Why Israel went public with its war on Iran

ANALYSIS: It is not the elections, but the facts on the ground that have Israel revealing its war on Iran.

By Yochanan Visser, INN

Missile explodes over Damascus, last night

Pundits and politicians in Israel tried to explain why Israel now openly talks about its military activities against Iran in Syria after the Israeli air force (IAF) again carried out a large operation against Iran-related targets in Syria.

Politicians on the left of the political spectrum in Israel think the announcements about Israeli strikes against the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps were connected to domestic politics and the upcoming elections in Israel.

“I am sorry to say it is all related to April 9 and political survival. Can someone explain to me what the benefits are of the announcements other than politics?” former IDF Chief of Staff and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe ‘Boogy’ Ya’alon told Army Radio (Galatz) in Israel.

In reality, however, there are other factors which play an important role in the apparent decision to abandon the long-standing Israeli policy of remaining silent about the military campaign against the Quds Force and its predominantly Shiite allies in Syria.

Let’s first take a look at what happened on Monday when the IAF again carried out a series of devastating airstrikes against Iran-related targets in Syria.

The assault, which was reportedly again carried out from the Mediterranean Sea and Lebanese airspace, destroyed Iranian military facilities and Syrian air defenses throughout the country.

The so-called ‘Glass House,’ the headquarters of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps near el-Kisweh in the Damascus region, wasn’t targeted this time since it has been empty after earlier Israeli airstrikes.

The ‘Glass House’ is where the covert war against Israel from Syrian soil had been overseen by Qassem Soleimani, the shrewd commander of the Quds Force, and his staff.

The Israeli assault was in retaliation for an Iranian surface-to-surface missile attack on Mount Hermon in northeastern Israel on Sunday which followed a new IAF attack on Iranian weapon storehouses near Damascus the same day.

The missile, which was launched from an area where the Quds Force wasn’t supposed to be under a Russian American de-escalation agreement, was intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile shield and caused no damages or casualties.

In a highly unusual move, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released extensive information about the aerial attacks and said that the operation was aimed at the Quds Force of the IRGC and the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad who is steadily turning Syria into an Iranian proxy.

Yisrael Katz, Israel’s Minister of Intelligence, later told Galatz that the policy for taking on Iran in Syria had changed and that the Jewish state was now in “open confrontation” with Iran.

“This is an open confrontation with Iran. When we need to step it up, we’ll step it up,” Katz said while again adding that Israel would not allow the continuing Iranian entrenchment in Syria.

To understand the depth of Iran’s entrenchment in Syriam one should read a new analysispublished by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

As happened in Lebanon, Iran is entrenching itself “not only militarily, but also politically, religiously, and culturally,” according to the authors.

This is done by “purchasing real estate, changing demographics, and by developing networks of support between Damascus and the Lebanese border” the report said.

Iran is also “pushing social, religious, and economic programs designed to woo underserved and deprived communities which may not be ideologically aligned with Tehran but lack viable alternatives,“ the authors reported in a reference to the Sunni Arab population in Syria.

The report also dealt with the situation in southern Syria, the area along the Israeli and Jordanian border, where Iran has established military bases and security networks over the past half year and is recruiting disgruntled Sunni Arabs who were part of the opposition front against Assad during the civil war.

The authors urge the US Administration to take non-military steps to thwart the Iranian entrenchment in Syria, such as sanctions on persons who work with Iran to turn Syria into another proxy state.

Israel, from its side, has apparently decided to prepare the ground for decisive action against Iran in Syria after the Trump Administration announced it would withdraw US Special Forces from Syria and would not interfere with Israel’s actions against Iran in Syria.

This explains why the Israeli government and the top brass of the IDF are now openly talking about the formerly covert war against Iran in both Lebanon and Syria

Gady Eisenkot, the now retired IDF Chief of Staff, recently revealed that the Israeli military has carried out thousands of strikes against Iran-related targets in Syria and claimed this had stopped the Iranian military build-up in the country.

Eisenkot also suggested that Iran’s activities in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria were responsible for the decision not to invade the coastal enclave again after its proxies Islamic Jihad and Hamas tried to drag Israel into an all-out war at the beginning of November 2018.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu earlier indicated that Israel could soon see a major escalation in the war against what Iran and its allies call ‘the resistance front’.

This happened after the Iranian-backed pro-Assad coalition announced it had changed the rules of engagement in Syria and would now respond to every Israeli strike against Iran-related targets in the war-torn country.

Monday’s events were a new indication Israel has adjusted its strategy vis a vis Iran and it has little to do with the upcoming election in the country.

The government in Jerusalem realizes that it will need the support of the international community to expand its campaign against Iran in Syria now that the Iranian axis hasthreatened to bomb Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv and said it is ready to “eliminate” Israel via a multiple-front-war.

In this respect, it’s important to understand that Iran is not only trying to heat up the northern front in Israel but is also trying to open-up fronts in Gaza and the ‘West Bank’ (Judea and Samaria).

January 23, 2019 | 2 Comments »

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  1. Iran has cheated on the nuclear deal since it was made (unsigned) in 2015. Now they are very close to producting nukes. Europeans still intent on preserving the mythical deal. This from Today’s Arutz Sheva:

    Iran nuclear chief: ‘We have replacements for equipment we agreed to destroy’
    Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization says Iran never actually filled Arak reactor with cement, secretly acquired replacement tubes.

    Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said in a television interview this week that the negotiations surrounding the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement had required Iran to destroy the Arak reactor’s calandria by filling it with cement, but Iran had secretly acquired replacement tubes ahead of time so that the reactor’s functionality would not be ultimately affected.

    Salehi also said that pictures that had circulated that showed the Arak reactor’s pit filled with cement had been photoshopped. He explained that Iran has no intention to build a nuclear weapon, and that the Arak reactor is nonetheless incapable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

    The interview aired on Iran’s Channel 4 TV on Wednesday. Excerpts from the interview were translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

    The cement, explained Salehi, was poured “into the calandria we pulled out [of the reactor]. Inside the calandria, there are tubes where the fuel goes. We had bought similar tubes, but I could not declare this at the time. Only one person in Iran knew this. We told no one but the top man of the regime [Khamenei].”

    “When our team was in the midst of the negotiations, we knew that [the Westerners] would ultimately renege on their promises. The leader warned us that they were violators of agreements. We had to act wisely. Not only did we avoid destroying the bridges that we had built, but we also built new bridges that would enable us to go back faster if needed,” he continued.

    “God willing, in the coming week, on the 30th or 31st of January, I will be going to Ardakan. From there, we will transfer 30 tons of yellowcake to Isfahan. Thirty tons. Ardakan has become operational,” claimed Salehi, adding, “We have advanced significantly in the field of nuclear propulsion. However, we must wait until we are certain about it before we announce it. For now, we have no intention to report about the nuclear propulsion [technology], but we are working on it. Suffice it to say that we are making rapid progress in this field, thank God.”

    Iran has been threatening to restart its nuclear program ever since US President Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal in May of 2018 and imposed two rounds of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

    Iran several months ago reopened a nuclear plant that was idle for nine years as it prepared to increase uranium enrichment capacity in response to Trump leaving the 2015 agreement.

    Earlier this month, Salehi said Iran is taking preliminary steps to design uranium fuel with a purity of 20 percent for reactors instead of having to copy foreign designs.

    The European signatories to the deal did not agree with Trump’s decision to leave the deal and have been trying to save the accord, which they see as crucial to forestalling an Iranian nuclear weapon.

    Tehran has demanded that Europe come up with an economic package to offset the effects of the US withdrawal but so far has found Europe’s proposals to be unsatisfactory.

  2. This article from Israel Hayom sheds additional insight into Israel’s new strategy for confronting Iran. A view similar to Visser’s but spelling out the new Chief of Staff’s strategy in more detail

    New IDF chief, new war doctrine
    “An efficient, lethal, innovative army” – in just a few simple words, the IDF’s new chief of staff laid out the doctrine he intends to implement in the coming years as he prepares the army for war.

    The IDF’s traditional war doctrine is predicated on forcing the enemy to surrender after defeating it on its own territory with nimble land forces capable of encircling and threatening to destroy it. What the new IDF chief, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, has described is a new type of doctrine that sees the military defeat the enemy primarily through destroying its military resources and personnel on the ground (and under it), from afar, by means of lethal precision weaponry born of Israel’s technological advantages.

    The focus on efficiency and lethality expresses the aspiration to emerge victorious as quickly as possible, without having to pay too high of a price and with higher levels of precision. Precision is necessary, among other reasons, to neutralize the main threat posed by the terrorist armies’ only game-changing weapon, that is to say the civilian population. Due to the desire to avoid civilian casualties, the IDF thus far has not used its full might to end campaigns quickly and shorten the period of suffering for Israeli and enemy civilians alike.

    Building this new army, it would appear, presents Kochavi with several challenges. The first among them is the urgent need for a budget that can limit the vulnerable transition period between the IDF’s new procurements, during which the army must incorporate the resources derived from the previous doctrine with the resources required to implement the new doctrine.

    Unlike in the past, increasing the budget is necessary for the IDF to manage a simultaneous war footing: a defensive posture alongside the ability to immediately launch offensive campaigns on multiple sub-fronts to annihilate the enemy’s ability to fight. Linear victory, as was the case in the past when the IDF concentrated its resources on one front and then moved them to another after securing the former is an economic use of those resources, but tends to expand the length of the war and, consequently, the scope of devastation and civilian casualties as well.

    The second challenge facing the new chief of staff is to eliminate the air force’s monopoly on precision, long-range “lethality” and to disperse this capability among all the branches.

    His third challenge is to breathe new life into the eroded ethos of “duty.” He has to motivate and incentivize talented officers to stay in the army and forego enticing and often better paying civilian avenues.

    The fourth challenge is defining the role of the reserve army in the new war. Galvanizing and updating the reserve force is imperative if he wants to fix the terrible impression left by the outgoing IDF ombudsman in his reports on the state of the army’s emergency weapons warehouses and military training according to the old war doctrine.

    Dr. Hanan Shai is a lecturer in the Political Science Department at Bar-Ilan University.