Is Israel Under a Wider Threat Than in the Past?

Iran’s capacity for self-delusion is a wonder to behold. It has now concluded that Israel is fearful of the Islamic Republic’s ability to create an “Axis of Resistance” that will surround the Jewish state and, with help from Arabs within Israel and the territories, manage to destroy it. A report on Iran’s rich fantasy life is here.

IRAN BELIEVES Israel is under a wider threat than in the past. It brags it could unite Gaza and the “northern front” against the Jewish state. It believes that the West Bank could “explode at any moment.” Iran also wants to stoke sectarian conflict inside the Green Line, the report says.

Is Israel under a wider threat than in the past? Hamas has just been dealt a crushing blow that Israeli military men say will take it years to recover from. Hezbollah is at the nadir of its popularity in Lebanon. Its o’erweening presence in Lebanon has managed to help bring the country’s economy crashing down. The Gulf Arabs will not renew their aid to a country dominated by a terror group linked to Iran, their mortal enemy. And by violently suppressing those Lebanese protesting against the permanent political elite that has through mismanagement and corruption helped to bring about the economic degringolade, Hezbollah has enraged almost all the Lebanese who are not members of the terror group. A recent shootout in a Christian neighborhood in Beirut left eight Hezbollah fighters dead. This was a demonstration of a new willingness by Lebanese to confront even the armed and goose-stepping goons of Hezbollah. It’s likely that if Israel went to war with Hezbollah again, the group would not have any support in Lebanon outside its own ranks.

Meanwhile, Israel has carried out thousands of airstrikes in Syria on Iranian bases, to prevent them from supplying Hezbollah with advanced weapons, especially precision-guided missiles. And neither Iran nor Hezbollah have been able in response to launch a single successful attack on Israel itself.

“These are related to the strategic threat against the Israeli internal front, and from the external borders, in addition to southern Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen [in which] will be [included] other components of the Israeli threat in the event of a multilateral war. On the other hand, the increase of Iran’s military and technological power adds to this concern of the Zionists.”

Israel has now destroyed, for years to come, Hamas’ ability to harm it, beyond the intermittent pinpricks of an occasional rocket lobbed into southern Israel. It has prevented Hezbollah from obtaining more than a dozen precision-guided missiles from Iran. The IDF has destroyed every tunnel that Hezbollah constructed that once snaked into Israel from Lebanon. These tunnels were very elaborate and expensive affairs: one tunnel, for example, was dug to a depth of 80 meters (260 feet), was a kilometer (3280 feet) long and penetrated 77 meters (250 feet) into Israeli territory. The IDF says these tunnels were equipped with advanced infrastructure for electricity, ventilation and communications systems, and that each of these tunnels would have taken years to complete. Now they are all destroyed, and there is no sign of Hezbollah trying again to build them. What would be the point? Israel would only destroy them.

How can the Houthis help in the “multilateral war” that Iran foresees waging against Israel? Can its missiles, from such a distance as Yemen, reach Israel without falling short, or without being intercepted early on by Israel’s Iron Dome missiles? And how many long-range missiles and drones do the Houthis possess? Israel is a lot further away from Houthi launching pads than are the Aramco oil facilities in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province which, until now, have been the Houthis’ only targets outside Yemen. Would the Houthis want to risk Israeli retaliation?

What about the Kataib Hezbollah militia in southern Iraq? Kataib Hezbollah has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. since 2009. Its performance has been underwhelming. On March 13 and 14, 2020 the group managed fire two rockets at American servicemen stationed at Camp Taji, killing exactly two Americans and wounding another half-dozen. Since then, it has used rockets and drones to attack Americans in Iraq with similar unimpressive results. Kataib Hezbollah’s last large attack took place on February 15, 2021, when it fired rockets at an Iraqi army base in Erbil. A dozen Iraqis were wounded, but only one American serviceman. The mighty Shi’a militia in Iraq that Iran claims will be of such assistance in the future, helping to besiege the Zionist enemy from every side, turns out to be not at all impressive in its war-making. It has managed to kill fewer than a half-dozen Americans over the last three years. And Kataib Hezbollah turns out to have only 1,000 members, hardly enough to make a difference in any major conflict between Iran and Israel.

Iran seems to have revealed its plans in this report. It says that Hezbollah coordinated intelligence with Hamas in Gaza during the May conflict. “He [the Tasnim reporter] stated that a high level of coordination was observed between the various members of the resistance during the Battle of the Sword of Quds [the May conflict].”

What was the “intelligence” Hezbollah shared with Hamas during Operation Guardian of the Walls? That Israel was surely aware of Hamas’ vast tunnel network under Gaza because of its experience with Hezbollah’s tunnel? What “high level of coordination” was demonstrated by the “various members of the resistance”? Other than warning Hamas about Israel’s likely knowledge of its tunnel network, what else could Hezbollah have done to help Hamas? Nothing. What could the Syrians have provided to Hamas? Again, nothing, and besides, the Syrian regime had its own reasons for wanting Hamas, that took the side of the Syrian opposition, to be defeated by Israel. What did Iran itself do to “coordinate” with Hamas, or to help it in any way in the May war? I can’t find mention anywhere of Iranian help to Hamas during its latest war with Israel.

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