We cannot disconnect the series of attacks that were carried out last week in Damascus and the blow that was dealt to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operatives from the events of the past few weeks, primarily the terror attack that was carried out in the north, apparently by Hezbollah.
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The shadow war between Israel and Iran has been ongoing for many years. However, it seems Iran has been increasing its pressure to act lately. This is demonstrated in almost every possible area: by its efforts to smuggle weapons into Syria and Lebanon; the attempt to harm Israelis and Jews in Athens (which was thwarted by a joint operation between the Mossad and the Greek security forces); by direct and indirect aid to Palestinian terror organizations; and by increasing activeness in the northern arena – with an emphasis on Hezbollah, which crossed a dangerous red line by apparently sending a terrorist from Lebanon to Israel to carry out an attack at the Megiddo Junction, that only luckily ended with no fatal casualties.
Those in the Israeli security forces think that this activeness results from Iran's assumption that Israel is preoccupied with its internal problems in light of the crisis caused by the judicial reform and that Israel can now be challenged more than in the past. This premise is incorrect twofold: Israel's security apparatus continues to operate as before to thwart terror activity, and an external crisis will actually unite Israeli society.
Over the past two weeks in Israel, it was debated whether to retaliate against the terror attack and, if so, how. On the one hand, direct retaliation against Lebanon will likely lead to backlash and unwanted escalation. On the other hand, no retaliation whatsoever will likely be interpreted as weakness, which will invite more terror attack attempts from the north. Hezbollah already came to similar conclusions in the past, when a lack of retaliation on Israel's part led to a series of kidnapping attempts that ended in July 2006 with the kidnapping of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, which developed into the Second Lebanon War.
Therefore, Israel now wants to make clear to Hezbollah and its Iranian benefactors that they are playing with fire. The two alleged Israeli strikes on Syria on Wednesday night and Thursday night will likely convey this exact message. Their target was Iranian weapons and infrastructure, and in the second attack, a senior IRGC operative, Milad Heydari, was killed. He was part of the organization that builds and strengthens Iranian infrastructure in the north, at the center of which lies Hezbollah. Another five Iranian operatives were killed along with him, and they were reportedly affiliated with the organizational framework run by the IRGC Qods Force in Syria and Lebanon.
Experience teaches us that these attacks do not happen without a reason. They are generally based on pinpointed intelligence – from the infrastructure being attacked to prior confirmation of whether people are present there and, if so, who. Therefore, it is likely that those in Israel knew that IRGC operatives were in place and wanted to target with them (or did not really try to refrain from doing so). This is a clear message to Iran that it and its proxies are playing with fire and that they will pay the price for doing so.
Iran hastened to threaten Israel that it would take revenge for the killing of its operatives. This does not need to upset us; Iran is always trying to kill Israelis and Jews in every corner of the world, and Israel's latest attacks will not change anything in this regard. They are supposed to make Iran understand Israel's red lines and deduce that if it crosses them – by escalating the Lebanese front, for example – Israel will act similarly and exact a heavy toll on Iran and its proxies. Simultaneously, an attack such as this also strikes fear into the hearts of the IRGC operatives and demoralizes them, for they fear arriving in Syria, lest they not return home alive.
We need to hope this message to Tehran (as well as Damascus and Beirut) was received. On the one hand, such an intense succession of strikes has happened in the past, albeit for limited periods, but Iran understood every time that fire would be fought with fire. On the other hand, we are in unusual times, not only because of Israel's internal rift but also because of rifts in the Israeli-American axis and the United States' increasing weakness in the area. Israel needs to ensure that Iran is not trying to take advantage of all this for its continued activeness, and if it is – to exact a bigger toll on it than it is on us.
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