Israel has not acknowledged the role it played planting the bomb which killed Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ safehouse 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 as well as the wealthy bosses of Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups that do Iran’s bidding.
Apart from the obvious necessity to kill the political leader of Hamas, the man who commissioned the 7 October 2023 massacre of Israelis and others, this Mossad hit should also be read as a warning to Iran’s mullahs.
Haniyeh and his leadership cohort move under a cloak of secrecy and with heavy personal protection. The ability of Israeli intelligence to plan a small bomb – one with just enough explosive power to kill its target without destroying the building – in a heavily guarded safe house is a remarkable coup.
The operation means that senior Hamas operatives, or Revolutionary Guards Force officers, or both, are assets compromised by Israeli intelligence.
Sworn in last Tuesday, 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.
On that basis I assess that an Iranian retaliatory strike on Israel will be just like the tit-for-tat missile and drone exchange last April – limited, telegraphed in advance and designed not to inflict major damage.
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.
Never let a crisis go to waste. Pezeshkian has an opportunity to consolidate his limited grip on the presidency by purging a few enemies in the name of hunting Mossad’s recruits.
The new president 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 7 October 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 because of the additional air power and intelligence coverage over 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. A key thing to watch in coming days will be what additional military forces the US deploys to the eastern Mediterranean.
On 24 June the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group entered the eastern Med. With the Nimitz-class carrier is the guided-missile cruiser, USS Philippine Sea and guided-missile destroyer, USS Gravely.
It’s highly likely that there will be one or more US cruise missile carrying attack submarines in the region.
This adds a substantial air defence and anti-missile shield in an area where the Israeli military already has a dominating capability.
Perhaps a likely outcome is that Tehran will bide it’s time until the US November presidential election before seeking a retaliatory strike against Israel. If Trump wins, Tehran might decide to go quiet for a time.
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 in Washington DC.
China will also council caution in Tehran. Beijing want’s a viable regional proxy able to do its budding, not a smoking ruin.
Israel’s strategic choices bring the country to a fundamental 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’ 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.
Sad to say, military operations have failed to recover all the Israeli hostages. But would three or six months more grinding conflict produce a different result? My view is that Israel will have to rethink how best to get the hostages returned.
The hardest challenge for Israel is to design a plan that ends the Gaza war and starts a return to, if not peace, then non-war. Israel will for years continue to use intelligence, precision strikes and special forces to keep Hamas’ military rebuilding to a minimum.
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.
The only thing which might prevent that is if Hezbollah withdraws from south of the Litani. That’s a call only Iran will make. It comes down to whether president Pezeshkian has the domestic power or will to do that. That’s unlikely in my view.
Israel rightly thinks it has an existential need to destroy the much larger military threat that Hezbollah presents to the safety of millions of Israelis. 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 a debatable assumption. A bigger strategic shock that even 7 October 2023 has been the capitulation of most of the world’s consequential democracies – Australia loudly among them – to a progressive ideology that will not let Israel fight for its own existence, while pretending that the Palestinians aren’t hostages of the Hamas death cult.
That international democratic betrayal of Israel will have its day of accountability, but the shock at that abandonment will not stop Jerusalem from a full-on military campaign against Hezbollah into southern Lebanon.
Some key points are relevant: First Israel has the military capability to do this quickly and decisively. Second the vast majority of Israelis will support such an operation. 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 powerbase 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. At some point in 2025 if not before, “normal” politics will resume in Israel. Netanyahu, other politicians, the military and intelligence establishment all must account for what happened on 7 October.
Then, Israel needs to find a way to settle a new accommodation with the world, its Middle East neighbours and indeed the Palestinians. I’m not sure I will see a two-state solution in my life time 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’s undergraduate posturing over ceasefires, moderation in war, pretending there is an islamophobia problem and denying open antisemitism has been as moronic as it has been depressing.
For a country apparently incapable of sending a ship to counter Houthi threats to shipping in the Red Sea, we have 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 Albanese, but an international price for his government’s unforgivable and empty posturing will be paid. We have lost Israel’s friendship for years. Other Middle Eastern countries will quietly understand just how intellectually pathetic our approach has been – would anyone imagine that Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Egypt rates Canberra highly today?
In Washington, Australia’s failure to show spine in the Middle East will damage us with the Democrats because they understand the threat presented by Iran. Washington knows the difference between geo-politics and woke posturing even though it does both.
If Trump is elected, Australia’s posturing over Israel will be a black mark, adding to our failure to address in any realistic time frame 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.