More than a few eyebrows were raised last week over the torrent of warnings by senior security and political officials concerning the threats posed to Israel from far and wide, namely from Iran and Iraq to Yemen.
This led many to wonder aloud if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi were indeed warning the public against new dangers, or was this a case of trying to augment existing threats, in the interest of creating media buzz that will serve foreign motives, be they political or budgetary.
Questioning the timing of these statements and any interests they it may serve is reasonable, as all those involved have a proverbial dog in this race: A chaotic security reality serves Netanyahu's narrative of the immediate need for a national unity government, and an raising the alarm certainly serves Kochavi's demand for a significant boost for defense spending.
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Former IDF deputy chief of Staff Maj. Gen. (res.) Yair Golan, now a Democratic Union MK, was the first to publically question Netanyahu and Kochavi's assertions, saying that there are no new threats to Israel and no place for warmongering.
"Underscoring these threats at this time stems from the debate about the defense budget and the IDF's multiyear work plan," he argued.
The military's operational work plan, "Momentum," will come into force on Jan. 1, 2020 and will focus on improving the IDF's defensive and offensive capabilities. As such, it will place special emphasis on training in urban warfare tactics, streamlining the collaboration between the various corps and all units, and further enhancing the military's intelligence-gathering and cyber capabilities, as well as its array of weapons.
As a past partner in cabinet discussions about the defense budget, Golan may very well be right in suggesting foreign interests are at play. On the other hand, he may not be privy to the most recent intelligence assessment,
Recent weeks have seen significant changes in the Middle East, including the US's decision to pull its troops from northwest Syria earlier this month and Washington's lack of response to the Sept. 14 Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities. As a result, the radical elements in the region have been emboldened, at the expense of the moderate ones.
Moreover, Iran has taken multiple steps – only some of them public – to tighten its grip on the Middle East.
The fact that Tehran has deployed precision-guided missiles in Yemen is just the tip of the iceberg. Iran is tirelessly trying to challenge its enemies and it has proven it has no qualms about introducing – and using – new weapons to the equation, namely cruise missiles and long-range attack drones.
Proxy wars intensifying
Yemen is not a new arena for the Iranians, but so far Israel has not had to be particularly concerned about their activities there.
In recent years, Iran has been using Yemen, via its local proxy, the Houthis, as a something of a "combat lab, to test military concepts, weapons and new battlefield tactics in real-world conditions," Dr. Uzi Rubin, former head of the Defense Ministry's Homa Directorate, which oversees the development of missile defenses, wrote in a recent article published by the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.
Robin extensively reviews the Houthis' operations against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, including their use of rocket fire, the limited abilities of the Saudi air defense systems seeking to counter them, the growing use of attack drones, and the gradual introduction of advanced combat systems and longer-range missiles with greater accuracy.
He also argues that in all cases, the Houthis used Iranian-made systems that were given other names to so as to allow Iran to maintain deniability about its involvement in the Houthi insurgency in Yemen.
The article presents several interesting conclusions that are very relevant to Israel, including the Iranian success in breaking the naval blockade on Yemen and sending the Houthis weapons, and their dogged determination to establish local missile production lines on Yemeni soil to reduce the Houthis' dependency on external supplies.
The selection of targets for these attacks should also interest Israel – not only civilian population centers but also military bases and national infrastructure facilities, and even attempts to assassinate leaders with cruise missiles and UAVs. But most notably, there is a concentrated effort by the Iranians and their proxies to undermine air defense systems so as to compromise their performance.
Rubin states that Israel must monitor the developments in the Persian Gulf very closely, and argues that "What we are currently seeing in Yemen will be used against Israel next."
He means primarily the weapons that may be deployed against Israel from other sectors, but the new threats presented this week make for a more complex picture whereby Iran may launch such attacks against Israel using not only Hezbollah, its primary proxy in Lebanon, but also from Yemen itself.
Such a move by Iran will aim not only to help Tehran maintain deniability but also to make it exceedingly harder for Israel to respond if nothing else because Yemen – like Iraq, where Iran also backs Shiite militias it could employ against Israel - is not a major focus for the IDF's intelligence-gathering efforts.
This new threat requires Israel to invest in new arenas in intelligence gathering, and the IDF must outline contingencies in case of such an attack – an immediate budgetary need. It also requires increasing political and intelligence coordination with Western and Arab states, especially in the Persian Gulf.
Still, it seems that the real way to face this threat is not but going after every missile-production line and downing every drone in every sector, but rather by sending a clear message to Tehran that any attack in Israel will result in an unprecedented blow to the Islamic republic – a threat Israel must be willing to back with actions.
ISIS: Down, but not out
The escalation in the Shiite threat posed by Iran and its proxies coincides to a certain extent with something of a decline in the threat posed by extreme Sunni groups.
Israel may not have been a primary target for the Islamic State group or al-Qaida before it, but these groups' radical ideology and their physical proximity to us required close monitoring and that, according to foreign media reports, includes, at times, operational activity, especially in southern Syria.
Little has been said about Israel's contribution to the geographical elimination of ISIS. This contribution focused mainly on intelligence-sharing with those fighting it on the ground, as well as assisting in counterterrorism efforts that helped thwart attacks around the world.
In that respect, the elimination of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an American-led raid in Syria last week does not affect Israel's intelligence assessments, namely that its shrinking geographical presence does not diminish the threat it poses; that the change in its leadership will not affect the groups murderous ideology; and that given the opportunity, al-Baghdadi's successor, Abu Ibrahim Hashimi al-Quraishi, will not hesitate to order the group to target Israel.
If there is anything ISIS' short yet bloody history has proven is that the organization adapts to changes very quickly. It may have lost the so-called "caliphate" it sought to form in parts of Iraq and Syria, but there is no shortage of lawless areas in the Middle East for it to take root in, nor has the support it garners among radical Islamists worldwide.
ISIS activity around the world is also showing no signs of declining. It may have failed its recent attempts to carry out terrorist attacks in the West, but its proxies elsewhere, from East Asia and Afghanistan to Nigeria, Mozambique, and Sinai, are thriving.
Yes, the elimination of Baghdadi – an impressive intelligence and operational achievement by any measure – dealt ISIS a serious blow, but as it is accustomed to decentralized and amorphous activities, it does not spell its demise, especially now that a new leader has been named.
