During the Gaza War, which Iran continues to believe ended in a Hamas victory, the Islamic Republic encouraged others in the “axis of resistance” to make trouble for Israel in the north.
More on Iran’s belief that it has Israel “on the run” is detailed here here: “Iran believes it has Israel on the run,” by Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, August 7, 2021:
Iran also encouraged Palestinians in Lebanon to fire rockets, and used a drone to fly from Syria into Israel in May, during Operation Guardian of the Walls.
Three rockets were fired at Israel from Palestinian factions in Lebanon during this latest Gaza war; all three fell harmlessly into the Mediterranean. Israel responded with artillery barrages, hitting Palestinian outposts in Lebanon. Israel also retaliated for the drone flown from Syria into Israel’s airspace, probably launched by Hezbollah, by hitting a Hezbollah base in Lebanon. Israel’s response was much more punishing than those three harmless rockets that landed in the sea, or than the drone that flew from Syria into Israeli airspace, doing no damage.
“The internal situation in Lebanon may be the reason for the resistance’s greater readiness for confrontation, not retreat,” Tasnim News says. “One of the issues to be noted in the clashes in southern Lebanon over the past few days, which began with Israeli aggression and Hezbollah missile responses, [shows] once again Israel’s intelligence failure to assess resistance positions to respond to aggression.”…
“Israeli aggression” did not begin the latest Gaza War. Hostilities began when Hamas let loose on May 10 a barrage of 180 rockets at Israel; Israel then responded with far more accurate and deadly airstrikes that continued for 11 straight days. It’s unclear what Tasnim News, a private news agency in Iran, means when it mentions Israel having “once again”(after the Gaza war) demonstrated an “intelligence failure.” From the 25 senior commanders in Hamas who were tracked down to their lairs and killed in pinpoint airstrikes on their offices, their apartments, their houses, to the attacks on weapons depots hidden in or near schools, hospitals, apartment houses, and mosques, and finally, most importantly, to the destruction of 62 miles of the tunnel network that Hamas, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, had dug deep underground, Israel showed it had an astonishing amount of information about the precise location of Hamas members, hidden caches of weapons, and the exact layout of the tunnel network built so deep that Hamas had assumed would avoid detection.
Mossad agents have been running circles around the Iranians, from the Stuxnet computer worm introduced in 2010, to the assassination of five top Iranian nuclear scientists from 2010 to 2012, to the locating and spiriting back to Israel of Iran’s entire nuclear archive in 2018, to the sabotage at two centrifuge plants at Natanz, the first one built aboveground and destroyed in 2020, the second, a replacement plant, built 50 meters underground, and also largely destroyed by Israeli saboteurs, in 2021. Meanwhile “mysterious explosions” at petrochemical plants, electricity grids, and missile sites continue to take place throughout Iran, all due to the vigilant work of Mossad agents. Given this display of superior Israeli intelligence, the embarrassed Iranians insist – despite all the evidence otherwise – that Israel now demonstrates a “weakness and decline in [its]intelligence capabilities.”
IRAN NOW admits that there “is a high level of coordination and intelligence cooperation between members of the Axis of Resistance, which was mentioned by the leaders of the Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah movements during the battle,” Tasnim said. This means that these groups have honed their close contacts in recent months….
For the Israelis, this was always taken for granted – that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, despite their sectarian and ideological differences, formed an alliance – the “Axis of Resistance” – against the Jewish state.
Iran says that Israel has relied heavily on intelligence technology that led it to think Hezbollah would not respond. It also says that the Jewish state works closely with countries in the region.
Recent events have shown that they cannot assess the orientation and positions and thinking of the resistance.
Israel crushed Hamas in Gaza. As for Hezbollah, when it did “respond” to Israel’s “aggression” in Gaza against Hamas, the most it could manage was to fire 19 rockets at the Jewish state, not one of which did the slightest damage. Ten were intercepted by Iron Dome, six fell harmlessly in open fields in Israel, and three fell short, landing in Lebanon. And to make matters worse for Hezbollah, angry Druze villagers, fed up with being used as human shields, besieged and roughed up a Hezbollah soldier driving a truck carrying rockets. Their anger finally overcame their fear of the terror group.
IRAN HAS assessed that Israel made a mistake in believing Hezbollah was suffering from Lebanon’s economic crisis. “This made the Zionist enemy think of changing the fixed rules of conflict between the Israeli army and the Lebanese resistance since the July 2006 war, which, contrary to the Zionists’ expectations, did not change – and Hezbollah immediately responded with aggression with its missiles.”…
But Israel did not make a mistake in thinking that Hezbollah is “suffering from Lebanon’s economic crisis.” It is known that Iran, given its own economic woes, has so far cut its annual subsidy to Hezbollah from $800 million to $600 million, with further cuts expected. True, that is not as dramatic a decrease as what the LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces) has suffered, for the salaries of the LAF soldiers are pegged to the Lebanese pound, which has lost 90% of its value in the last eighteen months; the LAF soldier’s pay is now $90 a month. But Hezbollah members have also complained about the cuts In their own salaries; some have quit the terror group to find other employment. And like all other Lebanese, Hezbollah members have been suffering from the skyrocketing price of food and other staples.
Iranian fantasists should look at the state of Gaza today, after Israel crushed it in the 11-day war; then look at Lebanon, with its economy sinking in a Hezbollah-aided swamp of mismanagement and corruption, resulting in widespread poverty; and finally at Iran itself, which is desperate for a lifting of American sanctions that seemed a certainty just a few months ago and that now, thanks to Iranian maximalist demands might, despite the desires of Bidenites, not come to pass as Tehran had assumed.
Accordingly, Israel’s repeated intelligence failures may lead the regime to escalate its aggression under the pretext of trying to change the rules of the conflict in its favor, which will certainly be accompanied by more decisive responses from the resistance….
What “more decisive responses” can the “resistance” offer? Hamas, in Gaza, lies prostrate. Hezbollah does not dare to drag Lebanon into another war with Israel that would lead to the terror group’s own destruction; it has already managed, with its highhanded ways, to antagonize the Christians, Sunnis, and even some Shi’a in Lebanon. If Hezbollah were to provoke another unwanted war with Israel, the terror group would find that many Lebanese will at long last rise up in open rebellion against it.
Hezbollah had a green light from Iran to fire missiles from Lebanon. Hezbollah caused some controversy by using a Druze village to move missiles via a truck. A Hezbollah member was detained and released. The terrorist group also made it clear it could fire the rockets with impunity but also targeted open spaces in the contested Mount Dov area.
Hezbollah can fire “rockets with impunity,” but the IDF can make sure that not one of them lands where it can do damage in Israel. Those that targeted “open spaces” were allowed to land; there was no need to waste expensive Iron Dome interceptors on such innocuously-aimed rockets.
Israel also appeared to communicate that it was willing to de-escalate. What is important from Iran’s view is that Hezbollah took responsibility. Previous incidents like this – such as after the Hezbollah drone team was killed in the fall of 2018 and the July 2020 incident near Mount Dov where the IDF said it foiled a Hezbollah attack – are other instances where Hezbollah sought to show it could confront Israel on equal footing.
Israel is willing to “de-escalate” with Hezbollah because for now, it has other worries: whether the U.S., despite Iran’s maximalist position, will still seek to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal, and whether the Americans will try to “lengthen and strengthen” that deal in a subsequent agreement with Iran that would deal with that country’s ballistic missile program and its regional mischief-making. A preference for “de-escalation” doesn’t mean, as the Iranians seem to think, that Israel is afraid of the “Axis of Resistance.” Both Aviv Kochavi, the IDF chief, and Benny Gantz, Israel’s Defense Minister, have soberly insisted that Israel will do “whatever it takes” to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. When has Israel ever promised to “do whatever it takes” to achieve a certain goal and failed to follow through? Whatever else Iran may wish to say about Israel, it invites only ridicule when it claims that it has Israel “on the run.”
owensgate says
When Israel says “Iran will never have a Nuke to threaten us”, that is a statement you can bet the entire contents of Fort Knox on.
gravenimage says
When has Israel ever promised to ‘do whatever it takes’ to achieve a goal and failed to follow through?
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Iran is playing with fire here. They assume that Israel being civilized means that she is weak.
OLD GUY says
Iran has seen the weakness of Americas political leadership and assumes Israel will follow suit.
Americas leadership is more worried about their TV news ratings than defending America or actually winning a war.
When you send your military into a battle you can’t tie their hands to not kill civilians on the battlefield or in the cities where the enemy is operating amongst the civilian population.
If you are not willing to fight for what you have just surrender and allow your enemy to force their will on you.
Look at history and what it took to stop Hitler and Japan during WWII. Islamic leadership wants to control our lives, we either fight it or let it take us over.
If you want to win, you have to destroy your enemy.