Is Israel Winning Its “War between Wars”?

For over a decade, the IDF has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria, in a campaign to prevent the buildup of Iranian and Iran-backed forces that could be used to attack the Jewish state. These strikes, many of them on weapons shipments and armaments factories, appear to have peaked in 2020 and 2021 and declined slightly in 2022. The “war between the wars,” as it has been dubbed, has also included cyberwarfare and other covert actions. Surveying the campaign as a whole, Eden Kaduri draws some conclusions about its success:

[R]ecent years have seen a number of strategic processes that increase Iran’s influence in Syria in a way that is not addressed by the war between wars. Iran is working to reinforce its civilian entrenchment, infiltrating many aspects of Syrian life—the economy, education, culture, and tourism. In 2022 Iran worked tirelessly to extend economic cooperation, including increasing trade between the countries, launching joint economic projects, and removing regulatory restrictions. According to the Tehran regime, Iranian exports to Syria doubled last year, and Iran is exploiting the economic crisis in Syria to increase Syrian dependence. It has reinforced cooperation in the field of energy and electricity, implemented joint construction projects, and promoted the involvement of Iranian companies in the rebuilding of Syria.

Moreover 2022 saw the revival of the “axis of resistance” to Israel, which includes Iran, Hizballah, Syria, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. Renewed relations between the Assad regime and Hamas strengthen Syria’s status as an important element in the radical axis. Iran regards all these activities as strategic processes designed to exploit the civilian and political situation in Syria, while hardly being affected by the air attacks, . . . which are focused on preventing Iran’s military empowerment in Syria.

Israel should extend the range of tools at its disposal against the Iranian presence and influence to include diplomatic, economic, and cognitive efforts, possibly in collaboration with relevant countries, above all the United States, Jordan, Turkey, and the Gulf states, as well as sectors in Syria, such as the Druze and the Kurds.

Read more at Institute for National Security Studies

More about: Hizballah, Iran, Israeli Security, Syria

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