WarSclerotic

A day after Washington suggested it could hold talks without preconditions if Iran changed its behavior, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif posted a video clip of a woman saying the prosthetic leg her son needs is sanctioned to Twitter.

He tweeted: “#EconomicTerrorism against Iran targets innocent civilians. Like this little boy, whose heartbroken mother can’t get him prosthetic legs as he grows. They’re sanctioned.”

Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the video.

“This is @realDonaldTrump’s ‘economic war’. And war and talks – with or without preconditions – don’t go together,” Zarif added in the tweet.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that Washington was prepared to engage with Tehran without pre-conditions on its nuclear program, but first needed to see the country behave like “a normal nation.”

Tensions between the two foes have escalated in the past month, a year after the United States pulled out of the 2005 Iran nuclear deal.

At this time, no group has claimed responsibility for the firing of two rockets at Israel’s Mount Hermon on Saturday night from Syria, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to view Iran, or one of its proxies, as the prime suspects.

The Iranian radical axis possesses both the ability and the motivation to conduct such an attack.

Israel’s alleged responses included a significant air strike on Iranian assetswithin the T-4 airbase, in central Syria, and deadly strikes on President Bashar Assad regime’s military.

Israel sent the message that Iran cannot hide behind its regional proxies and that its activities remain highly exposed to Israeli intelligence and firepower. It also reiterated that Assad will continue to pay a price for Iran’s aggression.

The Islamic republic has spent years creating proxy terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East, including in Syria. This gives it an ability to attack and pressure its enemies on their own doorstep, far from Iran’s own borders, while maintaining a facade of deniability. The “anonymous” firing of two rockets on Saturday appears to fit this pattern well.

Tens of thousands of Shi’ite militia members – made up of Iraqis, Afghans and others – are active in Syria. They are armed, trained and funded by Iran, and are also under its command.

Iran has tried to recruit Syrians, who live near the Israeli border, into Iranian-organized terror networks. In addition, Hezbollah – Iran’s powerful Lebanese proxy – is a part of this picture. Hezbollah has repeatedly tried to turn southern Syria into a forward operating base against Israel.

In addition to all of these efforts, Iran has tried to build up its own direct military capabilities in Syria.

In response, Israel uses its advanced intelligence and precision airstrike capabilities to disrupt the threats as they form.

Stopping Iran’s entrenchment in Syria has become a top Israeli goal. The Israeli Air Force has, in recent years, shifted into a high operational tempo to keep up with the constantly changing threat. The main mission, in Syria and beyond, is to stop the Iranian axis build-up.

This has frustrated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and its overseas black-ops unit, the Quds Force, commanded by the notorious Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

Iran’s plans have run into constant “problems” in the form of hundreds of Israeli preventative strikes, including some in recent months, according to international media reports. The reports said Israeli strikes destroyed valuable Iranian targets, like missile-production facilities and weapons warehouses, killing Iranian personnel in the process.

The mysterious rocket attacks on Saturday night, therefore, could be seen as an Iranian attempt to deter Israel from taking more such action.

Another motivation could be the increasing economic pressure that Iran is under, due to punishing American sanctions. The closer Iran comes to the economic crisis, the more willing it is to activate its proxies and destabilize the region.

Recent examples of this trend include the sabotage of oil tankers at a UAE port, the explosive drone attacks launched by Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and a rocket attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Saturday’s projectile attack from Syria seems could fit this pattern.

In addition, May 31 marked Iran’s “Quds Day,” held on the last Friday of Ramadan. This day is marked by rallies held in Iran and by Shi’ite communities abroad who are loyal to Tehran. Its defining message an ideological and fundamentalist religious commitment to Israel’s destruction.

The rocket attacks from Syria seem too close to Quds Day to be a coincidence. This year’s Quds Day was filled with threats by Iranian officials – not only against Israel but also against pro-U.S. Sunni Gulf states and the United States itself.

Israel’s first response to Saturday’s attack was to extract a painful price from the very regime that Iran worked so hard to save. Israeli aircraft struck a number of military targets belonging to Assad’s military, including artillery batteries, a number of observation and intelligence posts, and an SA-2 surface-to-air missile battery.

The IDF released a statement saying it “holds the Syrian regime accountable for every action taken against Israel and will firmly operate against any activity from within Syrian territory against Israel.”

Israel’s message is that Iran cannot hide behind its regional proxies and that the Assad regime will pay the price for Iran’s actions. This response should give Iran pause for thought since Assad’s survival is a key Iranian strategic interest. It is also a key interest of Russia, which is trying to keep Iran’s activities under some level of check to prevent the outbreak of a wider conflict.

In January this year, the Iranians tried to pull off a similar, more brazen attack. They fired a mid-range missile from the outskirts of Damascus at Mount Hermon, which was intercepted by Israeli air defenses right over the heads of winter skiers.

In response, the Israeli Air Force launched three waves of airstrikes that targeted Iranian sites in and around Damascus, as well as Syrian air-defense batteries that fired on the Israeli fighter jets.

Iran’s attack at that time was motivated, according to Israeli assessments, by a desire to stop Israel from hitting its troops and bases in Syria. That initiative failed.

The Lebanese front

Meanwhile, in neighboring Lebanon, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah used a Quds Day speech to state that “American intelligence knows that every war that erupts will not remain inside Iranian borders, but will spark a fire in the region. Israel and Saudi Arabia will pay the price.”

This threat likely came from Tehran rather than from Beirut. The mysterious rocket attacks fit Nasrallah’s warning. His message is that Iran’s axis should be seen as a single network and that Iran will activate its proxies if it becomes involved in any escalation with the United States.

That means that a U.S.-Iranian conflict will trigger an Israeli-Hezbollah conflict.

Still, Nasrallah has no appetite for a war at this time. His lackluster response to the IDF’s destruction of a series of Hezbollah tunnels, dug into northern Israel from Lebanon, are evidence of this.

On May 30, the IDF completed the destruction of Hezbollah’s largest and key tunnel.

In any future conflict, Hezbollah’s plan was to “infiltrate Israel through the attack tunnel into Israeli communities near the border in order to harm civilians as part of its war plans,” the IDF said.

Hezbollah invested “the most resources and efforts” into this tunnel, which was designed to allow terrorists to stay inside for a prolonged period of time.

So far, Israel and the Iranian axis have kept this conflict at bay. It remains unknown how much longer this will continue to be the case.

This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

Reacting to a U.S. offer to engage with Iran without preconditions, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that Tehran expected a change in U.S. behavior rather than “wordplay.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that the United States is prepared to engage with Iran without preconditions about its nuclear program but needs to see the country behaving like “a normal nation.”

“The Islamic Republic of Iran does not pay attention to wordplay and expression of hidden agenda in new forms. What matters is the change of U.S. general approach and actual behavior toward the Iranian nation,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.

“Pompeo’s emphasis on the continuation of maximum pressure on Iran is the same old wrong policy that needs reform.”

Pompeo, in an apparent softening of his previous stance, said when asked about Rouhani’s remarks: “We are prepared to engage in a conversation with no preconditions, we are ready to sit down.”

However, he said Washington would continue to work to “reverse the malign activity” of Iran in the Middle East, citing Tehran’s support of Hezbollah and the Syrian government.

Pompeo said U.S. President Donald Trump had been saying for a long time that he was willing to talk to Iran.

“We are certainly prepared to have that conversation when the Iranians can prove that they want to behave like a normal nation,” Pompeo told a joint news conference with his Swiss counterpart Ignazio Cassis in the southern Swiss city of Bellinzona.

Trump said last Monday he was hopeful Iran would come to the negotiating table. But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday Tehran would not negotiate with Washington, even after Rouhani had previously signaled talks might be possible if sanctions were lifted.

Cassis voiced concern at Iranian people suffering from the impact of sanctions and said that neutral Switzerland wanted to provide humanitarian aid, “especially pharmaceutical products and foodstuffs.”

He said Iran needed to make payments for this, and that was possible only if the United States allowed banks to transfer payments. Cassis said he was confident the U.S. would come up with the “best possible solution” to that problem in a short time.

Iran has stayed within the main restrictions of its 2015 nuclear deal, a quarterly report by the U.N. atomic watchdog indicated on Friday, at a time when Tehran is threatening to break the rules in future in response to new U.S. sanctions.

Pompeo declined on Sunday to comment on the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. He said Washington was tracking IAEA findings closely but added: “We also have our own independent understanding of what is taking place there.

“And the world should be mindful that we are watching closely how Iran is complying with the requirements that were set out in the JCPOA, not only the heavy water issue, but the amount of high-enriched uranium which they are accumulating,” he said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action which the Trump administration has quit.

“We are watching closely as they put centrifuges into work and whether they are actually beginning to spin those centrifuges and load those centrifuges,” Pompeo said.

Switzerland has served as an intermediary between Iran and the U.S. since shortly after the Islamic revolution in November 1979. Switzerland provides protective and consular services for some 100 U.S. citizens and 12,000 people with both U.S. and Iranian citizenship.

It was not the first attack of that type. Rockets have already been fired at the Hermon in recent years.

As a reminder, the most recent rocket attack, in January, took place in the afternoon hours and was carried out by Shiite militias supported by Iran, while the ski resort in the area was full of visitors. The rocket was intercepted by an Iron Dome battery stationed there in advance. That incident, which came in response to an Israeli airstrike, was exploited by Israel to carry out a broad attack on Iranian targets in Syria, most notably a logistics center used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah at the international airport in Damascus, which was knocked almost completely out of commission.

And yet, the rocket attack on Saturday was unusual in the sense that it seemingly came out of the blue. Unlike previous incidents, the attack wasn’t carried out in response or retaliation to any Israeli activity.

This could indicate that someone on the other side is fed up with Israel dictating the rules of the game in the north, and wants to send it a message that there’s more than one player on the field.

As of Sunday evening, Israeli officials were still unsure who fired the Grad rockets, one of which landed on the Hermon and the other, apparently, in Syrian territory.

The rockets were launched from a distance of around 30 kilometers (19 miles), from an area with multiple active actors, at least three of whom could have an interest in harming Israel: the Syrian regime or a group acting on its behalf, in an attempt to convey Damascus’ sovereignty; Iranian proxies (Shiite militias or Hezbollah), seeking revenge against Israel for a plethora of possible reasons – from airstrikes on weapons depots to economic sanctions imposed on Tehran; or another player, either Palestinian or another such terrorist group, who managed to get their hands on rockets and decided to put them to use.

From Israel’s perspective, it doesn’t really matter who fired the rockets. The response – striking Syrian artillery and anti-aircraft batteries and an intelligence gathering post near the border – sought to reiterate that as the sovereign power it is the regime’s responsibility to prevent hostile activities against Israel from its territory. This is Israel’s standing policy (in Gaza, too) – target the sovereign entity so that it exerts said sovereignty – to which it adhered to even throughout the Syrian civil war when the Assad regime was not in control of the border region. Therefore, it stands to reason that Israel is continuing to implement this policy now that the Syrian army has seized full control of the frontier region.

Still, this rocket attack should concern officials in Jerusalem because it means that someone in Syria wants to challenge Israel.

For the time being, the attack does not alter the basic situational assessment. The IDF enjoys complete dominance in the northern sector. If it avoids making mistakes (specifically regarding Russian forces in Syria), it will be able to continue, for now, to pound away at Iran’s entrenchment and weapons smuggling efforts. In the long term, however, Israel will have to consider and plan new avenues of action that reinforce deterrence and ensure that Israel meets its objectives in Syria; and as a byproduct in Lebanon as well.

Given the recent political upheaval in Israel, this task falls almost squarely on the IDF’s shoulders.

Consequently, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi will have to continue bearing an extraordinarily heavy load until a new, stable government can formulate a clear policy, security-related and otherwise. Until then, it seems things will mostly stay the same: from the frequent headaches in Gaza to the far more disconcerting security concerns in the north.