IRAN, ISRAEL, AND WAR
IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Hamas’ shocking infiltration of Israel is likely to be an inflection point in the Middle East. As Sept. 11, 2001, compelled a shift in America’s approach toward the region, so too are the barbaric violence of Oct. 7 and the war playing out now likely to force a recalibration of Israeli policy toward its enemies, and especially toward Iran. The Iranian-Israeli conflict is the least appreciated fault line in the Middle East. As I argue in my forthcoming book, Iran’s quest to topple the Israeli state is the cornerstone of its regional foreign policy and heavily influences Lebanese, Syrian, and Iraqi politics. It is an omnipresent factor in all of the regional conflicts Iran is party to, including in Yemen, and the dimension of its foreign policy with the greatest potential to spark a wider war. Although Israel has not blamed Iran for the attacks, the chances that Iran will somehow figure into Israel’s response at some point are high. In the interim, Iran will consider the deteriorating situation in Israel and the destruction in Gaza to be to its strategic benefit.
Fueled by Iran’s advancing nuclear program and its campaign to funnel weapons to allied proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, the Iranian-Israeli feud has steadily heated up in recent years. Iran’s threat to Israel is clear: It has encircled Israel with heavily armed militants. Those groups — e.g., Hamas, Hizballah, and Palestine Islamic Jihad — share Iran’s commitment to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and are dependent on Tehran’s largess to maintain their domestic power and military strength. Israel has countered such provocations by conducting assassinations and sabotage attacks inside Iran aimed at retarding its nuclear, drone, and missile programs, and by conducting routine airstrikes against Iranian military sites and arms shipments inside Syria. Israel’s ability to permeate Iran’s borders to kill military leaders and bomb heavily secured facilities has made the shadow war an outwardly one-sided affair. Israel has done far more damage to Iran than vice versa, and Iran’s attempts at retaliation, such as its numerous plots to kill high-level Israelis abroad, have routinely failed. More glaringly, Iran has lacked the ability to land a meaningful blow inside of Israel — that is, perhaps, until now.
Despite Israel’s assertive covert campaign, Iran has not been deterred. What happened on Oct. 7 was the fruit of Iran’s persistent effort to strengthen rejectionist militant groups and erode Israel’s sense of security. Yet Hamas is only one piece of Iran’s broader, multipronged strategy. And even if Israel were to succeed in destroying or permanently weakening Hamas, it would not put an end to Iran’s threat matrix. For that reason, it is likely that the Gaza war is the beginning of what will become a larger, longer lasting, and much more complicated conflagration. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will lead to open regional war, but it does suggest that Israel is unlikely to be content with limiting its response to Gaza and that, at some point, is likely to turn its attention to Iran.
An Iranian Connection?
What role, if any, Iran might have played in the Oct. 7 attacks is unclear. A Hamas spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, reportedly told the BBC that his group “had direct backing for the attack from Iran.” A Wall Street Journal report cited unnamed “senior members” of Hamas and Hizballah, who claimed Tehran greenlit the attacks on Oct. 2 and that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — Iran’s preeminent strategic force — had been instrumental in the operational planning, which began in August. Similarly, the New York Times cited anonymous sources in Iran associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and “senior leadership,” and a Syrian associated with Hizballah, who claimed that “a tight circle of leaders from Iran, Hizballah and Hamas helped plan the attack starting over a year ago, trained militants and had advanced knowledge of it.” The unprecedented nature of Hamas’ infiltration and the sophistication of its design are suggestive of outside assistance, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, having honed its skills in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, excels in asymmetric and guerrilla warfare against more powerful adversaries. And while Iranian officials have hailed the attacks — breathlessly calling the operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” in reference to the Jerusalem holy site — they have denied involvement. On Tuesday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised the Hamas militants that slaughtered innocent men, women, and children, saying: “We kiss the foreheads and arms of the resourceful and intelligent designers” of the operation. Yet he further suggested Iran’s noninvolvement by saying: “Those who say that the recent saga is the work of non-Palestinians have miscalculated.”
Even if the Iranian regime’s longstanding financial and military support to Hamas has made it complicit, Israel has given no formal indication that Iran had a direct hand in the Oct. 7 attacks. An unnamed Israeli official told CNN that while Iran might have been unaware of the timing of the assault, it knew about the “Hamas operation before it happened.” American officials have also not concluded that Iran played a direct role, even if they acknowledge that its military backing of the Gaza factions suggests, at the very least, an indirect link. Unnamed U.S. officials told the New York Times that they possessed intelligence indicating that some Iranian officials usually in the know were surprised by the attacks. Morgan Muir, a senior U.S. intelligence official, reportedly told members of Congress in a briefing “that U.S. agencies had intelligence contradicting assertions that Iran had helped plan the attack.”
Therefore, the evidence regarding any potential Iranian involvement is so far both slim and contradictory. Given that neither Israeli or U.S. intelligence services seemed to have caught wind of this plot during the months that it was being planned, nor identified anything exceptional in the information they had, it is perhaps unsurprising if those in the loop — whether within Hamas alone or within any outside parties that might have supported the effort — were kept to a minimum, and that those knowledgeable about the plot’s particulars were uniquely diligent in safeguarding that information from outside surveillance. It is also likely that the planning for this attack was heavily siloed and that even those within Hamas who participated did not know much more about the operation than their limited role.