Israel’s actions in the north spell trouble for Tehran’s dreams of destroying the West.
As Israel pounds Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, it appears that Israel’s actions on the northern front will change the situation in the Middle East. The multiple attacks against Hezbollah will also transform the war in Gaza and could finally modify, and perhaps even temporarily neutralize, Iran’s strategic plan to “unite the front” for its purposes.
According to many analysts, Iran has three main goals: create a large Shi’ite Islamic front led by longtime commanders to conquer the Middle East and the world, incorporating a Sunni part; destroy Israel; and destroy the West, starting with the United States.
A fundamental strategic stage was set on Oct. 7, when Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar unleashed Hamas on Israel. He should have first called his closest associates, especially Hezbollah, which did join the fight, albeit on Oct. 8 and in a far weaker state than Hamas expected. Sinwar had envisioned a territorial invasion of the south with his men occupying various strongholds and Hezbollah launching its own vast invasion to the north, identical in its bloodiness. It was planned but didn’t happen.
Hamas was pushed back into Gaza, where it then suffered decimation and destruction. Hezbollah is now facing that same fate as, in an operation of classic skill and precision, the Israel Defense Forces bombed the buildings the terror had transformed into weapons depots and destroyed the houses that hid Iranian missiles ready for launch, first, though, they told the civilian population to leave.
For years, Iran has equipped Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with hundreds of thousands of missiles. Yet the terror group can no longer count on them as many of them, as well as the missile launchers, have been destroyed in recent days. This comes after Hezbollah’s key leaders, among them Ibrahim Aqil, were eliminated last week after they gathered to plan their revenge for an attack that killed and injured Hezbollah fighters earlier in the week when thousands of pagers and other electronic equipment exploded.
Since the enemy’s Oct. 7 experiment aimed at eliminating Israel, the Jewish state has responded with all its strength. Hezbollah sought to expel the Israeli population from the north, create a desert wasteland and prepare for an invasion on the scale of Oct. 7 or worse. Israel responded with surprise attacks on both the terror entity’s fighters and equipment.
As for other Iranian proxies—who, according to the fantasies of the “resistance” would close ranks to destroy Israel—the Houthis, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, have only struck the Jewish state sporadically. Iran has also been thwarted by its attempts. On April 13, the terror state showed off its crown jewels, ballistic missiles it fired towards Israel, only to have them shot down by a coalition of international powers, in which Saudi Arabia and Jordan also participated.
A member of the Iranian government hypothesized that Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi—who was killed in a helicopter crash in bad weather this past May—had, perhaps, been surprised by an explosion of his beeper in the helicopter. Also, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has ordered all members not to use communication devices. The regime’s best weapon, Hezbollah, is leaderless, without weapons, and its role as a useless arsonist in Lebanese society is now increasingly clear.
Meanwhile, the official Iranian newspaper, Jomhouri-e Eslami, has published this notice: “In the current situation, the transition to other methods in the war against the Zionist regime … does not mean stopping it, but changing … There are elements that try to drag Iran into a direct war with the Zionist regime and bring the USA into involvement in the war. …. Now, Iran, are you afraid that Israel will do to Hezbollah what it did to Hamas in Gaza and will thus lose an important and powerful arm in the proxy axis in the Middle East and throughout the world? So, it seems.”
Israel’s actions are called deterrence, and maybe it’s starting to work.
Fiamma Nirenstein is an Italian-Israeli author, journalist and senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. An adviser on antisemitism to Israel’s foreign minister, she served in the past as a member of the Italian Parliament, where she was vice president of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Chamber of Deputies.
