WarSclerotic

Two wars have been avoided over the past year. The ‎first would have been an escalation of the well-known conflict with Hamas in the Gaza ‎Strip. The second is the understandable but less well-known conflict with Iran.‎

Although Israel and Iran do not share a border, this is nevertheless Israel’s most ‎active front at the moment.

The heads of the IDF’s Northern, Central and ‎Southern commands are very busy people, but none is as busy as GOC “Iran Command.” ‎Officially, there is no such position ‎and missions pertaining to Iran ‎are divided mainly between Military ‎Intelligence Director Maj. Gen. Tamir Heyman and Israeli Air Force ‎Commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin, with Maj. Gen. ‎Nitzan Alon acting as special project coordinator on ‎Iran. In practice, IDF ‎Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot acts as the de facto commanding officer on this issue, because Iran dominates his schedule. ‎

On Tuesday, Eizenkot was scheduled to attend a ‎ceremony marking the 30th ‎anniversary of the Judea and Samaria Brigade, one of the IDF’s top formations, which ‎deals mainly in counterterrorism missions. ‎

But Eizenkot was conspicuously absent from the ‎event, while another ceremony – the appointment ‎of Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav as head of the Air Defense ‎Command – was ‎pushed up and rushed.‎

Later, the news gave a clue as to why, when Syrian ‎media accused Israel of targeting military positions ‎in the western province of Hama and ‎the coastal city ‎of Tartus. The targets of the alleged Israeli strikes ‎were two missile component production facilities. ‎

As a new Jewish year begins, as far as Israel is ‎concerned, Iran remains the source of all the ills of the Middle East. The turmoil in ‎Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip can ‎all be traced back to Iran. If Iran was removed from the equation, everything would be much simpler. ‎

Israel has been ‎shouting this warning from the rooftops, in every possible ‎language, for several years, but the world has largely refused ‎to listen. The international community has been far more ‎preoccupied with eliminating the Sunni Islamic State ‎group, and as a result bolstering the Shiites and their ‎beneficiaries, chief among them Syrian President Bashar ‎Assad. ‎

The world is willing to ignore the fact that ‎Assad has murdered hundreds of thousands of his own ‎countrymen and displaced millions of others in ‎the seven-year civil war, which he has mostly won with the ‎help of Iran and Russia.‎

The shift in the world’s position on Iran’s ‎involvement in Syria has been very recent. Washington ‎leads the pack, as expected, and to a lesser extent, ‎a similar understanding can be seen in Moscow and ‎European capitals. ‎

A senior security source said this week that U.S. ‎President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir ‎Putin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Assad ‎himself have only one thing in common: their desire ‎to see Iran leave Syria.‎ This statement may not be entirely accurate, but it is certainly headed in the right direction.

Diplomatic activity is underway to complement the ‎military actions. This week, the IDF revealed that it ‎has struck over 200 Iranian assets in Syria over the ‎past two years. ‎

This is a phenomenal figure, pointing to an average ‎of one attack every three days. The number ‎may very well be higher, considering that besides the acknowledged ‎attacks there are countless cyber ‎operations aimed at achieving the same goal of ‎thwarting, or at least significantly slowing, ‎Iran’s efforts to establish itself militarily in ‎Syria.‎

These moves aim to undermine Iranian operations in ‎Syria directly, by targeting the bases and ‎facilities Iran is building to house its forces, as well as ‎indirectly, by targeting Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, ‎mostly by eliminating missile production sites and ‎weapon convoys bound for Lebanon, where Hezbollah ‎is based. ‎

Preventing the situation from boiling over

Efforts to stop Iran are underway all over Syria as well as outside it. Most recently, foreign media reported on an alleged ‎Israeli strike on the Syria-Iraq border, hundreds of ‎miles away from Israel. The U.S.-led coalition was ‎also operating in the area at the same time, ‎fighting Shiite militias as part of the power ‎struggle in the region. ‎

This was most likely why Iran reportedly deployed ‎long-range missiles on its border with Iraq, far ‎from the Syrian sphere but still close enough to ‎threaten all its enemies in the region.‎

Israel has no plans to attack Iraq, not because of ‎any military difficulty, but because it does not want to ‎compromise the U.S., which has taken Iraq and its current regime ‎under its wing.

The Shiites in Iraq are already embroiled in an ‎internal battle between U.S. and Iranian ‎loyalists, and Israel has no interest in undermining ‎the U.S. there. On the contrary: All of Israel’s ‎efforts are currently focused on convincing the ‎Trump administration to keep American forces in ‎eastern Syria to block Iran and counterbalance Russia.‎

The report on Iran’s activity in western Iraq ‎coincided with reports that Tehran has been using ‎a pseudo-civilian airline to smuggle ‎weapons to Lebanon. This is nothing new: Hundreds of ‎flights have taken the same route in recent years ‎with civilians on board and weapons in the cargo ‎hold. ‎

Realizing that they had been compromised, ‎the Iranians ‎apparently deduced that Israel also knows about ‎these flights and to avoid having their planes ‎intercepted, they decided to “play it safe” and ‎use civilian aircraft, with innocent passengers as shields.‎

These reports were intended not only to expose ‎Iran’s illicit activity but also to pressure ‎Tehran. In the wake of the U.S. withdrawal ‎from the 2015 nuclear deal and the renewal of the ‎economic sanctions, the ayatollah regime in Tehran is ‎facing one of its most challenging periods in ‎recent memory. The regime is under attack both ‎domestically and internationally, and the Iranian ‎people are leveling unprecedented criticism at their leaders ‎over the country’s dire economic situation.‎

The idea behind this campaign is to push Iran into a ‎corner and force it to give up its dreams of ‎exporting the Islamic Revolution, as well as ‎terrorism, for the sake of its rulers’ political survival. ‎However, there are no signs of this happening ‎anytime soon and while the Iranian conservatives ‎engage in heated debates about the issue among ‎themselves, the Quds Force – the Revolutionary ‎Guards’ elite black-ops arm – is continuing on its path uninterrupted.‎

Iran will undoubtedly remain the focus of Israeli ‎activity in the coming year.

Things will be more of ‎the same, in different variations. This means ‎efforts to calm the situation on the ground in other ‎sectors, mainly in Gaza and to a lesser extent in ‎Judea and Samaria, and continued, combined action against Iran on ‎the military, economic, political, technological and ‎media fronts.‎

The imminent end of the civil war in Syria presents ‎Israel with a new challenge: so far, Israel has been ‎able to carry out attacks in Syria relatively ‎uninterrupted, but this stands to change soon. This ‎means higher-risk missions with a higher likelihood ‎of escalation. ‎

Israel has already made it clear that, given no ‎other choice, it is willing to walk down that road ‎in order to stop the Iranian tide before it floods the region.