Benny Gantz On What Israel Should Target In Iran

Benny Gantz, who is both a former Israeli chief of staff and a former defense minister, has written an opinion piece for the New York Times that explains the lessons Israel learned on October 7 and that he believes justify its impending attack on Iran. He also wants to share those lessons with the rest of the world, which does not yet see Iran as a grave threat to world order. More on his views can be found here: “‘Now is the time’: Former defense minister Gantz pushes for strike on Iran,” Jerusalem Post, October 6, 2024:

Benny Gantz, Israel’s former defense minister, compared the October 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas to the recent rocket attacks from Iran in an opinion piece published by The New York Times.

In the NYT article, he delved into the question: “A year later, one must ask: What were Hamas’s leaders hoping for, and what are Iran’s leaders seeking to achieve?”

Gantz identifies three rationales behind Hamas’s attack:

Gantz wrote that the first factor was JIhadi [sic] fanaticism. This was the component that the IDF underestimated, a senior Israel Defense Forces intelligence commander said to Gantz in the early days of the war, referring to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader.

Rational Western man has difficulty comprehending Muslim fanaticism, of the kind embodied by Yahya Sinwar, Hassan Nasrallah, and Ayatollah Khomeini. Even the Israelis, who have been fighting Muslims for their entire history, failed — until October 7 — to grasp how profound is its murderous hold on the minds of the true believers.

Secondly, Hamas assessed that Israel’s internal issues were a sign of weakness, believing that at Israel’s weakest, we would not be capable of uniting and reacting effectively to an attack, Gantz said.

Though the Hamas attack on October 7 had been in the planning stage for a long time, what finally triggered it was the great division in Israel between those supporting a proposed judicial reform and those opposed to it, which led to months of protests and marches in 2023. Hamas misinterpreted this as being akin to the civil strife in Arab lands, endowed it with greater significance than it had, and chose to think that in these conditions of perceived “civil war,” it would be a good time to strike the Jewish state. Instead, on October 8 the people of Israel instantly united, dropped their previous divisions, and girded their loins to defend themselves and their embattled country. Within days 360,000 IDF Reservists showed up for duty.

Third was loyalty to Iran and its axis of evil. Gantz cited as evidence a document reportedly found in Gaza, written by a Hamas leader on Jan. 8, 2023, that Hamas planned to join together with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Shiite militias in Syria, Iraq, and Iran —in a regional war with the ultimate goal of destroying the Jewish state….

If anyone had any doubts about this plan, the attacks launched by Hamas from Gaza on October 7, followed immediately on October 8 by attacks launched from Lebanon by Hezbollah, while the Houthis in Yemen continued their already-begun campaign on shipping in the Red Sea, should dispel them. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis have all received weapons and money from Iran, have been preparing to join forces with each other, as desired by their puppet-master Iran, in order to attack Israel and, ultimately, to annihilate the Jewish state, whose mere existence makes so many Muslims so deeply unhappy.

Iran has been an evil actor in Europe, providing Vladimir Putin with munitions, artillery shells, drones, as well as Fath and Shahid missiles. In the Red Sea, Iran supplies the Houthis in Yemen with missiles to hit ships and force 15% of the world’s seagoing vessels to change their routes from Asia to Europe; the ships that used to go up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal now must go round the Horn of Africa and up Africa’s western coast to Europe, a much longer and more expensive trip.

Iran appears to have been planning an attack akin to that of October 7, but much larger, with simultaneous attacks from all of Israel’s regional enemies, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and from Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank. The IDF’s ferocious assault first in Gaza, followed just now by a similarly ferocious attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon, has put paid to those plans. The mullahs in Iran have launched two missile assaults on Israel, in April and in October. In April, all of the 300-odd missiles were either intercepted or fell harmlessly on open fields. In early October Iran let loose 180 missiles aimed at IDF military bases and Mossad headquarters. It managed only to punch a hole in the roof of a hangar at the Nevatim Airbase, and to destroy housing at the base. Mossad was untouched. No Jews, but one Palestinian was killed.

In the year since the October 7, the IDF has completely dismantled Hamas as a fighting force in Gaza. Hamas is now a shadow of its former self, with at least half — 20,000 — of the estimated 40,000 combatants it had before that date, have now been killed, and thousands more wounded and no longer able to fight. The Israelis have carried out devastating air attacks on the Houthis in Yemen, a country more than 1,240 miles from Israel. They have severely damaged a great deal of infrastructure, including major ports. The most damage has been inflicted on the key port of Hodeidah, where weapons from Iran are received, and on power stations, as well as weapons depots. In Lebanon, 3,000 Hezbollah members have been wounded, and many dozens killed, by exploding pagers and walkie-talkies. The IDF says that as of October 6 it had killed at least 250 Hezbollah fighters. Israeli airstrikes have been destroying some of Hezbollah’s vast storehouse of about 150,000 rockets and missiles, but no figures have as yet been given out by the IDF as to the number it believes it has rendered useless.

David Albright, the Founder and Director of the Center for Science and International Security, who has been relentlessly following threats of nuclear proliferation around the world for many decades, and has been giving special attention to the nuclear program in Iran, believes that Iran is only weeks away of producing a nuclear weapon should Tehran make that fateful decision to do so. He deserves to be heeded.

The sanctions that the Biden administration weakened are now again being strengthened. Individual Iranian big shots who somehow escaped previous sanctions have now had their assets abroad frozen. Iran cannot make use of the international banking system. However, Iran sells 90% of its oil to China, a purchaser whom the Americans have no ability to dissuade.

On the legal side, Gantz stated that governments that have not already done so should place the Islamic Republic and its branches, including the Revolutionary Guards, on their terrorist lists.

This should have been done a long time ago. Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and has been since Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. In 1983, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah murdered 280 American Marines sleeping in their barracks in Beirut. Iranians were responsible for the suicide bombing on July 18, 1994 in Buenos Aires, that targeted  the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentine (“Argentine Israelite Mutual Association”), a Jewish Community Center. It is Iranian money and weapons that keep Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in business.

Gantz does not explicitly state that he thinks the IDF should now attack Iran’s nuclear project as a response to Iran’s latest volley of 180 missiles, rather than to hit either military bases, or Iran’s oil fields or oil terminals on Kharg Island. But he does state, meaningfully, that such a target should be considered if “a red line is crossed” and Iran races toward producing a bomb. Unfortunately, President Biden has said most unhelpfully, that the Americans will not support an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. That’s too bad. If necessary then, the IDF must act alone. But it cannot allow people in Washington to dictate to the Jewish state what it can or cannot do to survive.