Nicholas Carl & Brian Carter
The Israel-Hamas War is a prelude to future Iranian aggression in the Middle East. Iranian military leaders are explicitly drawing lessons from the war to develop concepts for fighting and destroying Israel. Senior Iranian officials are arguing that the war has revealed critical Israeli vulnerabilities that they can exploit. They are specifically examining ways to use proxy forces and terror to destabilize the Israeli state and Israeli society. Iran is sharpening these concepts because it is increasingly confident that its “Axis of Resistance”—the collection of Iranian-backed partners and proxies, including Hamas, across the region—is winning the current war against Israel and could fight and win a larger war too. Iran will not be able to fight a war at this scale for the foreseeable future, to be sure. But this Iranian thinking reflects Tehran’s regional aspirations and the current tenor of regime discourse. This thinking also underscores the importance of seeing the Israel-Hamas war within the context of the broader Iranian effort to dominate the Middle East. Narrowly focusing on the situation in the Gaza Strip ignores the war’s long-term implications and risks for the United States and its partners.
Senior Iranian military officials are developing concepts for destroying Israel without having to defeat the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Iran recognizes the technological superiority of the IDF and the risk that an overt war could draw in the United States, which Iranian leaders desire to avoid. Iranian strategists are thus exploring how to use proxy forces and terror to disrupt the Israeli political and social order without triggering a full-scale war between Iran and Israel. Their thinking proceeds from the theory that destabilizing Israel would cause Jewish citizens to flee Israel and end the long-term viability of a Jewish state in Israel. Senior Iranian officials have begun discussing these ideas with greater specificity than ever before, even though they are proceeding from flawed assumptions. That Iran is seriously considering concepts that it is unlikely to be able to execute for years it at all is unsurprising; Iran has a decades-old strategic culture of exploring and pursuing ambitious and ideological objectives that are not immediately feasible.
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