Is This The Eye Of The Coming Israeli Storm Of Attacks Directly On Iran?

Simon Watkins

Simon Watkins is a former senior FX trader and salesman, financial journalist, and best-selling author. He was Head of Forex Institutional Sales and Trading for…

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• Israel has recently targeted top leaders of Iran-backed groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s IRGC Quds force.
• Israel’s next steps may include securing the Lebanon border area and potentially striking Iran’s nuclear sites.
• Timing of further action may depend on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, with Israel viewing a Trump victory as more favorable for its strategic goals.

In recent weeks, Israel has neutralised all the top leadership of Iran’s key proxy terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah which pose the main local threat to its territory. It has done the same with several top leaders in Iran’s own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) elite foreign operations Quds force responsible for Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. Tit-for-tat actions have continued between the remainder of terrorist groups’ lower-ranking militia personnel and elements of Israel’s military and intelligence operations. This lower-level field work might suggest to many that the worst of Israel’s fury has passed after the 7 October massacres, but it may just be the temporary calm of the eye of a terrible storm that is to come.

At the top of the list of Israel’s eliminations in Hamas were its leader (and architect of the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel) Yahya Sinwar; the chairman of Hamas’s guiding council Ismail Haniyeh; and Sinwar’s closest aide Mohammed Deif, among many others. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has seen the permanent removal of its leader Hassan Nasrallah; his senior military adviser and chief of staff Fuad Shukr; and Nasrallah’s likely successor, Hashem Safieddine, again among many more. At the beginning of April, Israel allegedly wiped out the entire leadership for Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) elite foreign operations Quds force – specifically, Brigadier Gen. Mohammed Zahedi, its commander for Syria and Lebanon, General Hossein Aminullah, its chief of staff for Syria and Lebanon, and Major Gen. Mohammed Hadi Haj Rahimi, the commander for Palestine. These actions follow the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s Mivtza Za’am Ha’el (‘Operation Wrath of God’) playbook effected on those responsible for the murder of 11 Israelis centred on the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich and serve three key purposes. First, they demonstrate revenge on the Israeli people for the 7 October 2023 atrocities. Second, they show its enemies the long reach of Israel’s capabilities to remove anyone at any time in any place it wants. And third, they have severely disrupted the command-and-control structures of Israel’s opponents.

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So far, so good, from the Israeli perspective. But this is not the logical end of this type of military and intelligence operation aimed at securing the Israeli homeland’s security for the long term, surrounded as it is by hostile states, many of which want to see the country and its population destroyed. Hamas’s own charter epitomises this broader view when it quotes directly from an Islamic saying in which Mohammed prophesies the annihilation of the Jews. Specifically, “The Day of Judgement will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’.” This view — when coupled with the expedited programme to develop nuclear weapons by Iran, and the fact that all of Israel’s military forces are now on a full war footing – points to its current low-level local operations against Hamas and Hezbollah being just a prelude to the main act. “Here [in the Middle East], these things are not just quotes in books, they are lived each day, and the genie [Israel’s full military capability] is out of the bottle now,” a senior energy security source who has worked closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry exclusively told OilPrice.com last week.

The logical conclusion to the train of events that was put in place when Iran first gave the go-ahead in June for Hamas’s attacks on Israel on 7 October is three-fold. First, Israel will attempt to secure and hold the area in the northern part of its country that abuts southern Lebanon, from which 60,000 or so Israelis who were evacuated last year. As they were moved from the region due to ongoing missile attacks from Hezbollah, this can only be achieved with the neutralisation of the Iranian-backed group within a certain distance of these Israeli residents. This will require an ongoing big push over many months at minimum from troops, tanks and other support vehicles on the ground in Lebanon. Legally, this would accord with the terms of UN Resolution 1701 that prohibits the terrorist organisation from operating south of the southernmost stretch of the Litani River that runs 15 to 20 miles north of the Israeli-Lebanon border. This Resolution remains in play, although it has never been properly enforced by the UN and has been completely disregarded by Hezbollah ever since it was put in place. Second, Israel will push for much more help from the U.S. to keep this Resolution active, and much greater support from it too in leveraging its remaining influence over key Arab states, most notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to maintain a distance from the actions of Israel’s most immediate enemies. And third, Israel will want to destroy several of Iran’s key nuclear sites. Some of this could be done through a combination of technology and human intelligence mechanisms, but some will have to be done through air strikes.

Such an operation would not be easy, of course, but Israel could do it. According to a U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report from 2012, it would require a very large proportion of the country’s top-level fighter and bomber aircraft. Striking Iran’s Natanz, Esfahan, and Arak nuclear sites or similar targets in logistical terms would probably require 90 tactical fighters, although — assuming a 10 percent margin for reliability — 100 would be needed. That said, even at the time of the report Israel had around 350 fighter jets, with the number having risen since then. Also potentially problematic would be the flight route into Iran, which could involve Israeli aircraft crossing the sovereign airspace of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and/or Turkey. However, it could overfly NATO-member Turkey to reinforce its assets in Azerbaijan and use that as a staging post, unless the assets are already there after the build-up of Israel’s military in the country following the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict escalation last year. And there is also the question of the weaponry required to take out some sites located deep underground. Again, though, Israel could do it. Back at the time of the CRS’s 2012 report, it highlighted that the U.S. had already sold Israel Guided Bomb Units (GBU) of the ‘27’ 2000-lb class and the ‘28’ 5000-lb class. Israel used the U.S.-made 2,000-pound BLU (Bomb Live Unit) -109 penetrator bombs to kill Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September. However, his bunker was only 100 feet underground compared to the 300 feet+ of some of Iran’s nuclear installations – most notably the Fordow underground uranium enrichment facility. Crucially, though, the CRS report added in 2012 that, “the U.S. may have quietly given Israel much more sophisticated systems or Israel may have developed its own.” Aside from these logistical considerations, a telling fact remains that Iran clearly thinks Israel could pull it off, as in April — shortly after the Iranian missile attack on Israel — Tehran closed its nuclear facilities.

It may be that Israel is waiting for the result of the U.S. Presidential Election before taking its next steps against Iran. Several senior security sources in Washington, London, and Brussels exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com last week do not think that the outcome will prevent Israel from undertaking any of its planned operations, but it might affect the timing. For Israel, a victory by Donald Trump would be the preferred outcome, as 4 October saw the former president say that “Israel should hit the nuclear [facilities] first and worry about the rest later”. in response to an Iranian missile attack on Tuesday. He added – in response to Biden’s flat ‘no’ on Israel striking Iran’s nuclear sites — “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s the biggest risk we have. The biggest risk we have is nuclear … Soon they’re going to have nuclear weapons. And then you’re going to have problems.” Trump has also said that he will expand the relationship normalization deals between Israel and Arab states that he began in 2020 with the UAE. These would be a major benefit to Israel’s goal of maintaining the security of its territory, particularly if such an agreement was made with Iran’s longstanding nemesis Saudi Arabia. This was the plan before Trump left office, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order, prior to China brokering the Iran-Saudi Arabia relationship resumption deal on 10 March 2023.

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