Israel and Iran: Chapter Two - The Empire Strikes Back

Hamas believed its surprise and brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 would fundamentally change the paradigm in the Mideast. They were correct, but severely miscalculated on the nature of the changes. Prior to October 7, Israel had successfully isolated the Palestinian question from its broader geopolitical strategy. The Abraham Accords had created a new opening for further rapprochement with the broader Arab world. They had established diplomatic relations with the Gulf States and were negotiating seriously with the United States and Saudi Arabia on a grand bargain. Saudi Arabia would recognise Israel and join the Abraham Accords which would promote economic cooperation.The United States would enter a security arrangement with the Saudis and also assist their civilian nuclear program. Israel would agree to initiate a “good faith” process with the Palestinians that would ultimately lead to a de-militarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. The agreement would isolate Iran- an enemy of the Americans, Israelis and the Saudis and serve as check on any plans of Russia and China to become more influential in the region. Hamas was completely opposed to the success of this venture. They were rightfully skeptical of Israel’s commitment to a Palestinian state and they never supported a two state solution. The agreement would be a strategic defeat for their sponsor Iran and create a unified regional front against Iran- one that could lead to the end of their nuclear ambitions and ultimately the fall of the theocrats. Hamas concluded their best option was to inflame the Arab “street” against Israel and check the Saudi negotiations. The general Arab and Islamic public, raised on a diet of jihadist anti Jewish and Zionist hatred has never warmed to the ideal of a permanent peace recognising Israel’s right to remain in the region. Hamas believe a high profile attack would inspire the Arab world and create a new reality. They anticipated an Israeli response, but a limited military one consistent with past Israeli behaviour. Plus, they would have leverage with the hostages. Hamas also believed Israel would avoid a regional war since Hezbollah had a strong military deterrent and the ability to strike Israel hard.

The October 7 attack was a short term tactical victory for Hamas. They bludgeoned and shocked Israel, inflicting serious casualties and taking 250 hostages. They did checkmate the US-Saudi plan as the Arab populace celebrated the attack and many international players, including many in the West, actually blamed Israel’s policies for the violence. In the immediate aftermath, polls in the West Bank and Gaza showed super-majority levels of political support for Hamas. The USA immediately embraced Israel and endorsed a military response, but cautioned against over-reaction and over-reach. The upper hand for Hamas was short lived, although anti-Israel feelings were reactivated among western elites.

It quickly became apparent that Israel’s military response would be orders of magnitude more severe than prior military incursions into Gaza. The last 20 months has produced a new reality and a dramatically different dynamic on the ground. Israel has demolished Hamas in Gaza, decapitated and destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon and humiliated Iran. The Israeli settlers in the West Bank have aggressively attacked Palestinian villages. Right wing politicians in Israel are calling for the forcible removal of Palestinians from the area. Israel has established a dominant military hegemonic in its neighborhood. As a bonus, the Iran allied Assad regime in Israel collapsed and Israel took the opportunity to widen its buffer zone in Syria and destroy remaining military assets there. The Iranian nuclear and ballistic military programs have been severely damaged and Israel had complete air superiority in the entire region. The Mideast conflict may indeed be eternal, but Israel’s intelligence and military operations have radically altered the balance of forces. There will continue to be challenges, but Israel is more secure now.

Let’s examine the scorecard. Israel has shown no mercy in Gaza. 60,000 Palestinians are dead, hundreds of thousands wounded and 80 percent of the population has been displaced. The major Hamas battalions have been severely degraded and top levels of the leadership structure killed. The Hamas missile capability is gone and they have no present ability to strike Israel militarily. The masterminds behind the attack, including the Sinwar brothers are in their graves. The Hamas political chieftain was killed by a bomb at a “safe house” in Tehran in a brilliant Israeli intelligence and Mossad operation. Hamas is trapped in their tunnels. Netanyahu has deflected American pressure for a ceasefire, stating he wants to finish the job. Of course, civilian casualties, including women and children are high- probably 40,000 of the 60,000 killed. The physical infrastructure is in ashes. Gaza is “inhabitable” under any American definition of the term. There are no functioning hospitals or schools. There are water shortages and famine like conditions in the majority of Gaza. There is limited electricity. Israel has been subject to pointed criticisms from human rights groups and many governments for the tactics employed in the operation. The high number of civilian deaths leaves Israel open to charges that its use of force is “disproportionate” and “indiscriminate”- code terms for war crimes. The aggressive displacement of civilians and the blocking of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza have also been classified as “Crimes against Humanity” by Human Rights Watch and other respected human rights groups. The Israelis deny the charges and blame Hamas because they use the civilian population as human shields in tight urban quarters and sets up their brigades in hospitals and schools. The political reality is that Israel has paid no “real price” for its conduct of the war. The United States has occasionally scolded it, but the weapons flow and economic support from America continue unchecked.

These “moral” questions deserve a rather quick aside here. My baseline conclusion is that Hamas is the bad actor here. They openly seek to destroy Israel and kill off Jewry. They have no redeeming qualities. They initiated this chapter of the conflict- there would not be 60,000 dead Palestinians but for the Hamas October 7 attack. The conflict could have ended earlier if they released the hostages and basically surrendered militarily. The actions of the IDF will be scrutinised rigorously after the violence stops and the chips will fall where they may, but the idea of a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas is nonsensical to me. There is rampant moral confusion in many quarters, most discouragingly in our own elite universities. Sam Harris said it best on his Making Sense podcast. He postulated two scenarios- First “the Palestinians recognize Israel, sue for peace and demilitarize- Israel would cease operations and Palestinian deaths come to and end. We know this because there are already 2 million Palestinian Arabs living as citizens in Israel. In scenario two, the Israelis disarm and offer to live in harmony with the Palestinians. what would be the response? A genocide against the Jews would proceed immediately.” So when I hold up my moral compass here, it is clear the anti-semitic jihadists in these groups are the source of the problem and the obstacle to a solution.

Hamas is not dead, but they are no longer an existential threat to Israel. The Israeli government will create a big buffer zone, monitor developments closely and strike aggressively if Hamas attempts to rearm. Plus, the people who would rearm them are on the run as well. They have no future, but the ultimate governing structure for Gaza is mystery, The Israelis have no plan and have been cool to proposals for the PLA to assume control. There are talks of an an “Arab Mandate” to govern and rebuild, but the sums necessary will be enormous and Arab countries probably will not assume this risk. The near to midterm answer is that Gaza will remain a “hellhole” and its residents will suffer enormously.

Next, our delightful friend in Lebanon- HEZBOLLAH. They controlled southern Lebanon, had thirty thousand trained and well armed fighters AND possessed a huge battery of short and long range missles- all aimed at the Israeli heartland. They had significant political influence in Lebanon and most of its leaders lived in the suburbs of Beirut. Hassan Nasrallah, their leader, was charismatic and considered by Israeli intelligence, to be highly competent. They were flush, receiving 700 million a year in support from Iran. The consensus was Israel would avoid a full scale war with Hezbollah because casualties would be high and it would ignite a regional conflagration. Hezbollah was Iran’s “hedge” in its strategic containment of Israel. WELL- Israel flipped the script and conventional wisdom was found to be wanting again. In a three week perfect storm, they conducted several of the most successful intelligence and military operations in history. A Mossad “pager operation, more creative than anything ever seen in any TV spy drama, killed a thousand of Hezbollah’s top operatives. They had implanted explosive devices in the default communication system purchased by Hezbollah from a third party. Then, Israel in surgical and precise air and missile strikes destroyed 80% of Hezbollah’s missiles, including storage areas and launchers. Again, the intelligence penetration necessary to know the locations of these targets is breathtaking. I sincerely doubt whether the American CIA could pull off anything of this magnitude. Finally, using the heaviest bomb in their arsenal, they killed Nasrallah and his top lieutenants as they planned operations in am underground and fortified headquarters in Beirut. It was a decapitation strike and knowing the location and timing of the meeting was another amazing success by the Israeli intelligence services. KUDOS!! In response, Hezbollah lunched a limited number of missles that did no damage to Israel. Hezbollah eventually agreed to a ceasefire, the organisation a shell of its former self. The missile threat against Israel was now inoperative and Israeli ground troops occupied Southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has been removed as a player in the short term. Importantly, Iran was now naked. Its "Axis of Resistance” partners had been destroyed and the systematic dismantling of its proxy network was a gigantic strategic reversal for Iran. Israel and Iran now stood eye to eye.

Israel has previously engaged in quasi- military and intelligence conflict with Iran. The main goal is to stop Iran’s nuclear program. In the 2010’s- Israel and the United States conducted a successful cyber attack on Iran’s enrichment facilities. The Israelis periodically assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists. Israel conducted airstrikes on Iranian facilities in Syria, successfully targeting Iranian Republican Guard leadership. The United States killed Supreme Commander General Sulemani in 2015. The stakes increased after the Hamas October, 2023 attack on Israel. Iran felt obligated to respond to the Israeli assault on Hezbollah and Hamas. In 2024, it attacked Israel with drones and missiles, but the attacks did very little damage in Israel. Netanyahu responded to the attack by targeting Iran itself- precision strikes on the Iranian missile defence systems. Again, they were incredibly successful and Iran was slow to repair or rebuild those systems. This was critical for future Israel attacks because the lack of air defences made Iran’s nuclear and missile launchers very vulnerable. Iran has no Air Force to speak of and their ground capacity is also second rate. They spend most of their money defending the regime against internal opponents.

Israel played its final card in June 2025. With Iran’s defences severely degraded, the opportunity was there to fulfill the long time goal of targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz, Ishafan and Fordosz. Iran’s nuclear program had accelerated rapidly after Trump pulled out of Obama negotiated agreement in 2018. By 2025, Iran had enough enriched weapons grade uranium to make 10 nuclear bombs in 7-14 days, The IAEA concluded that Iran had progressed to point where “weaponisation” was imminent. Iran was on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power. Iran’s protestations that the program was civilian in nature were nonsense. Why does a country with 10% of the world’s oil deposits need nuclear energy? And why would you need to enrich the uranium to a weaponisation level- far beyond what is necessary for civilian nuclear applications? Israel jumped on the IAEA finding and Netanyahu ordered the attack that he had been itching to order for 15 years. What followed was another primer on how to execute a coordinated intelligence and military operation. Israel blasted Natanz and Ishafan, killed 8-10 of the top Iranian military leadership at their headquarters in Tehran and assassinated another 12-15 nuclear scientists. They also destroyed 70% of Iranian military launchers and the Israeli Air Force was flying brazenly over Tehran within a week. Mind boggling!! Everything was synchronised and the planning had obviously been in the works for years.

The final piece of the puzzle was the US attack on the Fordoz facility. It was a primary enrichment plant was was buried far underground and Israeli munitions could not reach it. The United States possessed the “bunker bombs” that could do the job. After a series of American negotiating sessions with the Iranians on a “no enrichment” future, President Trump authorised an attack by stealth bombers and submarines. Reports confirm severe damage to the site that will probably delay any Iranian restart of the program for significant amount of time. Trump’s hyperbolic pronouncement that the plant was obliterated and the Iranian nuclear program destroyed should be taken with the usual grain of salt, but it is undeniable that Iran was hit very hard and is no longer a nuclear threshold power. I support Trump’s authorisation of the strike. It was an “uncontested layup”, a “freebie” because Israel had done all the dirty work. Our planes faced no opposition. It has been our policy for 5 Presidents that Iran could not possess a nuclear bomb and the timing was perfect here. The IAEA had confirmed Iran was moving closer to weaponisation, the risk of a broader regional war had disappeared with the destruction of Hezbollah and Iranian own defences had been destroyed. It was justified and prudent decision and the lack of pushback from the international community has been interesting. Iran has few fans and they have now been revealed to be a paper tiger. After a perfunctory attack on a US facility in Qatar which also did no damage, Iran agreed to a ceasefire. Many political questions remain and the issue of whether Iran still possesses enriched uranium must be vigorously investigated, but the West has won a big victory here. Regime change in Iran is the ultimate solution, but that must be the choice of the Iranian people. The regime is unpopular- 20 to 30 percent approval so we can always hope. Until then, monitor and deter!