Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Israel, Fighting A Seven-Front War, Is Dangerously Distracted

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Israel is now fighting a seven-front war, with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the pro-Iran Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, the Alawite-led army in Syria, the terrorists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ conventional forces in Iran. It is a lot to contend with. But the IDF is now coming to the end of its war with Hamas in Gaza, has caused great damage to the Houthis’ port of Hodeidah, is continuing its airstrikes on Hezbollah outposts and weapons depots in Lebanon, keeps killing terrorists in the West Bank, continues to strike at targets in Syria where Iranian weapons have been waiting for delivery to Hezbollah, and has fired at the pro-Iranian militia in Iraq. Israel has also attacked Iranian targets, including centrifuge arrays used to enrich uranium, petrochemical plants, and most recently, the Jewish state destroyed part of an S-300 long-range air defense system in Isfahan.

But all this activity on so many fronts has led, some analysts fear, to Israel paying less attention than it formerly did to the greatest threat of all — that is, Iran’s nuclear program, which would allow Tehran to build nuclear weapons “within months,” if not sooner. “Israel forgot about Iran’s nuclear threat – will it pay the price?,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, August 15, 2024:

Israel is very ready to defend against a massive Iranian conventional missile and drone strike, against a massive rocket and drone strike from Hezbollah, it has for now mostly neutered Hamas in Gaza, has terrorists on the run in the West Bank, and is ready for attacks from Syria, Yemen, or Iraq.

But sources have given the Jerusalem Post mixed signals about how ready Israel is to stop an Iranian nuclear weapons breakout.

In several high level briefings the Post has been part of where discussion of Iran’s nuclear weapons threat used to take up a significant amount of the time, the issue is often not mentioned at all or only discussed briefly as a response if the issue is pushed.

The last significant briefing on the IDF’s capabilities in this area was given before the war. For several months, the Post has sought to consult on the issue with a special Iran desk within military intelligence which was revealed to the public in mid-2023, but has been denied access….

Usually, Israel’s lead in combating Iran’s nuclear threat is the Mossad.

Israeli military intelligence and the air force also play important roles, but it is a given that their attention is always divided elsewhere even during peacetime, which is why the Mossad has been the “point-person” on Iran for so long.

But Iran has not been Mossad Director’s main job now for 10 months….

The current head of Mossad is David Barnea, much of whose time is now spent in efforts to free the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. He travels repeatedly between Doha, Cairo, Washington, and Jerusalem, bringing new messages, proposals, rejections, acceptances from the two principals, Israel and Hamas, from the three mediators, Qatar, Egypt, and the United States. It’s time-consuming and wearying.

And Barnea has much else on his plate. He no doubt had a lot to do with planning the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. He has to keep tabs on the Houthi drone attacks on Red Sea shipping, and has to help select the proper targets to hit in Yemen by way of response. He has to keep a close eye on Iranian weapons being delivered via Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. He must accumulate information on the tunnel network Hezbollah has built underground in Lebanon, where most of its 200,000 rockets and missiles are now hidden. And he has to keep tabs, too, on Iran’s IRGC and its conventional weapons, and must make decisions, along with the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, and the IDF high command, as to where, and when, and how ferociously, to attack the Islamic Republic’s conventional forces.

Now with a huge array of centrifuges installed at Fordow, Iran’s uranium enrichment program can continue deep underground, far from IAEA inspectors and Israeli spies-in-the-sky and agents on the ground. This is cause for great alarm. But no Israeli leader has raised this matter recently, as Netanyahu used to do. There is nothing reported about David Barnea discussing this threat with the Biden administration. Perhaps it’s all being done sub rosa, so as not to alert Iran to a possible attack on Fordow by the Israeli air force, using bunker-buster bombs supplied by the Pentagon. It would be a relief to think so.

Remember how the computer worm, Stuxnet, was introduced into Iranian computers, and causing them to speed up so fast that they destroyed themselves? Remember the assassinations, one after another, of five of Iran’s most important nuclear scientists, including the head of its nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh? Remember how Mossad agents managed to locate in a nondescript warehouse in Tehran the Islamic Republic’s complete nuclear archive, and to take tens of thousands of documents back to Israel for study and analysis? Remember the strange explosions at “chemical” plants deep inside Iran? Remember how Benjamin Netanyahu warned about Iran’s nuclear threat both in his appearance at the UN and in two of his three addresses to Congress?

Now there has been almost a radio silence from the Israelis about Iran’s nuclear program. Does this mean they no longer want to talk about this threat publicly, if they believe the Iranians are in their judgement getting too close to producing a bomb? Possibly the Israelis want the Iranians to believe that they are too preoccupied with other matters to plan an attack on Fordow and other essential nuclear facilities.

Distracted as they have been with fighting a seven-front war, with most of their attention and energy since October going to the war in Gaza and the possible return of the hostages who are still alive, Israelis have to re-focus on what is the greatest threat to the state’s existence: Iran’s production, and possible use, of nuclear weapons. Both Mossad and the IDF have to go back to work in Iran. Otherwise, the Jewish state may soon be brought up short by news of an Iranian bomb, and a ballistic missile ready to deliver it, that are just weeks away. Israel will then have to do something it would prefer to avoid, which is to follow the Talmudic injunction — “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first”— and pre-emptively strike Iran in what will undoubtedly be an all-out war.

Comments

  1. While Israel is fighting threats to their very existence on multiple fronts, the depth of Iran’s nuclear program continues to be refined albeit clandestinely. It has been reported that Iran has enough fissile material to make about four nuclear bombs. Intelligence looks at the sophisticated methods of delivery, seeking to thwart them, but as Richard J Huer wrote in The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis: when considering all possible scenarios that determine an outcome to any potential crisis, the solution that seems to be the most improbable becomes the most probable. In other words, the simplicity of a simple gun type device used as a delivery system disguised as ordinary everyday product could be the method by which the Iranians, along with their proxies, carry out their plan to remove once and for all Israel from the face of the earth.

  2. Ezekiel 38-39 When all is that has been “said,” is “done,” those who live to do evil will be gone and forgotten.

  4. Please share this excellent article with the Israeli government!

    It’s not only an existential threat to Israel, but to the entire world!

  5. I support Israel, but I think Hugh over-counted their number of enemies. The Syrian army is a shadow of what it was during the last century, when it held sway over Lebanon. Now, it has control over most of the country, but it’s still not in any position to threaten Israel. On top of that, they have to do a balancing act b/w Iran and the sunni Arab countries who decided to stop trying to topple them b’cos they didn’t want to see Turkey reconquer Syria. All of Israel’s attacks on Syria have been on Iranian, rather than Syrian targets. If Syria was the target, Israel could have occupied Damascus. But I believe that they are in constant communications w/ the Russians to make sure that the Syrian army doesn’t do anything against Israel, given all their other enemies

    All the other enemies of Israel listed are valid, although I suspect Kataeb Hizbullah in Iraq is more there to put pressure on Baghdad to not do what the Jordanians and Saudis have been doing in denying Iran overflight rights to attack Israel. Also, Israel does have to be wary of Fatah as well, which has fallen behind in the jihad sweepstakes and would have to do something to show its jihadist bona fides in comparison to both Hamas and islamic jihad

  7. “ But all this activity on so many fronts has led, some analysts fear, to Israel paying less attention than it formerly did to the greatest threat of all — that is, Iran’s nuclear program, which would allow Tehran to build nuclear weapons “within months,” if not sooner.”

    The analysts can analyze and conjecture all they like, but Israel has not dropped the ball on Iran’s nuclear capability. The US has a new generation bunker buster, the 30,000 lb. GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator, that can penetrate deep underground and reach Iran’s nuclear facilities. But the US would need to drop them using a B-2 stealth bomber; Israel does not have a plane that can deliver such a large bomb. Israel can however, use the Mossad to discover exactly where we enriched uranium, resides and deal with it that way.

  8. “‘This is a religious war’: Likud MK calls for Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount”

    “Last week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir stood on the Temple Mount and, for the third time in as many months, declared the end to the longstanding status quo governing the contentious Jerusalem holy site.

    As Orthodox Jews prostrated themselves and prayed loudly, the chief of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party challenged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s authority, declaring that the government’s “policy is to allow prayer.”

    …..”In a statement, the national-religious Halevi told reporters that he had ascended the Mount to pray “for victory in the war.”

    “This is a war for the Mount, for God, against an enemy that in the name of religion fills the world with murderousness, barbarism and evil in the face of the Israeli culture and its call from the Temple Mount for justice, truth, morality and mercy,” he said.”

    And Halevi is correct. it is a religious war. That is another “front.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/this-is-a-religious-war-likud-mk-calls-for-jewish-prayer-on-the-temple-mount/ar-AA1p3xbd?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=3472dc5273794cf0992bd34e91bc0549&ei=71

    • from that article
      “In addition, Israel needs to take control over “the energy, the gas… electricity and the food, the aid, and the education, the basic, the fundamental issues,” Halevi said. “Otherwise, you have thousands of new soldiers in the Hamas army,” because “Hamas is a product of the population.”

      “hamas is a product of the population.”

  9. “Panic in Israel: Did Hezbollah track and record Netanyahu’s residence with a drone?”

    “In Israel, there is a huge panic after a drone infiltrated northern Israel and captured footage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home. Reports suggest that Hezbollah may have sent the drone. The Israeli Prime Minister usually spends weekends at his private residence in Caesarea, 37 km south of Haifa. According to reports, an Israeli Navy missile ship detected the drone hovering in that area. Given the ongoing threat from Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, many believe Hezbollah might be behind this incident.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/panic-in-israel-did-hezbollah-track-and-record-netanyahu-s-residence-with-a-drone/ar-AA1p0M4D?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=1ce370d0882e4b6eaf9b16e93be72ea5&ei=16

  11. What makes you think Iran doesnt already have nukes? Tech is almost 100 yrs old and even third world countries have them like Pakistan and NK. Iran is way more sophisticated than both on every other armament. They have better engineers obviously. I bet they do.

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