For years, it seems, the word "war" has not been uttered as frequently as it has been over the past week. The dizzying sequence of security and political events and the high-profile threats on all sides naturally raised the anxiety levels among the Israeli public, which in recent years has grown accustomed to a mostly peaceful security situation.
None of the parties involved in the escalating security situation on the northern border – Israel, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Russia and the United States – have any interest in war. So far, this rationale has been a restraining factor but this week, several variables were added to the regional equation that have somewhat increased the likelihood of the situation in the northern sector getting out of control.
The most significant of them was the threat of Iranian retaliation over the April 9 airstrike on the T4 air base in Homs province, which killed seven Iranian soldiers and severely undermined Iran's drone deployment in Syria.
After concealing quite a few blows in the past year, Iran chose not to contain the strike on T4 and vowed to exact revenge.
The Islamic republic's response was delayed for a month only due to a combination of a lack of operational readiness, various operational disruptions attributed to Israel and a choice to wait for two events – the Lebanese parliamentary elections, in which Iran's proxy Hezbollah marked a significant achievement and President Donald Trump's official announcement that he was pulling the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal.
The result was an unprecedented Israeli-Iranian skirmish: Iranian militias in Syria fired 20 rockets at Israeli military posts in the Golan Heights, to which the Israeli Air Force responded by bombing 50 Iranian targets in Syria, in what defense officials said was the biggest Israeli strike in Syria since the 1973 Yom Kippur War and by far the most involved Israel has ever been in neighboring Syria since the civil war broke out there in 2011.
Left with no choice, war is an option
The events that took place on the Israel-Syria border in the early hours of Thursday morning are too fresh to truly analyze, especially as it remains unclear whether the clash has concluded, as it is still possible that Iran and Israel could trade blows and counterblows of various intensity on Syrian soil.
Another reason is that nothing has really changed. Iran remains determined to expand its presence and influence in Syria, where it wants to establish a vanguard against Israel, and Israel remains determined to prevent that from happening, even if, barring any other choice, it would mean going to war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman's statements this week have made that clear.
To a great extent, Iran's efforts to entrench itself militarily in Syria and Israel's efforts to thwart them are a direct result of the nuclear agreement, whose signing three years ago allowed the IDF to divert intelligence and operational resources from the Iranian nuclear program to its operations in Syria or, in other words, from Iran's temporarily suspended race for the bomb to its aggressive expansionist efforts in the Middle East.
It was a mirror image of what was happening in Iran itself, as once the deal was in place it, too, could divert resources from the nuclear program to other avenues of interest in the region, most prominently Syria.
The Iranian decision was based on three insights: First, that Syria is too weak to resist, especially since it was Iran's billions that assured the survival of President Bashar Assad's regime; second, that the balance of Hezbollah's interests in Lebanon has become too complex to control and that the terrorist group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has become too powerful to be treated as merely another Iranian puppet; and third, that given the complexities of the entire region, Russia, which stepped into the Syrian civil war in September 2015, would provide Iran with a wide umbrella of protection under which Revolutionary Guards commanders in Syria could act.
This Iranian logic led it to accelerate its efforts to tighten its grip on Syria. This included diverting resources and weapons, especially drones and rockets to its forces there, setting up the necessary infrastructures and organizing and training the militias it had imported into the war-torn country to fight alongside Assad's forces for their new mission.
These efforts were and are led by the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guards' black ops arm. However, to avoid leaving a clear Iranian fingerprint, Quds Force operatives in Syria relied on Hezbollah experts and Iranian-backed militants.
Israel has repeatedly placed these Iranian efforts in the spotlight. At times, this was done diplomatically, by warning other nations and providing them with incriminating intelligence on Iran's nefarious intentions. Other times, this was done through the media, as seen in numerous reports in the international media about Iran's bases and weapons in Syria, and on other occasions, it was done kinetically, in alleged Israeli strikes against Iranian assets, infrastructures and weapons in Syria.
It is safe to assume that only a fraction of the full details has ever been made public and that the bigger picture includes operational, intelligence and psychological warfare designed to thwart and delay the Iranian scheme.
In this, Israel was only partially successful. On the one hand, its operations seriously disrupted Tehran's intentions, but on the other hand, Iran was not deterred. Despite the attacks, and perhaps because of them, it continued its efforts in Syria in the hope that it would be able to establish a new Hezbollah-like front there, which would also include a dense array of tens of thousands of rockets, drones and operatives.
The blistering Israeli response to the Iranian militias' attack has, according to senior defense officials, crippled a substantial part of Iran's accumulated abilities in Syria, and dealt Syrian air defenses what one official called a "blinding blow." This now poses a dilemma for Tehran, which will have to decide whether to retaliate again and continue with its entrenchment efforts in Syria, knowing full well that Israel will enforce its declared red lines.
Not a knockout
One must remember that Syria is only part of the Iranian headache. Trump's decision to exit the nuclear agreement is likely to plunge Iran into political, economic and civilian turmoil. Belligerent Iranian rhetoric aside, the Islamic republic has sustained a massive blow – albeit not a knockout – that will undoubtedly lead to fundamental changes.
It is still too early to assess how Iran will respond to the U.S.'s move and the sanctions Washington will impose on Tehran will play a big part in shaping its response. Last time, the Americans stopped short of imposing fully debilitating sanctions on Iran. This time, it seems that Trump intends to go all the way, including sanctions on the Iranian economy, on any company maintaining trading ties with the Islamic republic, and even personal sanctions on its leaders.
This would spell the complete collapse of the Iranian economy, which is already in shambles as it never really began recovering from years of crippling international sanctions.
The hope in the West, as expressed in Trump's speech Tuesday, is that the Iranian people will act to replace the regime. This is not unlikely to happen at this point, although the ground in Iran has been shaky for a long time, as evident by the recent demonstrations there, which were brutally quelled.
The simmering unrest can also be seen in the growing rift between the conservatives, led by the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guards, and the moderates, led by President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who want to establish a "normal Iran" – in Iranian terms, of course, nothing close to the Western concept. Their push for reforms is in trouble over the collapse of the nuclear agreement they both championed, but on the other hand, they have the sympathy of the masses, who now fear that Iran will increase its investments in security over a much-needed boost to the economy.
Chain reaction
Assuming that the ayatollahs' regime does not become peaceful, it is likely to debate whether to reinvest in the nuclear program to counter the American move or accelerate efforts to establish itself in other areas – from Yemen to Syria and Lebanon. Iran's choice will have an immediate affect Israel, which is likely to have already decided to intensify its raids on Iranian assets targets in Syria, so to take advantage of Iran's strategic distress.
In this respect, Israel noted tremendous success this week. Chances of the war may have increased, but in the greater scheme of things, the fear of a wealthy, nuclear Iran trying to cement its regional hegemony has taken a significant turn.
Netanyahu's strategy, which is backed by Lieberman and the heads of the defense establishment, which labeled Iran as the source of all evil – certainly after the defeat of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which created an imbalance between Shiites and Sunnis – has proven successful, pushing the dilemma back to Iran's doorstep.
Still, Israel would be wise to remain humble. Too many ministers talked themselves senseless in the media this week fueling the public's anxiety and contributing nothing to national security. In cases like these, silence is golden, especially since in the complex Middle East reality nothing is over until it is totally over – and things in the region are rarely over.
This is true in the Syrian-Iranian arena and it is also true in other arenas. Although the public-diplomatic-security attention was exclusively tuned into the northern sector in recent weeks, the coming days will force Israel to divert its attention, at least in part, to other sectors.
The opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on May 14 could lead to violent riots in the West Bank. Combined with Nakba Day – commemorating the displacement of Palestinian refugees during Israel's War of Independence, known in Arabic as the "Nakba" (catastrophe) – and Hamas' "March of Return" on the Israel-Gaza Strip border on Monday and Tuesday, events could prove volatile, demanding considerable military resources. Given recent developments, tensions on the borders with Syria and Gaza may play off each other, as one sector could echo violence in the other.
Israel is preparing for this with the familiar combination of sticks and bigger sticks. The attempts to calm the Gaza Strip have failed and while Hamas is not interested in a confrontation, the situation may rapidly escalate as a result of its ostensibly civilian actions.
This requires Israel to generate strong deterrence and to exercise determination on the ground. Just like Syria, Gaza is very sensitive to the Israeli seismograph, and it understands very well that when Israel says "no," it means it.
