Israel’s defense doctrine aims for emasculation, not deterrence

 

By James M. Dorsey

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Hamas’ October 7, 2023, paradigm-shifting attack has prompted Israel to change its defense doctrine with devastating consequences for the Middle East. 

No longer satisfied with operating on the principle of deterrence, involving regular strikes against Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon, militant Palestinian groups in the West Bank, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Iranian targets in Syria and the Islamic Republic, and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Israel’s new defense doctrine focuses on militarily emasculating its opponents. 

The new doctrine, focused on kinetic rather than negotiated solutions, has driven Israeli military operations since the Hamas attack broke a psychological barrier by successfully breaching Israeli defences and invading Israeli territory.

Hamas and other Palestinians killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the attack.

Israel’s subsequent decimation of Hamas and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia and political movement, with little regard for the cost to innocent human lives, offered proof of concept for a strategy that involves killing top leaders and destroying military infrastructure based on the Jewish state’s military and intelligence superiority.

In addition to the devastation of Gaza in a bid to destroy Hamas militarily and politically and the weakening of Hezbollah, Israel has destroyed much of the Syrian military’s arsenal and infrastructure since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. Now, it is targeting Iran’s military command, missile and launcher arsenal, and nuclear facilities.

“The unexpected degree of success…reduced Israeli wariness about launching a similar campaign against Iran, despite expectations that a severe Iranian response might still be forthcoming,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum. 

Alarmingly, Israel’s newly conceived dominance-driven military assertiveness has fueled public anger and widespread anticipation of war across the Middle East.

In addition to concerns about the environmental fallout of US bunker-busting bombs taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, Gulf states fear Iran could retaliate against US military and diplomatic facilities on their soil and/or their oil-exporting infrastructure.

 Turkey and Iraq dread an expected influx of Iranian refugees if hostilities continue or, even worse, expand. Together with Pakistan, Iraq, and Azerbaijan, Turkey worries about the potential spillover effect of potential unrest among ethnic Iranian minorities like the Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, and Baloch that straddle their borders. 

For their part, Egyptians fear that war is inevitable amid concern that Israel could attempt to drive Gaza’s Palestinian population out of the Strip and into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

“Anyone who thinks Egypt is immune to the ongoing Israeli wars in the region, especially the war with Iran, is mistaken. The Egyptian street has become convinced that a confrontation with Israel is inevitable and imminent,” said journalist Abdul Nasser Salama.

 

Wary of an escalation, Egypt recently barred entry to a land aid convoy of some 1,500 pro-Palestinian activists and more than one hundred vehicles travelling from Tunisia across Libya to the Egyptian-Gaza border and activists arriving at Cairo International Airport for a Global March on Gaza.

Egyptian authorities acted after Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz insisted, “I expect the Egyptian authorities to prevent the arrival of Jihadist protesters at the Egypt-Israel border and not to allow them to carry out provocations or attempt to enter Gaza.”

Meanwhile, pro-Israel figures in Donald J. Trump’s administration and support base who argue that US kinetic support for Israel’s strikes against Iran is compliant with the president’s Make America Great Again or America First doctrine enhance the sense of expanding imminent war.

“’America First’” never meant America alone,’” said Jason D. Greenblatt, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy in the president’s first term in office.

Countering a growing sense in the Make America Great Again crowd that Iran is Israel’s war, not America’s, Mr. Greenblatt added, “Trump’s strategy — supporting Israeli capabilities while maintaining American strategic flexibility — consistently puts America first by using US strength and leverage while keeping allies close. Whether Iran’s leadership recognizes that the US still runs the show on the world stage, including by supporting Israel in this conflict, is another question — one that will determine the once-great nation’s future.”

In Iran, the Israeli doctrine threatens to backfire, even if Israeli attacks have significantly damaged Iran’s nuclear program, destroyed some of its missile and launcher arsenal, and decimated its atomic science community.

The Israeli attacks threaten to accelerate a long-predicted potential shift in Iran’s domestic balance of power, with the cleric-led regime becoming a fig leaf for the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), widely viewed as the militarily and economically most powerful force in Iran.

The consolidation of the Guard’s power could lead to Iran adopting an even more hardline stance against Israel. Some IRGC officials have called for weaponisation of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Largely unnoticed, Iran may have already hardened its position. Speaking in Geneva after Friday’s meeting with European foreign ministers, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi expanded Iranian conditions for a return to nuclear talks with the United States.

To revive the talks, Mr. Araghchi, reading a written statement, suggested that Iran wanted not only a halt to the Israeli attacks but also that “the aggressor (Israel) is held accountable for the crimes committed.”

A day later, Mr. Araghchi didn’t mention accountability in off-the-cuff remarks in Istanbul on the sidelines of an Islamic foreign ministers’ conference.

Israel has targeted the Guards in the past eight days, killing their commander, Hossein Salami, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the IRGC Aerospace Forces and architect of Iran’s missile strategy, Mohammed Kazem and Hassan Mohaqiq,s the force’s intelligence and deputy intelligence chief, and Saeed Izadi, the head of the Palestine Division of the Quds Force, the Guard’s external arm, alongside top commanders of Iran’s conventional military.

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted that killing 86-year-old Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would end, not escalate, the Israeli Iranian military conflagration. "It's not going to escalate the conflict; it's going to end the conflict,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

Mr. Khamenei has reportedly gone into hiding in a bunker at an undisclosed location.

Iran expert Ray Takeyh cautioned that “the balance of power within Iran in the aftermath of this will shift in the direction of the military, in the direction of the Guard. Those in charge will be the men with guns. And they will try to bring back some sort of clerical leadership because, after all, this is an Islamic Republic.”

Meanwhile, the Guard sought to ensure that a possible US military attempt to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities with bunker-busting bombs in a limited series of aerial raids would suck the United States into a prolonged conflict.

Guard Major General Mohsen Rezaie suggested that the United States and Israel may bave to hunt for Iran’s 60 per cent enriched uranium because "all enriched materials…are in secure locations. We will come out of this war with our hands full."

The question is how secure those locations are.

On Friday, Israel killed an unidentified nuclear scientist, an alleged weapoinisation specialist, while he holed up in a safe house in central Tehran. The scientist was the tenth nuclear expert assassinated by Israel in the last week.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.