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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/07/us/politics/iran-us-israel-conflict.html
From Lebanon to the Red Sea, a Broader Conflict with Iran Looms
(New York Times) David E. Sanger - American and Israeli officials, and a dozen countries working in concert to keep commerce flowing in the Red Sea, are confronting a newly aggressive Iran. Meanwhile, the Iranian nuclear program has suddenly been put on steroids. International inspectors announced in late December that Iran initiated a threefold increase in its enrichment of near-bomb-grade uranium. By most rough estimates, Iran now has the fuel for at least three atomic weapons. American and European intelligence officials say the Iranians seem more than willing to push the envelope, enabling attacks, coordinating targeting of American bases and ships carrying goods and fuel, and walking to the edge, again, of nuclear weapons capability. There is also the problem of the dramatically widening scope of Iran's aid to Russia. "Iran is active on all the borders, resistant to any sort of change from within, while enriching uranium at very alarming levels," said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. American intelligence officials say Iran did not instigate or approve the Hamas attack in Israel and probably was not even told about it. Hamas may have feared that word of the attack would leak from Iran, given how deeply Israeli and Western intelligence have penetrated the country. But as soon as the war against Hamas began, Iran's proxy forces went on the attack.