Israel Still Has More to Fear from Iranian Nuclear Weapons Than from Hizballah

The Islamic Republic’s recent attempts to sabotage Saudi and Emirati oil tankers and pipelines suggest that the mullahs have shifted to a more active response to renewed American sanctions. Could Tehran’s next step be to order Hizballah, or its other proxies, to attack Israel? Unlikely, argue Amos Yadlin and Ari Heistein:

The sabotage of oil infrastructure caused no loss of life, and the Saudi pipeline was quickly brought back online. Notably, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia did not respond militarily. However, an extraordinary cross-border attack against Israel by one of Iran’s clients—exceeding the current sporadic but routine exchanges in terms of threat or consequences—runs a high risk of eliciting the powerful military response Iran seeks to avoid. This certainly proved true [at the beginning of this month], when two rockets fired from Syria triggered Israeli airstrikes that caused significant damage to Iranian and Hizballah forces. . . .

The direct and indirect threats along Israel’s border are unlikely to disappear anytime soon, but it is probable that Iran’s precarious geopolitical and economic situation will reduce the appetite for escalation with Israel for the foreseeable future. The Iranian nuclear issue, by contrast, may reemerge and replace the Iranian conventional threat as the foremost priority for Israel’s security establishment. . . .

Israel would be wise to prepare for three more problematic nuclear scenarios. . . . If the 2015 nuclear deal continues to limp along, Israel should devise a method for coping with the agreement’s sunset clauses over the next decade that could leave Iran with a full-scale nuclear program, accompanied by a dangerously short breakout time, by 2030. Preparing for this will require a great deal of investment in diplomatic, intelligence collection, and force-building efforts that can be utilized for an international push, bolstered by an effective military option, to prevent Iran’s nuclearization, perhaps by seeking to extend the sunset clauses.

This would be no simple task even with the current level of support from the U.S. administration. It will be considerably more complex should one of Donald Trump’s opponents win the presidency next year and choose to rejoin the deal.

Read more at War on the Rocks

More about: Hizballah, Iran nuclear program, Israeli Security, 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