Target Iran: Israel seizes its moment to reshape the Middle East

TEL AVIV — Israel’s leaders believe they now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East, one that goes well beyond pulverizing Hamas and Hezbollah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear on Monday that his ultimate target in the regional power shift is to undermine the authority of Tehran’s clerical leadership, defanging the Iranians who are the bankrollers, trainers and supposed protectors of both Hamas in Gaza and the Lebanese Shi’ite militia Hezbollah.

In an address in English, Netanyahu promised the “noble Persian people” that the day when they were free of rule by “tyrants” and could have peace with Israel would come “a lot sooner than people think.”

“There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach,” he warned ominously.

For Iran, that will not sound like idle posturing. Israel is not just fighting Tehran by smashing its allies and proxies — such as Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen — but is showing its supremacy both in terms of technology and espionage on Iranian soil.

In April, unscathed by a massive Iranian missile barrage, Israel hit back by blowing up an air defense radar near the central city of Isfahan, in what was widely seen as a warning that it could take out Iranian nuclear facilities at will. In July, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was murdered by a rocket, fired into a government guesthouse in Tehran. Top Iranian commanders have died in strikes on Damascus and Beirut. Netanyahu’s messaging about Israel’s “reach” is clear, limiting Iran’s room for maneuver.

For Tehran’s leadership, this is an excruciating challenge. Iran projects power across the region by styling itself as the military heavyweight that can support its loyal proxy militias across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Israel is now directly challenging that authority, with Friday’s bunker-busting assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah being the most flagrant example of Netanyahu throwing down the gauntlet to Tehran.

Ground offensive in Lebanon

Israel surely won’t stop there.

There is no sign Netanyahu is going to call it a day after scything through Hezbollah’s entire top command structure. Indeed, all the signs are Israeli defenses forces are poised to launch a ground assault in southern Lebanon, with Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant telling soldiers deployed in northern Israel that the next phase of the war against Hezbollah is set to begin. Reservists are also being called up and directed north.

Blowing through growing international calls for a ceasefire, Netanyahu will intensify the offensive on Hezbollah, says a senior Israeli official who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity. That will likely include launching a major ground assault aimed at smashing Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, forcing it to withdraw its forces north of the Litani River, 29 kilometers from the Israeli-Lebanese border, in accordance with a UN resolution that concluded the 2006 Lebanon war.

Israel will also continue to pound Hezbollah’s weapons depots, logistics and command hubs further north and in the Beqaa Valley, while continuing to send out its hunt-and-kill missions for senior commanders. “This is our chance to break Hezbollah so it can never recover and wield the power it has in Lebanon,” the official said.

Netanyahu’s once electorally fatal opinion poll numbers are rising since Nasrallah’s assassination, meaning there’s every political inducement for him to prolong the offensive and ignore repeated ceasefire calls from Western allies and aid groups, who fear a humanitarian crisis worsening in Lebanon.

Visiting Israeli troops deployed in northern Israel on Monday, Gallant, strongly hinted a ground offensive against Hezbollah would be ordered soon. Israeli special forces have already been conducting raids across the border.

“The elimination of Nasrallah is a very important step, but it is not the final one,” Gallant told troops serving with the army’s Golani Brigade. “We will employ all the capabilities at our disposal, and if someone on the other side did not understand what those capabilities entail, we mean all capabilities.”

U.S. officials believe any Israeli incursion will be limited, targeted and not as extensive as 2006, which triggered a short but fierce war that hurt both sides. But there remain fears in Washington of an Iranian attack against Israel, prompting some U.S. forces being moved “to defer and defend as necessary.” And there are worries of Israeli overreach. 

Late on Monday, there were Israeli media reports that there had been an increase in Israel’s artillery bombardments along the border and that Lebanese army forces had withdrawn units that could be caught up in any fighting. 

The U.S. said it was being kept abreast of operations. “They have been informing us about a number of operations, I know I’ve seen reports about ground operations. We’ve had some conversations with them about that,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told reporters in a briefing Monday. “But we’re in continuous conversations with them about it,” Matthew Miller, the spokesperson, said.

Beginning of the end for Iran’s Axis

But the rhetoric being used by Israeli leaders doesn’t seem to match the more limited remarks of U.S. officials. And it isn’t only domestic political logic driving Netanyahu — but military rationale, too. “The military incentives for Israel are to continue,” observed Matthew Savill of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, a think tank.  

“It has destroyed Hizbollah’s senior leadership, compromised its ability to coordinate and has the initiative. In spite of the risks a ground incursion would face, the long-range threat from ballistic missiles, and the stretched nature of current IDF operations, it is possible to imagine that many would argue there will never be a better time to go into southern Lebanon to destroy Hizbollah’s military infrastructure there,” he added.

Israeli officials are talking in much more ambitious terms than the more limited war aim of making Hezbollah stop its months-long cross-border rocket attacks to allow around 80,000 Israeli evacuees to return to their northern homes.

Outside the current ranks of the government, several senior and still influential former intelligence and security chiefs, including former Mossad head Tamir Pardo, are publicly urging the military campaign to be sustained to redraw the Middle East.

Speaking to the Israeli media including Haaretz, Pardo said the blows Israeli dealt Hezbollah the past 12 days have presented Israeli with “an opportunity that must not be missed.”

Tehran’s most important regional ally is unlikely to recover to control Lebanon to the extent it has since the 2006 war with Israel, he added. “In my humble opinion, there is no way they can rehabilitate it to what it was before,” he says.

The extraordinary damage the IDF has inflicted on Hezbollah has indeed left the organization reeling. The list of top Hezbollah commanders killed in the past fortnight reads like a Who’s Who of Shi’ite militants and is being added to daily.

“Almost the entirety of the group’s senior leadership, political and military, along with thousands of members and mid-level commanders, has been assassinated, eliminated, or rendered combat-ineffective — not to mention that the Israel Defense Forces have destroyed large quantities of strategic munitions that could have threatened Israeli cities and targets,” said Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, an analyst at the Atlantic Council.

“The region might be witnessing the beginning of the end of Iran’s axis of resistance,” he added.

That outcome wouldn’t displease a broad swathe of Arab leaders, including in the Gulf. Some Gulf media are already heaping blame on Hezbollah for the suffering of the Lebanese. Saudi Arabia’s influential daily newspaper Okaz has accused Hezbollah of acting “for the sake of Iranian interests, not Lebanese or Arab ones.”

Both Hezbollah and Iran are in a bind with few attractive options.

Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has been eager to improve ties with Arab neighbors and has also been making overtures to the West, hinting Tehran is ready to get more serious about nuclear talks. To become directly involved in the conflict risks wrecking that diplomatic outreach. Launching the kind of direct missile assault it did unsuccessfully earlier this year on Israel will expose its weakness in the face of Israeli military superiority, leaving Hezbollah largely on its own and just with rhetorical support from Tehran.

Julien Barnes-Dacey of the European Council on Foreign Relations, however, warned against further Israel escalation and described the idea of creating a new regional order a “dangerous illusion.” 

“The Israeli attack marks a significant tactical achievement but remains detached from a viable strategic pathway to sustainably address Israeli security needs and end the series of interlinking regional conflicts,” he argued.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a fierce Netanyahu critic, also told POLITICO it was too early to talk in terms of success. “What if two or three big missiles land in Tel Aviv?” he cautioned.

Erin Banco contributed reporting.