Stopping the Great Middle East War of 2019 before It Starts

Neither Iran nor Israel seems to want to go to war, but the former is willing to risk provoking Israel and the latter is determined to prevent a dangerous buildup of Iranian capabilities in Syria. Thus, write Nadav Ben Hour and Michael Eisenstadt, there are several possible scenarios that could lead to a war between Jerusalem and Tehran (and/or its proxies). After outlining various ways such a conflict could play out, the authors venture some predictions:

Israel’s next northern war will be far more wide-ranging than prior conflicts. Israel may start with an intense air campaign to counter the threat of enemy rocket and missile forces and militias, but effectively dealing with this threat will require large-scale ground operations. Israel’s enemies will not be satisfied only with launching rockets and missiles at Israeli military facilities, population centers, and critical infrastructure, but they will try to use ground forces to infiltrate Israeli lines and to capture Israeli villages and small military outposts. They will also likely employ cyberwarfare in support of conventional military operations (for instance, to disrupt Israeli missile defenses), and perhaps against critical infrastructure, to achieve strategic effects.

In past conflicts with [Tehran’s proxy] Hizballah, Israel focused on the organization’s military forces, its leadership, military specialists, and elements of the Lebanese infrastructure that facilitated its operations. In the next northern war, the dilemma of whether to prioritize action against immediate threats or enemy centers of gravity and critical enablers will be acute. . . .

Russia is a key actor in Syria and could be a key factor in a future war. Will Moscow stand aside, or will it constrain Israel’s ability to strike pro-regime forces in Syria, to prevent the unraveling of the Assad regime’s post-2015 civil-war gains? And will Washington remain militarily uninvolved—beyond perhaps augmenting Israeli missile defenses—or will it play a more active role, seeing this as an opportunity to strike a blow against Iran and thereby advance its goal of undermining the latter’s influence in the region?

Depending on how events play out, Israel could face a disquieting possibility: Russian efforts to thwart its use of decisive force, U.S. reticence, and ineffectual great-power diplomacy could prevent Israel from achieving its full military aims—not entirely unlike the denouement of the October 1973 war. That could ensure a protracted war, and perhaps a war that ends without Israel fulfilling its aims.

More optimistically, Ben Hour and Eisenstadt recommend some strategies both Washington and Jerusalem could adopt that will make war less likely—the most important of which are Israel’s continued efforts to interdict an Iranian force buildup in Syria, and America’s maintaining a contingent of troops in northeastern Syria.

Read more at American Interest

More about: Hizballah, Iran, Israel & Zionism, Israeli Security, Syrian civil war, U.S. Foreign policy

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF