Iran is pressuring Hamas (and maybe also Hezbollah) to
react forcefully in the wake of the escalation in Gaza in order to exact
revenge on Israel for its operation against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This
is a part of Iran's persistent strategy to include Israel in a campaign that
spans many theaters while keeping itself out of a current direct conflict.
As it gets closer to Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran is
breaking all the commitments it signed: it violates human rights in Iran and
the Ukraine, backs Russia in its conflict with Ukraine, and finances terrorist
groups in Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria, among other places. However, there
are still those in the EU and the United States.
I have written several times in the past on the folly of a
flawed and incomplete nuclear agreement (dubbed "less for less," when
it is actually "much more for much less"). Although an agreement
would at worst afford the West a few weeks or months' delay before Iran
acquires enough fissile material for a bomb and at the same time result in
significant sanction relief, it appears that the Iranians are (again) acting at
the behest of Israel by refusing to accept the deal.
As a result, the dictatorship will be able to revive its
economy and keep funding and supporting terrorism. It will also be exceedingly
challenging for Israel to strike Iran on its own under a deal that the
superpowers, including the United States, signed.
There is no question that Iran, through Hamas, Hezbollah,
and its soldiers in Syria, has been at least partially responsible for the
majority of recent attacks against Israel in the south, north, and east. Its
objective is to provoke Israel into a conflict with Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Judea
and Samaria, and Jerusalem on four or possibly five fronts.
The time has come to put into action one of the
significant changes in Israel's national security strategy that Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu started in 2017–2018: punishing not only those who directly
attack Israel, as the IDF and Shin Bet have recently done against the PIJ in
Gaza, but also those who fund and send them with the expectation that they will
be treated without consequence, i.e. Iran.
The punishment need not be harsh or direct since doing so
would cause the area to degenerate into all-out conflict. Iran may be weakened
and punished in a number of indirect ways, including by helping the
demonstrators inside.
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