As Israeli troops make incursions into southern Lebanon, in the wake of recent successful aerial and covert campaigns against Hezbollah, Tel Aviv appears ascendant. Iran, by contrast, seems on the back foot, at odds with its proxies and divided internally as to the way forward.
Israel’s response to Iran’s missile strikes, and the West’s ability to check Israel’s actions to prevent all-out war, will determine how the next 48 hours pan out. Iran has strongly signalled that it is relying on the US to curb Israel’s response to its missile strikes last night, a statement that carried with it a whiff of desperation.
Israel still can’t answer the crucial question that has hovered over this entire conflict: how does it end?
Wars in the region tend to follow a pattern, in which lightning early successes for the technologically advanced power (Israel) drag them into a ground conflict which turns into a counter-insurgency campaign in which morale suffers as the insurgents slowly make gains and the invading force loses men.
This has happened in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. It was a feature, too, of Israel’s wars in Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. Israel may well be walking into a trap in southern Lebanon, made more enticing by its stunning decapitation of Hezbollah’s senior leadership. Iran knows this; it’s why it built up a network of proxies, able to fight a regional insurgency against the US and Israel. When you take away Tehran’s proxies, what are you left with? Israel is aggressively trying to find out.
Yet Israel still can’t answer the crucial question that has hovered over this entire conflict: how does it end? It is unrealistic to expect a total defeat of Hamas, Hezbollah and all of Iran’s proxies across the region. It is also unrealistic, given the evidence from 50 years of military engagements in the region, that the IDF can win a war in Lebanon against a determined and well-armed Hezbollah, no matter how damaged it may be.
The same goes for Gaza. The stated aims in Gaza and Lebanon, of returning hostages and allowing 60,000 Israelis to go back to their homes in northern Israel, are good ones. But these aims seem at odds with the tactics used to achieve them. A ground incursion, fraught with complexities, will not be a cast-iron guarantee of peace for northern Israel and the return of displaced Israelis to their homes. An intensified bombing campaign in Gaza will probably kill any remaining hostages.
That’s not to say Iran has the upper hand. On the contrary, there are splits emerging not only between Hezbollah and their masters in Tehran, but also between the Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, and the IRGC over how to respond. Both want to avoid all-out war, but Pezeshkian favours dialogue, de-escalation and diplomacy, while the IRGC prefers continued military pressure to restore Iranian deterrence.
Some within Hezbollah have recently been vocal in criticising Iran’s timidity towards Israel. The growing perception among Iran’s proxies is that Tehran is hanging them out to dry as IDF bombs rain down. The hardliners, the IRGC, are winning the day, as we saw with Iran’s barrage of ballistic missiles on Tuesday. That operation was designed to be a step up from April’s attack, but simultaneously not a declaration of war: the IRGC said as much as the missiles were in flight.
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s message on Sunday to the Iranian people in which he said, ‘Our quarrel is not with you,’ was a clear attempt to exploit these tensions within Iran. It could also be read as a possible hint that the regime in Tehran is next in Israel’s sights.
Ayatollah Khamenei’s policy of strategic patience, formulated in 2020 after the killing of IRGC commander Qassim Soleimani, has been the guiding principle of Iran’s regional foreign policy: ‘We will respond at the time and place of our choosing.’ Yet his internal critics argue that this idea has run its course: what is the point of a policy of patience, if the destination is war? Why not get on with it? These voices are in the minority, for now, but that could change.
But perhaps a bigger danger is that of sectarian conflict rearing its head throughout the region.
Sunni Syrians were filmed parading through Idlib in celebration of the death of Nasrallah. Lebanese Sunnis, too, have been seen tearing down Hezbollah posters in the north of Lebanon. Isis and their Sunni affiliates in the region will be salivating at the prospect of western boots on the ground, or even a conflict that balloons into Iraq and Syria. For now, Iran’s strategic headaches strike Israel and its western allies as good news. But the last thing the world needs is Isis 3.0. The many western analysts now applauding Netanyahu’s boldness and the Israeli military’s (undeniable) operational brilliance might want to reflect more on those longer-term dangers.