In forty years, the first direct Iranian attack on Israel was only last April, and the second was yesterday. Israel vowed yesterday that it would respond, and then we are in a second phase of the conflict between the two regional powers.
For many years, Iran and Israel have been engaged in a dangerous and complex game of war.
The Jewish state did not stop developing military capabilities aimed at the day of decisive war, and it planned for that day with its Western ally.
Iran, on the other hand, has built military capabilities and built a cordon around Israel through agents in Yemen, Gaza, Iraq, and the most dangerous of them in Lebanon, with the aim of balancing power with Israel and reaching a stage in which Iran imposes its regional demands.
Hezbollah made it its most important asset, with about thirty thousand fighters and an arsenal of 120,000 missiles, according to the map of Iranian targets against Israel.
This complex balance is what prevented direct military confrontation, as all past wars were fought between Israel and Iranian proxies.
The events of the past few days gradually revealed their goals. The Israelis deliberately did not reveal their intentions until after they had been achieved, which was to finally confront Iran. It was only talking about the area south of the Litani River, then it became clear that the target was south of Beirut and Hassan Nasrallah specifically.
This war is different, without rules of engagement and without red lines. Israel directly targeted Hezbollah’s leadership and arsenal and achieved massive destruction. While the 2006 war aimed to force the party to hand over the kidnapped soldiers and their bodies only.
It appears from the statements and rounds of battles that the real goal of this round is to remove Hezbollah from the confrontation equation with Iran, and not to isolate it from the Gaza front, nor to weaken the party and its role in Lebanon. These sub-goals may be achieved within the repercussions of the war and not because they are among its goals. Israel is determined to put pressure on Iran with the aim of stopping the construction of its nuclear weapons and breaking the cordon of its militias around it.
The question is, within its plan to confront Iran, can Israel really eliminate what remains of Hezbollah, its strongest sword, and make Iran naked in the next war?
Naim Qassem says, in the first announcement since the killing of his boss, party leader Hassan Nasrallah: “Despite the assassination of the cadres, Israel has not been able to affect our ability, and there are alternatives for every leader.” While Israel says it eliminated half of the party’s leaders and about eighty percent of the main weapons arsenal.
The strength of the party is that it is not a traditional army, and it is able to survive whenever Iran decides to continue supporting it. However, it may no longer be a force that threatens Israel in the great war.
The next stage, as Israel announced, after eliminating what it can reach and destroying the rest of Hezbollah’s weapons that were stored throughout Lebanon, is to prevent it from being brought back to life by depriving it of weapons supplies. We will witness an open war on the Israeli side to stop transportation and smuggling operations across borders and airports and to pursue new sites. Iran had built a long transportation network from Iran to Iraq, then Syria, and even Hezbollah sites.
From a different perspective, yesterday’s Iranian attack can be considered an announcement of the death of Hezbollah. It fulfills the role that was the party’s mission.
However, the party, as a local militia, will continue to enjoy massive Iranian technical and material support and a local popular incubator, and it will be difficult for the Iranian entity that owned and managed an army and an arsenal larger than the Lebanese army and most Arab countries’ forces to return. These Iranian capabilities have been destroyed in the past few weeks, by superior Israeli military and intelligence capabilities capable of adjusting the balance of power against Iran in an unprecedented way in the history of the conflict between the two countries.
Even if the military leaders in Tehran do not tell their leaders the truth, the results announce themselves, and the battle is long, costly and losing. I am not basing this on the new reality, but also on the voices coming from within Iran itself that speak of its inability and suggest that they look for goals other than Israel.
After losing Hezbollah, Iran has only two paths left: either direct confrontation, as it did yesterday, or reaching a political solution in the post-US election period, regardless of the winner.
