An inflection point for Israel and Iran
An Israeli push into southern Lebanon probably also buys Bibi Netanyahu a little more time in power.
Israel has not acknowledged the role it played planting the bomb which killed Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ safe house in Tehran.
Take it as read: this was a Mossad operation and one that will put the fear of the Old Testament God into Iran’s senior leadership. Thus far it has acted more as a deterrent than a spur to an Iranian military response.
Iran’s supposedly moderate new President Masoud Pezeshkian will read this as a signal that Mossad knows how to find him and others central to the regime.
Tehran’s leaders are ideological zealots, but also pragmatic and not stupid. From the April strikes they should have drawn some key conclusions: First, their ability to successfully target Israel is limited. Second, the US and UK will help Israel shoot down Iranian missiles and drones. Third, Israel has better quality air power and retaliatory systems.
Pezeshkian will also want to see what the United States will do in an atmosphere of renewed tension about the risks of a wider war.
Biden’s early support of Israel after October 7 was intelligent and rapid. Deploying two aircraft carrier battle groups to the eastern Mediterranean was a major show of strength, a deterrent to Iran and a reassurance to Israel.
Now Biden is a much-diminished lame-duck President and his administration took a disastrous turn to faux “pro-Palestinian” progressivism in a bid to appease the left of the Democratic party.
Nevertheless, Biden remains the Commander in Chief and his instincts on Israel are sound. On June 24 the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group entered the eastern Mediterranean. With the Nimitz-class carrier is the guided-missile cruiser, USS Philippine Sea and guided-missile destroyer, USS Gravely.
What of a Kamala Harris election win? For all of her time as Vice-President, Harris has shown no engagement in, or aptitude for, crisis management. Her meeting with Bibi Netanyahu and the vacuous claim that “I will not be silent” on the plight of Gazans (was anyone asking her to be quiet?) shows she has not taken the step from performative theatrics to thinking like a strategist.
That said, war, or the threat of it, makes even trivial people pause for thought. The American national security system will move to constrain Iran even during a potentially messy presidential transition.
Israel’s strategic choices bring the country to an inflection point in terms of the Gaza war, dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon, reversing its catastrophic slide in standing with key partners, and in domestic politics.
In Gaza, the IDF has achieved a key objective of destroying Hamas’s 24 battalions and its command-and-control system. A ground war could go on, but to what effect? There is a serious diminishing return in continuing to go after Hamas fighters.
Sadly, military operations have failed to recover all the Israeli hostages. But would three or six months more conflict produce a different result? My view is Israel will have to rethink how best to get the hostages returned.
On Hezbollah and Lebanon, Israel may quite soon stage a ground and air operation across their northern border as far as the Litani river 30 kilometres north.
Israel rightly thinks it has an existential need to destroy the much larger military threat of Hezbollah. Nine months ago, I would have written that the West’s major democracies would have had the sense and courage to back Jerusalem in that fight. Today that is debatable, but it will not stop Jerusalem.
Some key points: First, Israel has the military capability to do this quickly and decisively. Second, the vast majority of Israelis will support it. Third, the wider Middle East will continue to posture but do very little to support the Palestinian cause.
Fourth, Iran will happily fight Israel to the last Hamas and Hezbollah thug, but the mullahs in Tehran will not jeopardise their own precarious power base with a population that largely detests them by fighting a big direct war with Israel.
An Israeli push into southern Lebanon probably also buys Bibi Netanyahu a little more time in power.
Then, Israel needs to find a way to settle a new accommodation with the world, its Middle East neighbours and the Palestinians. I’m not sure I will see a two-state solution in my lifetime because the Palestinian half of that equation must want peace more than martyrdom. They are not there yet, even if Hamas is wiped from the equation.
Australia has been happy to stride a rhetorical global stage without ever troubling to understand how Israel has been trying to defend itself against a genuinely existential threat. We all understand the electoral priorities driving Anthony Albanese, but an international price for his government’s unforgivable and empty posturing will be paid.
In Washington, our failure to show spine in the Middle East will damage us with the Democrats because they understand the Iran threat. If Trump is elected, Australia’s posturing over Israel will be a black mark, adding to our failure to address in any realistic timeframe China’s growing military risk to Asia.
And Labor has tolerated the unleashing of an extremist cancer in our own society through the unholy alliance of woke progressivism and extremist Islam. Just as in Europe, this will inevitably bring violence to our shores.
Peter Jennings is director of Strategic Analysis Australia. A longer version of this article can be found at strategicanalysis.org.
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