Is Iran next? Israel's next move after Hezbollah - opinion

Last year, veteran Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross said that as someone who has worked on the issue of a nuclear Iran and “talked to the Israelis for a long time, the one thing I am personally convinced of is they will never allow themselves to lose the option [to preemptively strike Iran]. You don’t wait until it is one minute to midnight.” 

After Iran’s unprecedented attack against Israel in April 2024 with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones, a Reuters headline read, “Iran threatens to annihilate Israel should it launch a major attack.” 

The question is even more urgent in the fall of 2024, as Israel has decided to go on the offensive, dramatically increasing its kinetic actions against Iran’s most important proxy in the North. In rapid succession was the daring special forces operation in the Masyaf area of Syria, destroying an IRGC and Hezbollah precision weapons factory; the assassination of the terror group’s chief of staff Faud Shukr, who was directly related to killing US soldiers in the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983; the pager and walkie-talkie attacks targeting the Hezbollah command structure; and culminating in the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

By forcing Israel to empty its northern civilian communities since October 2023, Iran and Hezbollah had achieved a decisive short-term victory. This has followed the Iranian playbook – to design long wars of attrition to dishearten the Jewish nation while using Lebanese civilians and their homes as human shields to manipulate the West and isolate Israel diplomatically. The more far-reaching strategy is to encircle Israel and construct an unending multi-front war without bearing direct consequences on its nuclear, military, or economic resources on Iranian territory. 

Will Israel strike Iran and will the US support them?

So, is Israel’s major offensive against Hezbollah to push them north of the Litani River, which is called for by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, the beginning, or is it the end of its strategy to deter Iran? The real questions are: How far is Israel from falling off the proverbial cliff by not having already targeted the primary source of its existential issues, a nuclear Iran? And when does it become too late to save itself?

Unfortunately, Iran has been assisted by the Biden administration’s decision not to fully enforce sanctions that were crippling its economy and its ability to support its proxy network of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal on September 23, 2024, President Biden’s Iran envoy Robert Malley – who is under FBI investigation for allegedly mishandling secret documents – proposed right from the beginning of the Biden administration, “removing…US sanctions that related to Iran’s nuclear program,” which the Iranians “pocketed” while demanding even more far-reaching concessions. 

The Iranians correctly interpreted this as weakness and desperation on the Americans’ part. According to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Iran continued to march within “two weeks” from “producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.” Although former president Donald Trump should be commended for ending a terrible deal guaranteeing an industrial-sized Iranian nuclear arsenal over time, he should have had a Plan B after withdrawing from the executive action.

Israel’s survival is directly related to the viability of the Iranian regime, its hegemonic ambitions, and its fundamental goal to annihilate the Jewish nation as a central feature of its religious mindset. What is needed but is highly unlikely to occur is a meaningful American-led economic coalition against the leading state sponsor of terror, fully enforcing sanctions. There is clear justification, as Iran is thumbing its nose at the International Atomic Energy Agency, not allowing them to certify their compliance with the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which it is a signatory. 

Is there any nation in the world willing to design or be part of a coalition and strategy to destabilize the Islamic regime, even if they are convinced Israel’s survival is at stake? The answer is no, and that likely includes the United States, which sees Israel as an essential security partner but considers the threats of China, North Korea, and Russia to be of much greater danger to American security. 

The empty rhetoric of the Biden administration about not allowing Iran to get a nuclear weapon is transparently false, as Iran has advanced its ability to enrich enough uranium for many atomic bombs in just a few weeks. The US national director of intelligence, Avril Haines, could not affirm to Congress this summer that Iran is not weaponizing a device. Trump talks a big game, but would he have his secretary of state clearly declare it is in America’s interests to aid the Iranian people to change their fanatic government? 

No discerning person believes a future Harris administration, with Secretary of State Chris Murphy or National Security Advisor Phillip Gordon, would counsel president Harris to help Israel end the Iranian nuclear program kinetically or have the courage to state that American foreign policy’s goal is to be for the Iranian people and against the regime and take actions, even non-military actions, to undermine the authoritarian government, even if it were only days from a functional atomic weapon. 

Weaponization entails turning uranium gas into a metal for a nuclear warhead, enhancing the computer modeling to test a nuclear device successfully, and crafting the neutron initiators to ignite an atomic device. The Biden team, until the last quarter turn of a screw for a fully functional nuclear weapon is done, pretends to consider Iran a non-nuclear weapon state. For Israel, feigning ignorance of how far the Iranian nuclear project has progressed is not an option.

So, Israel has a choice, knowing that as long as the Supreme Leader and his henchmen, the Iranian Republican Guards, are in power, their unbending goal is to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible. Will Israel accept the inevitable, a nuclear Iran? 

The alternative is to hope that a defensive missile shield protects Israel and that a few nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles among thousands of conventional missiles in an overwhelming Iranian missile barrage will not evade the passive defense. Israel’s multi-layered missile shield, even in conjunction with America’s, could still fail to intercept at least 5% of the missiles. Does Israel want to play this Russian roulette with the jihadists in Tehran? It should be noted that the Biden administration should be commended for increasing American aid by $5.2 billion to the Iron Beam, Iron Dome, and David Sling anti-missile system this fall. 

If Israel decides Iran is the head of the octopus that must be directly confronted, it could bring on a devastating war; but waiting for American help, which is unlikely ever to come, would increase the risk that Iran can fulfill its dream of killing seven million Jews, more than in the Holocaust, with a couple of million Palestinian Arabs as collateral damage. 

A recent article in The Jerusalem Post highlighted two contradictory opinions. Maj-Gen. (res.) Itzhak Brik was “adamant that war with Iran now would lead to Israel’s destruction. Security expert Yair Ansbacher was convinced that war with Iran at this point is a must – to avoid Israel’s destruction. Brik warned, Iran is backed by Russia, China, and North Korea, and the US will avoid getting involved in a war that could develop into a world war. He advised building a strategic alliance with Western and moderate Arab nations that will form a deterrence balance against Iran and its partners. Trying to thwart the Islamic Republic’s nuclear capacity is futile. Ansbacher said the time is right to strike Iran before it makes its final nuclear breakthrough. If today the West has little success in taming the ayatollahs, it will have zero success when they obtain atomic weapons. Iran will provide a nuclear umbrella to terrorists across the globe. 

If Israel decides to go it alone, the targets to destabilize the Iranian economy are the same as if America joined in, whether by cyber or military attacks. This includes the container port in Bandar Abbas, where 90% of the container shipments transit; the primary fossil fuel port on Kharg Island that supplies China with cheap oil; Iran’s drone and missile sites and production facilities; and most consequentially, its nuclear enrichment facilities, deeply embedded within mountains; and its clandestine weaponization sites.

There is little chance that an American administration will overtly help Israel. The best hope is behind-the-scenes intelligence allowing the US to claim plausible deniability. The more likely scenario is the United States slowing its supply lines as the Biden administration did in Israel’s war with Hamas, slow-tracking licenses for weapons and deliveries during Israel’s Gaza war.

Will the world be a better place if the Iranian people overthrow the current Islamic revolutionary regime in Tehran? In a word, yes, even considering the unknown risk of the law of unintended consequences. Suppose the US wants stability in the Middle East to turn to the more significant threat of an ascendant and belligerent China. In that case, the best path is to undermine and weaken the malign anti-American regime as soon as possible.

But is Iran a threat to America? Yes. 

“The US intelligence community has assessed that Iran will threaten Americans – both directly and via proxy attacks – and that Tehran remains committed to developing networks inside the US,” according to the intelligence community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment, published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Iran has also placed death contracts on American government officials. On September 24, Blinken said, “we are intensely tracking” an ongoing threat by Iran against current and former US officials. “This is something we’ve been tracking very intensely for a long time, an ongoing threat by Iran against a number of senior officials, including former government officials.” 

According to Josef Joffe, Distinguished Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, “The real problem is Tehran…America’s mightiest enemy in the Greater Middle East…The playbook is easy to read. Hit Israel, Washington’s only reliable ally, and wound the American giant it dares not take on directly. So, demoralize him to kick him off the Mideast chessboard.” 

Israel does not have the luxury of waiting. Iran is determined to destroy Israel. Those who doubt it are fooling themselves. Iranian-directed wars of attrition over the years will demoralize the Jewish state, and Iran is betting on the fecklessness of the international community that doesn’t care about the survival of the Jewish state and would be more than happy to continue trading with Iran, even if it sent a nuclear device toward Tel Aviv. 

America, based on its value-based foreign policy, its national security interests, and as a message to allies around the world that it supports its friends even when there are difficult choices, needs to stand firmly with Israel against Iran and stand with the Iranian people who yearn for freedom and a new government – and Iran’s return to the family of nations. ■

The writer is director of MEPIN, the Middle East Political Network, and has been briefing members of Congress and their foreign policy aides for more than 25 years.