Iran has drones with a range of 7,000 km (4,375 miles), Iranian state media cited the top commander of the Revolutionary Guards as saying on Sunday, a development which may be seen by Washington as a threat to regional stability.

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Tehran's assertion comes as Iran and six major powers are in talks to revive a 2015 nuclear deal that former US President Donald Trump exited three years ago and reimposed sanctions.

Western military analysts say Iran sometimes exaggerates its capabilities, but drones are a key element in Tehran's border surveillance, especially the Gulf waters around the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil supply flows.

Iran and regional forces it backs have increasingly relied on drones in Yemen, Syria, Iraq in recent years.

"We have unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) with long range of 7,000 kilometers. They can fly, return home, and make landing wherever they are planned to," the Guards commander-in-chief Hossein Salami was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

US President Joe Biden is seeking to revive and eventually broaden the nuclear pact to put greater limits on Iran's nuclear and missile programs, as well as constraining its activities.

Tehran has ruled out negotiations over ballistic missiles and its role in the Middle East, where Shiite-led Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia have been involved in proxy wars.

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The strikes allegedly hit Iranian and Hezbollah assets. They included development, storage, and transfer facilities, some of which appear to have been embedded in Syrian military bases. Targets around Damascus, Homs, and western Syria were all reportedly hit, resulting in a number of casualties.

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Long before the United States began its policy of maximum economic pressure on Iran, Israel was applying its own policy of maximum – yet low-profile – pressure in Syria, and that policy continues.

Using advanced intelligence coupled with precision firepower, the Israeli defense establishment has prioritized disrupting Iran's war machine in Syria. Israel has also acted on many occasions to prevent Iran from using Syria as a transit and production zone for advanced weapons, such as guided missiles, for the benefit of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

This effort involves tracking flights, weapons factories, suspicious ground convoys, and an array of Iranian weapons production and smuggling activities throughout the Middle East.

According to reports, Israel's "campaign between wars" has also included strikes against Iranian efforts to build a land corridor linking Iraq to Syria for the purpose of transferring weapons and fighters.

The reported Israeli strikes represent the tip of a very large iceberg. For every reported preventive action taken by Israel, it can be assumed that there are many more that go unreported and remain unknown to the general public.

Israel is determined not to allow Iran to build drone bases, missile factories and proxy terrorist networks with which to threaten its citizens, and the Israeli Air Force operates around the clock to monitor and disrupt emerging threats.

Israel's overall strategic objective in these strikes was spelled out by Mossad Director Yossi Cohen hours after the alleged July 1 attack, when he stated at the Herzliya Conference, "I believe that Iran will reach the conclusion that it is just not worth it."

This statement reflects the wider Israeli goal, which is not limited to just physically stopping Iran's force build-up in Syria. Rather, Israel's goal is to get Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and its Quds Force to reach the conclusion that they will not be able to slip offensive capabilities into Syria without Israel noticing and taking action.

Hundreds of Israeli strikes in recent years were designed to push Iran into changing course and scaling back its Syria project. It is hoped that the net result of the strikes will be that Iran is forced to perform a cost-benefit analysis and conclude that its investments in Syria are going to waste.

Iran's response so far has been to play cat and mouse with Israel: It temporarily tones down its activities before turning the volume back up and shifting the focus of its force build-up activities away from southern Syria, near the Israeli border and Damascus, and toward the deep central Syrian desert.

Cohen confirmed this in his speech, saying that the Mossad has witnessed Iran and Hezbollah building bases further north in Syria.

Israel is determined not to allow Iran to build drone bases, missile factories and proxy terrorist networks with which to threaten its citizens

This likely includes Iranian attempts to use the T4 airbase in central Syria as an alternative to the Damascus International Airport for smuggling and storing advanced weapons before distributing them onward to Syria and Lebanon.

"They mistakenly think it will be harder to reach," Cohen said during his speech.

In recent weeks, Israel has attempted to complement its military steps with added diplomatic pressure on Iran to roll back its activities in Syria. This came in the form of a significant trilateral meeting, held in Jerusalem on June 24, which saw national security advisers from Russia, the United States, and Israel meet to discuss Syria.

The results of this effort remain unclear. Publicly, at least, Russian national security adviser Nikolai Patrushev indicated that Moscow is in no hurry to disband its alliance with Iran in Syria, which has seen the two countries coordinate air and ground operations to secure the brutal regime of Bashar Assad.

"Iran has been and will be an ally and partner of ours, with which we have [been] gradually developing ties for quite some time, both bilaterally and multilaterally," Patrushev said during the conference. "Any attempts to make Tehran look like the main threat to global security, to put it in the same basket as ISIS or any other terror group, are unacceptable. Iran has been contributing a lot to the fight against terrorism in Syria, helping to stabilize the situation. We call upon our partners to exercise restraint and to take efforts to alleviate the concerns and tensions. Efforts should be made to decrease tensions between Israel and Iran."

Moscow's public stance appears to suggest that while Russia is open to pressuring Iran to stay away from the Israeli border, it either cannot or will not act to oust the Iranians and their proxies from Syria. Iran's presence is still needed to stabilize the Assad regime, and the Iranians still have a strategic role to play in Russia's long-term Syrian project, despite the clear fractures and tensions that are emerging between Moscow and Tehran due to a divergence of interests in Syria.

Iran, for its part, is working to counteract Israel's attempts to recruit Russia against the Iranian axis. In recent days, a member of the Iranian Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee stated that despite Russian-Israeli ties, Tehran has been able to maximize the utility of the "Russian card" in its activities in Syria, according to a report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

Israeli-Iranian competition over Russian influence looks set to continue, placing Moscow in the position of the arbitrator in Syria – which suits Russia's objective of returning to great-power status in the Middle East.

Iran's overall response, therefore, has been to try and weather the Israeli strikes and be flexible in its approach to building up a force in Syria, without abandoning its ambition of turning the country into an extension of the Hezbollah-Lebanese front against Israel.

In the face of increasing American economic sanctions pressure, Iran could seek to activate proxies or assets in Syria to target Israel. Iran appears to have already tried such a provocation on June 1, when two rockets were fired at Mount Hermon from Syria. The Israeli retaliation targeted the Assad regime artillery, an air defense battery and observation posts.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attack left three Syrian soldiers and seven "foreign fighters" – Iranian and Hezbollah personnel – dead.

The Israeli-Iranian struggle in Syria looks set to continue. Both sides seek to recruit Russia against the other.

Crucially, Israel has shown its determination to use military force to keep Iran in check in Syria. This determination was expressed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 14 during a visit to the IDF National Defense College. "At the moment, the only military in the world that is fighting Iran is the Israeli military," he said.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The rocket attack, then, did not come as a total shock. Still, it came two weeks after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suddenly canceled a trip to Germany and headed to Baghdad to warn Iraqi leaders about Iran's growing influence on their soil and threat to their sovereignty.

On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump made two statements that illustrate his administration's dilemma about when or whether to engage in actual battle with the Islamic republic.

In the afternoon, he tweeted: "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!"

Yet in an interview with Fox News that aired Sunday evening, he said, "They can't be threatening us … and I'm not … somebody that wants to go into war. … I don't want to fight. But you do have situations like Iran. You can't let them have nuclear weapons – you just can't let that happen."

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif shot back at Trump on social media.

Alluding to U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – both of whom have been accused of trying to manipulate Trump into going to war, he tweeted: "Goaded by #B Team, @realdonaldTrump hopes to achieve what Alexander, Genghis & other aggressors failed to do. Iranians have stood tall for millennia while aggressors all gone. #EconomicTerrorism & genocidal taunts won't 'end Iran.' #NeverThreatenAnIranian. Try respect – it works!"

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, however, stated recently that "war is not in the offing. … We do not want a war, and neither does the United States, which knows it does not stand to gain anything from a war. … Iranian willpower is strong because Iran puts its trust in Allah. The boastful and bullying enemy has no real strength."

In spite of Iran's "bluster and bluff" – as Jonathan Tobin has called the regime's attempt to extricate itself from the corner of crippling sanctions into which Trump has forced it – Tehran clearly knows that it is no match for the might of the U.S. military. Its leaders also are aware, however, that Americans are never keen on going to war. Especially when persuaded by propaganda that they are doing so in order to defend a third country. You know, like Israel, for instance, whose prime minister has been shouting about the global danger of a nuclear Iran for decades.

And that brings us to the real problem facing the Trump administration right now. While a full-scale war with Iran does not appear likely in the near future, low-intensity conflict against the West and its allies already is being waged by Iran's proxies all over the world.

Indeed, Iran-backed Shiite militias and terrorist organizations have been committing atrocities well beyond the Middle East. Israel has been on the front lines of this incessant guerilla onslaught, attempting simultaneously to fight off genocidal groups and individuals along its borders without launching a military offensive on an actual country.

Fending off Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members in Syria, the only democracy in the region takes great care not to kill the civilians used by the terrorists ruling their governments (and living in their midst) as human shields and cannon fodder.

In such asymmetric warfare, definitive victory is elusive, if not impossible.

Herein lies Iran's current advantage over the United States.

In an article on Friday in the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese daily, Al-Akhbaron – translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute – editor Ibrahim Al-Amin described Tehran's global tentacles as follows: "The Soviet leader of old, Josef Stalin, was once asked about the nature of the ties between the Soviet Union – the center of the communist movement – and other communist forces around the world. He replied: 'We support and sponsor all the communist parties in the world. Each of us operates according to his status and circumstances. If any [communist] party experiences a crisis in its country, we will see how we can assist it and figure out the best course of action. [And] if we are in crisis, the communists around the world will no doubt come to the aid of the Soviet Union.'"

According to Al-Amin, Iran not only "possesses an arsenal that threatens the farthest edges of Western Europe, and can also destroy all the centers of influence in the Middle East," but "has allies that will join it in war: a real army in Afghanistan; an influential force in Syria and Iraq; Hizbullah, a party with state-like powers; and vast capabilities in Yemen, as well as allies in Palestine and other parts of the Arab world who will feel the need to come to its aid."

The good news is that the Soviet Union was eventually defeated by the United States without a war. The bad news is that America did not achieve victory over the USSR until nearly 40 years after Stalin's death.

Let us hope that toppling the evil regime of the ayatollahs takes far less time – with or without troops on the ground or bombs from the air. Our lives depend on it.

This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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