When Hamas Fires Rockets from Lebanon, Iran Is Giving the Orders

April 18 2023

On April 6, over 30 rockets were launched from southern Lebanon into Israel, injuring three and prompting a response by the IDF. While it seems most likely that Hamas carried out the barrage—the largest from Lebanon since the 2006 war—it could only have done so with the permission of Hizballah, the Iran-sponsored militia that controls the area. Oved Lobel argues that this attack is not an extension of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but of the Iran-Israel one:

Once again, as it did in 2021, [Tehran’s] integrated network known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chose to piggyback on tensions and provocations in Jerusalem to launch salvoes of rockets at Israel from Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria. . . . This is far from the first time the Palestinian fronts of the IRGC’s “resistance axis” have fired rockets from Lebanon, hence Israel striking Palestinian bases there in 2013 and 2019. Rockets were also launched, likely by Palestinians, in 2009 from Lebanon.

Both Hamas and the Iranian regime consider the Palestinian terrorist group to be a constitutive element of the IRGC’s regional jihad to destroy Israel. . . . As if to underline the point, the rockets last week were launched while the Hamas politburo leader Ismail Haniyeh, leading a senior Hamas delegation, was meeting with Hizballah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut to “coordinate positions and strengthen the resistance against the Israeli enemy.”

It is very important not to fall for the IRGC’s shell game. All of these ostensibly separate organizations, Palestinian or otherwise, are both materially and, in almost all cases—though not necessarily in the case of Hamas—ideologically beholden to Iran’s supreme leader and the IRGC.

Read more at Fresh Air

More about: Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, Israeli Security, Lebanon

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy