The Battle in the North

Israel Battles and Iran Plans

The war in the north is starting to take shape as Iran is positioning its proxies to make sure it stays relevant in the war to destroy Israel and Israel seems to be continuing its plan for limited war goals. The main Iranian force, Hezbollah in Lebanon, is under internal pressure to keep that front on a lower flame.  As we stated in a previous essay (What is Israel’s Plan in the North) Israel seems to be continuing on its plan to drive Hezbollah back to the Litani River by combining military action with diplomacy.   The head of French army intelligence (again – when did generals become diplomats?) was on a mission to Beirut where he has apparently warned the Lebanese that UN Resolution 1701 mandating that Hezbollah remain north of the Litani River might be enforced militarily.   If that meant that the French themselves will intervene or that they will provide diplomatic cover for an Israeli incursion is not clear.  

Meanwhile the war continues as Hezbollah attacks Israel between 20-30 times a day.  Their attacks are a combination of anti-tank missile attacks on Israeli military positions and civilian villages as well as rockets and drones into larger towns like Qiryat Shemona.    They have still not sent major attacks south of the Haifa-Tiberias line.

Source: Google Maps

Israel continues to hunt and destroy Hezbollah weapons depots and forward reconnaissance and battle positions.  Over the last few days in addition to retaliatory fire, Israel has destroyed Hezbollah positions in the Lebanese villages Zibqin, Hula, Odaisseh, Ej Jabal, Aladisa, Jibra Basil., Salouki, Al-Taybeh and other locations South of the Litani River.  In the map below the general area of the Litani is in blue and the villages mentioned are in red.  As you can see, the Lebanese villages attacked are all close to the border with Israel and south of the Litani.   These attacks are a “preparation” it seems, to allow the global community to enforce a Security Council resolution that has never been enforced. 

Source: https://mapcarta.com/12889856/Map

The expectation of Hamas was help from Hezbollah and the Iranian armed terrorists in the West Bank.   In the West Bank, Israel pre-empted the terror cells there has been fighting daily for the last two months, killing and capturing terrorists and confiscating major arms caches.

In the north the lack of a major response by Hezbollah is due to three possible reasons.

1.            Internal Lebanese pressure – The Lebanese people are not supporters of Israel and would not be upset with its disappearance but, unlike the Gazans, they happen to like their land and their lifestyle.  Beirut was once called the “Paris of the middle east”, but the capital and the rest of the country is an economic and social wreck.   What started as a civil war between the Sunnis-Shiites-Christians-Druze in the 1970’s and ended with the PLO taking advantage of the chaos to attack Israel turned to the First Lebanon War and Israel at the gates of Beirut.  After Israel’s withdrawal to the Litani leading to the creation of Hezbollah and then Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2000 and Hezbollah’s presence on the border, Israel invaded yet again in 2006 destroying much of Lebanese infrastructure.  That is the war that ended with UN 1701 that never got implemented.  In sum, the Lebanese can’t afford another destructive war between Hezbollah and Israel.

2.            Israeli Deterrence – Israel started with only returning fire but quickly turned that into actively destroying the Hezbollah presence along the border in spite of US warnings not to “provoke” Hezbollah. 

3.            US Deterrence – the US moved a nice chunk of the US Navy to the Mediterranean coast which, along with Biden’s famous “don’t” is supposed to keep Hezbollah from joining in an all out war.

4.            Iranian Strategy – Iran has one major goal and that is to be the hegemon in the middle east and assert Shiite superiority over their Sunni rivals in the Islamic world.   In order to achieve that goal they need to receive the support of the “Arab Street” – which is mostly Sunni.   That can only happen, according to Iranian strategy, by destroying the one Mideast presence detested by Sunnis and Shiites alike- Israel.  But the destruction of Israel without that leading to the control and Shiite-ization of the Arab world would leave their eschatological goals incomplete. 

With Israel gone they still will need vast military power to assert their will on the Arab world.  Their nuclear capabilities will be one leg of their power but they will need “boots on the ground” , too.  They have spent the last two decades building their own military in the form of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.   The second major project is Hezbollah in Lebanon.  A major war now between Israel and Hezbollah might end up a stalemate like the Second Lebanon War  - that is a best case scenario now for Iran-Hezbollah.   But even with a stalemate Hezbollah will be weakened and will lose its ability to rule Lebanon, let alone support the Shiites and Alwais in Syria.   

Iran, according to this theory needs a strong Hezbollah and they can only risk a war when they are sure that Israel will in fact be defeated.  

I am not sure which answer is correct here other than to say that US deterrence seems out of the question.   Hezbollah attacked Israel in spite of (because of?) the “don’t” of President Biden, knowing that this administration still needed to find a place for Iran in its global strategy.  The US still refuses major retaliation against Iranian proxies that attack it for fear of provoking Iran and igniting a regional war that everyone except the current US Administration knows exists already.  As for Israeli deterrence – although Israel has hit back stronger than expected, that in itself would not have stopped a more massive attack south of the Haifa-Tiberias line.

On the one hand Hezbollah does not feel strong enough politically to test its position in Lebanon and on the other that Iran is not yet ready to risk a weakening of Hezbollah to an extent that would push its plan of domination back a decade or more.   That doesn’t mean Hezbollah will accept a withdrawal of their forces north of the Litani without payment. There are reports that Biden Admin expert Amos “give Hezbollah Israel’s gas fields to stop a war” Hochstein is preparing to demand that Israel withdraw from the Shebba Farms area which all international borders deem NOT to be part of Lebanon. Both the Syrians and the Israelis claim it. But in the Biden Administration’s best appeasement act they figure it is good policy to give Hezbollah a prize so as to give them more power in Lebanon.

However, in order for Iran to maintain its claim that it is the defender of Islam against the Jewish infidels it can’t be seen to be sitting on the side.   It needs to do more than just harass Israel, it needs to cause Israel enough pain for the” Arab street” to see it suffer – much like Hamas did on October 7.

We need then to look to the northeast and to this map of south-western Syria/north-eastern Israel.   It shows the foreign forces in southern Syria near the Israeli and Jordanian borders and includes 9 Russian bases and 82 Hezbollah and Iranian military installations.   It does not have the Shiite militias that Iran has formed in Syria and Iraq but we can assume they are part of the non-Russian bases.    

Source:  Eran Malka via Telegram channel 301 Ha’olam Ha’aravi

If Iran needs to be seen to be more heavily involved in the fight against Israel while preserving its more potent force for a later time, what better move than to force a fight from Syria?   There have been rocket attacks from this area and Israel has responded but Israel has not targeted the militias or Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG).    Militia attacks can intensify and even hit below the Haifa-Tiberias line while protecting Hezbollah and Lebanon from retaliation.   The Russian presence will create a brand new issue for Israel as there is no more military cooperation between Israel and Russia.

But rocket fire from Syria by the militias will not be enough. Shiite militias might also try to infiltrate across the border into the Israeli Golan or go via Jordan to Israeli population centers in the Jordan valley in order to commit terror attacks, much as Hamas did.    The Syrian-Jordanian and the Israeli-Jordanian borders are quite porous and Iran has been using that route to smuggle arms into the West Bank.   For those who remember, in the late 1960’s the PLO used Jordan as a base to attack Israel leading to, in 1970,  what has been known in the Palestinian world as “Black September”.  The Jordanians were tired of being used as  terror base and massacred and exiled all PLO fighters (which led them to go to Lebanon… see above).   Syria at that time massed forces on the Syrian-Jordanian border and were deterred from entering the war and toppling the Hashemite government.   The Iranians would see this though as a two-fer – destabilizing Jordan and Israel at the same time.  This could also lead to ISIS reasserting their head in Jordan allowing Iran to invade and “save” the Jordanians from ISIS  - whether the threat is real, or not.

It seems to me that the Iranians understand that a fight with Israel in Lebanon can boomerang on them since it won’t do anything to further their true aim of regional domination.   If they did, this would be happening already.  Iran does not yet feel confident enough to unleash its most potent force other than the IRG.  But a fight with Israel from Syria and Jordan can open a new major front for Israel which didn’t exist a few months ago.  With Hamas about to go down to defeat in Gaza, Iran needs a new non-Lebanese front.   They are using the Houthis in Yemen, but the distance is too great to present a threat that will tie down the IDF and cause pain to Israel.

This new front would provide Israel with major challenges as it would want to avoid a conflict with Russia and avoid attacking in Jordan so as not to cause that shaky regime to fall.

A new front across the Golan Heights would mean that Israel would have to either continue kick the can down the road policy it used against Hamas for years or they would have to pre-empt and destroy the IRG and Hezbollah bases in Syria.  

What can the West do if this front heats up?   If the Biden Administration continues its current policy of “restraint” when Iranian proxies attack on its own troops in Iraq there is little chance the US will attack if a new front was opened against Israel.  The US has already made it clear that it will never attack Iran proper no matter what their proxies do to them or the international order. 

To me it seems that Iran will feel the need to prove their Islamist credentials and send their Shiite militias to fight Israel.  At the start of the war the call was for them to go to Lebanon to help Hezbollah – but now it is more logical to send them to the Syrian-Jordanian-Israeli border where, according to current Western military doctrine – proxies make their sponsors immune from attack. If this happens Iran will be one step closer to regional domination as they threaten Israel and the stability of Jordan.

We now have a situation where Russia and Iran could be dominant in the entire landmass from Iran to the Mediterranean – including Jordan – with only a weakened Israel standing between Iran and Egypt – an economic disaster run by a corrupt military, just itching for a “savior”.  The Iranians are already threatening to control shipping in the Arabian Sea via the Yemenite Houthis and have been brash in the Persian Gulf with their own navy.   If the US will not stand up to the Iranian Navy in the Persian Gulf imagine what will happen if a Chinese destroyer escorts illegal Iranian oil shipments through the Gulf.

The West in general and the US in particular can pretend that Iran is not a revolutionary-hegemonic power and part of an aggressive Axis that includes Russia and China – but they are.   Iran is both the weak link in this Axis and the strongest threat to the current international order.

To quote Henry Kissinger:

Coalitions against revolutions have usually come about only at the end of  a long series of betrayals and upheavals, for the power which represent legitimacy and the status quo cannot “know” that their antagonist is not amenable to “reason” until he has demonstrated it.  And he will not have demonstrated it until the international system is already overturned.

Well … contra Kissinger, Iran has already demonstrated it, and the international system has not YET been overturned.    But the “yet” may disappear quicker than we think.