Courtesy of Tehran and the Whole Gang

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As Israel’s UN ambassador, Ron Prosor, said: “Every rocket flying out of Gaza could bear the imprint ‘Courtesy of Tehran.'”

Good point. It should make us think more broadly about the Gaza/Israel war. That war isn’t just a conflict between Israel and Hamas, because both stand for much larger parts of the world. Israel’s ability to wage war depends in part on the military cooperation and assistance that comes from the United States (think Iron Dome, just for starters), while Hamas’s strength derives in part from help coming from Iran and Qatar.

So the Gaza war should be seen as a test of the two sides’ backers as well as a test of the actual combatants, in the same way the Spanish Civil War tested the abilities and resolve of the two sides that would shortly face off directly in the world war. The West’s decision to stay out of the little war encouraged Hitler and Mussolini to be more ambitious, thereby making the big war more likely.

Pundits almost never put the several little wars now raging from Europe to the Middle East in global context, preferring to deal with each separate conflict as a separate event. But even a short look at recent headlines about Hamas shows the extent of its support network (which should be the main issue). Here are three, in addition to the one quoting Amb. Prosor:

1. A secret arms deal between Hamas and North Korea;

2. Deals between Iran and North Korea;

3. Bragging by one of the most powerful Iranian leaders, Ali Larijani, taking credit for providing Hamas with rockets.

Eyes tend to roll at the suggestion that North Korea is a significant force in world affairs, but the leaders of the hermit kingdom do matter. Take all those Gazan tunnels, for example. One will get you five that a good deal of the expertise, and perhaps even a certain degree of manpower, came from Pyongyang. The North Koreans excel at tunneling, as at nuclear weaponry. (Remember that Syrian nuke facility the Israelis bombed a while ago? That was a North Korean public works project. And they have worked hard on the Tehran subway system and on tunnels in Iranian mountains too.) They are totally in cahoots with the Iranians on missiles and nukes, and evidently link up with the mullahs to help terror organizations.

Then there’s Sudan, a vicious Islamist regime with which Tehran has been closely linked for decades. Sudan is a key link in the smuggling chain that has long brought weapons to Gaza: from Sudan through Egypt, into Gaza through a tunnel network of the sort we have seen so much of recently. And don’t forget that Sudan also gave space to Osama bin Laden for a while; it was there, in fact, that he first started working with Hezbollah, which taught him useful skills like car bombing and simultaneous attacks.

It’s a global network: add Russia (very busy in Syria, not just Ukraine, lest we forget) and Cuba and Venezuela and Bolivia and Nicaragua playing significant roles.

So when you think about Gaza, remember that it’s just one battlefield and one small war, a piece of a big war that threatens us more and more with every passing day.

Somebody should stand up and say these things, and ask our leaders why they aren’t coming up with a strategy to win the big war.

Because if we don’t win it, they will.