An offshoot of the Iraqi branch of Hizballah, the Harakat al-Nujaba militia has fought against Islamic State in Iraq and in support of the Assad regime in Syria—always operating directly under the command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The militia recently announced the formation of a “Golan Liberation Brigade.” Amir Toumaj explains what this might portend:

While it is not uncommon for entities to name themselves after areas they aim to “liberate,” the militia’s spokesman has said that the unit could assist the Syrian regime in taking the Golan Heights. . . . [But first, the] unit would likely participate in an offensive to capture territory from the Syrian opposition in the part of the Golan still controlled by Syria before moving on to the much taller order of dislodging the Israelis across the border. This week’s announcement reflects Tehran’s priorities in southern Syria since finally taking the fiercely contested city of Aleppo late last year. . . . [R]eaffirming an ideological commitment to fighting Israel signals defiance to a global audience amid a reportedly converging American-Arab-Israeli military alliance against Tehran. . . . Harakat al-Nujaba also released a video promoting the Golan unit that showed fighters marching in columns and carrying a banner reading, “Israel will be destroyed.”. . .

The combined forces of the Syrian regime and the IRGC-led militias are no match for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and this disparity is expected to hold for the foreseeable future. Israel could also adopt a more proactive approach in Syria to foil IRGC encroachment in the Golan, for example by coordinating with Syrian rebels positioned in the area. The Syrian Golan’s flat geography furthermore denies the IRGC suitable terrain to replicate the southern-Lebanon model of concealing rocket launch sites dispersed across a widespread area, making it easier for the IDF to search and destroy weapons systems. For years, the IDF has been fortifying positions in the rocky plateau of Golan to face greater capabilities than the IRGC and its allies can muster.

Yet the claim to retake Israeli Golan underscores Harakat al-Nujaba’s ideological commitment to the IRGC’s and Ayatollah Khamenei’s declared goal of destroying Israel. . . . [For the time being,] IRGC’s primary goals in southern Syria are to crush Syrian opposition forces and to build the capability to open another front against Israel. The IRGC hopes a viable Golan foothold would serve as a deterrent against Israel and the U.S. that could be activated in a future conflict, such as another Israel-Hizballah war.

Roger Zakheim believes the U.S. has taken the wrong approach to the Israel-Hamas war, and to the fate of the five Americans currently being held in Gaza:

For more than seven months the secretary of state and director of central intelligence, along with other senior officials, have treated the Gaza war as if it were a conflict between state actors, employing shuttle diplomacy and negotiating with both sides. They have indulged in the conceit that you can negotiate with a terrorist organization by treating it as an equal party. The Biden administration has continued to allow Qatar to give Hamas’s political leadership sanctuary in its five-star headquarters in Doha, on the theory that if they can talk with Hamas leaders, a resolution is more likely.

It is long overdue for the United States to shift the paradigm. Over the past twenty years, the United States has developed an array of intelligence, economic, and military tools and techniques that can pressure and destroy terrorist networks. They should be deployed against Hamas.

We should also unleash our military and intelligence community’s world-class targeting and strike capability that killed Osama bin Laden and Qassem Suleimani, and has rescued hundreds of hostages held by terrorists. . . . Instead of fully utilizing this exquisite capability, only a handful of military advisers are whispering advice to Israeli counterparts in Tel Aviv. . . . As one IDF special operator told me, “Your Delta forces would be a game changer.”