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As early as December 27, 2023, speaking to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant said: “We are in a multifront war and coming under attack from seven theaters.” He added that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were taking action on six of them.
On July 1, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu elaborated on this to a group of visiting US leaders. Israel, he told them, is engaged in defending itself on at least seven fronts, all Iranian-inspired and supported. He listed them: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militias in Iraq, Syria and the West Bank, and Iran itself. Iran has dubbed them the Axis of Resistance.
Yet even though all seven look to the Iranian regime for financial and military support, and act under its guidance, to regard the Axis as anything like a unified or integrated opponent would be to misread the situation. The alliance is, in fact, inherently unstable, and therefore vulnerable.
In mounting its bloodthirsty incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023, Hamas certainly did not realize it was biting off more than it could chew. Its leadership must have calculated that the organization could absorb an inevitable and massive Israeli retaliation. They certainly never foresaw that they were dealing themselves a death blow. In the event, Hamas’s military strength has been literally decimated by Israel’s defense forces, and whatever shape a ceasefire deal may take, Hamas will never rule in Gaza again.
The Iranian regime became interested in Hamas in the early 1990s, when the organization broke with Yasser Arafat for signing the Oslo Accords. It became clear that Hamas was one hundred percent rejectionist, and spurned Arafat’s tactic of winning over world opinion as a preliminary to eventually ousting Israel from the Middle East.
After the first Oslo Accord a conference hosted by Iran in Tehran in support of the Palestinian cause was attended by Hamas but not by Arafat, and afterward Iran began supporting Hamas both militarily and financially.
But Iran is the leader of the Shia Muslim world, and its founder is on record as describing the followers of the majority Sunni branch of Islam as apostates and heretics.
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Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, is Sunni heart and soul. It is obvious that this Iran-Hamas relationship is a marriage of convenience, destined for divorce at the first suitable opportunity. Iran will support Hamas just as long as there is something to support, and not a moment longer.
Then Hezbollah, formed in the early 1980s shortly after Israel invaded Lebanon in order to chase the PLO out of the country. It was Israel’s presence within Lebanese territory that led a group of Shia clerics to create the organization. The new body modeled itself on the principles established by Ayatollah Khomeini following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and its clear purpose was to remove the Israeli presence from Lebanon.
Much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Hezbollah has entrenched itself within the Lebanese body politic, and now forms a significant part of the country’s government. To retain power, it has to be responsive to some degree to the opinion of the public from which its electorate is drawn.
Polls show that the Lebanese public has no desire to be drawn into a war with Israel. The country is at an economic low ebb, and they see no advantage, and much to be feared, in such an enterprise. Hezbollah will find it difficult to ride roughshod over public opinion. The tit-for-tat armed exchanges with Israel that grow ever more lethal, have turned into combat for combat’s sake. Hezbollah’s original purpose – to remove Israel from Lebanon – has long been an anachronism. Now Hezbollah has nothing to gain for itself, or for Lebanon, from prolonging the conflict. Its somewhat muted retaliation on August 29 for the assassination of its military commander Fuad Shukr indicates as much. It wants to take over southern Lebanon. The only way is to wind down the conflict with Israel, and get the UN to remove its UNIFIL forces from the border.
In 2009 the Houthis in Yemen welcomed Iranian assistance in their struggle to take over control of the country from the officially recognized government. The Iranian regime had its own reasons – it enabled them to gain a foothold on the Arabian peninsula, much to the alarm of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Ever since 2015 a coalition assembled by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has been holding the Houthis at bay.
The Houthis, who display “Death to Israel. A curse on the Jews” on their flag, were
willing enough to put their domestic struggle to one side after October 7, and respond to Iran’s effort to attack Israel on as many fronts as possible. The group has launched missiles and drones against Israel, as well as attacking commercial shipping.
But all this extra-mural military activity was never on the Houthis’ agenda. They have their own fish to fry, and it has nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinian cause. They seek to gain control of the whole of Yemen, and they will not reman diverted from their main aim for very long.
As for the Iranian-funded militias in Iraq, Syria and the West Bank, each indulge in harassing tactics that require Israel’s occasional armed military response. Hamas has had an active presence in the West Bank for years, fomenting action against the Palestinian Authority which it once aimed to replace – an ambition that is now moribund. On August 28 the IDF took successful action to root out the terrorist militias that had infiltrated the West Bank.
As for Iran itself, the Supreme Leader and his acolytes, including the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), rule a population seething with disaffection. Every now and then open rebellion erupts onto the streets, in protest against the heavy-handed religious observance forced on the population, to say nothing of the privations forced on them by the heavily-sanctioned government. The danger of a popular uprising is always present.
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On April 13, 2024, Iran launched its first-ever direct aerial assault against Israel, involving hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles. The anticipated military and propaganda triumph turned into a miserable failure. Israel’s Iron Dome, American and British jet fighters, and Jordan’s refused to allow Iran to use its air space, resulted in about 99% of the aerial armada never reaching Israel. Iran will certainly think twice, and probably more than that, before attempting a similar operation.
Seven rather vulnerable military entities, including Iran itself, make up the much touted, but basically unstable, Axis of Resistance. No wonder Israel’s leaders feel confident they can deal with them all – if necessary at one and the same time.