Defeat, deter and dissuade: Israel's survival strategy against Iran and its proxies

Defeat, deter and dissuade – that is how Israel manages its three-front war against Iran and its proxies. 

Tehran is the immortal head of this hydra. But Israel will have to eliminate its other two heads to get to it.

Each front presents an existential threat to Jerusalem. Isolating the threats and defeating them sequentially is the best course of action. However, the narrative is not in Israel's favor. Support from the Biden administration is waning.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah is flexing. The leader of the Iranian-backed paramilitary organization, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, recently threatened Israel, stating that there would be “no rules and with no red lines” if all-out war erupts between Hezbollah and Israel.

Last fall, Hamas made itself the most immediate threat to Israel. The terrorist group invaded Israel from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage on October 7. 

But Hezbollah, the terrorist group in Lebanon, threatens Israel’s northern border with upwards of 150,000 rockets, missiles and drones and as many as 50,000 militants. Iran, through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, funds, trains, equips and directs its proxies to attack Israel and U.S. interests throughout the region, while trying to build a nuclear weapon in the background.

As Hezbollah increasingly threatens Israel, Gen. C.Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cautioned that “the U.S. won’t likely be able to help Israel defend itself against a broader Hezbollah war as well as it helped Israel fight off an Iranian barrage of missiles and drones in April.” 

It does not help that the Biden administration is slow-walking or decreasing shipments of weapons to Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alleges.

Operating with limited resources against multiple threats, Israel must carefully weigh its effort. 

The Israelis' strategy encompasses decisive offensive operations to defeat and remove Hamas from Gaza in the close fight, while defending itself from rocket, missile and drone attacks. It requires self-defense strikes and proactive defense actions to deter Hezbollah from entering the war with Iranian support. All the while, the Israelis must keep Iran in focus as it continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Since Oct. 7, Israel has been in a kinetic war against forces intent on its destruction. Netanyahu declared war on Hamas immediately after the attack. The Israeli government formalized the declaration on Oct. 8. But by declaring war on Hamas, Israel in practice also declared war on its allies — Hezbollah and Iran.

At the onset of the war, the Biden administration moved two carrier groups — the USS Eisenhower and USS Gerald R. Ford — into the Eastern Mediterranean Sea to “deter Iran or Hezbollah from joining the Israel-Hamas conflict,” as Israel was preparing its ground assault in Gaza. This provided Israel space and cover to mobilize its forces.

True to his word, Netanyahu said that the aim of the ground assault into Gaza was the destruction of Hamas’s “military and governing capabilities” to an extent that prevents it from threatening Israelis “for many years.” For the last 264 days, Israel Defense Forces tactics have been harshly criticized as the number of Palestinian civilians killed or wounded has mounted. But the IDF is indeed slowly pushing Hamas out of Gaza.

Israeli military assessments report that Hamas’s final functioning brigade could be dismantled in Rafah within weeks. Of the four Hamas Rafah battalions, only two remain functional. A force would be required to remain in Gaza to secure the Hamas-free territory, but combat power could then be moved north to address the threat posed by Hezbollah.

Defeating Hamas is priority number one. As Israel comes closer to achieving this objective, Hezbollah, under the guise of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has increased its attacks on Israel, forcing Israel's military to move forces north to counter the threat. To keep the two Iranian proxies at bay and off-balance, Israel began targeting their leadership — a top-down approach designed to disrupt command and control and create confusion within the ranks.

Two IDF airstrikes in December 2023 killed General Seyed Razi Mousavi in a Damascus neighborhood, and another 11 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials at the Damascus International Airport. On April 2, Israel struck the Iranian consulate building in Syria, killing Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who led elite Quds Forces in Lebanon and Syria until 2016, his deputy, Gen Mohammad Hadi Hajriahimi, and five other military officers.

On June 11, Israel killed senior Hezbollah commander Sami Taleb Abdullah and three other militants at a Hezbollah command-and-control center in Jouaiyya, southern Lebanon. They claim to have killed as many as 100 Hezbollah terrorists since the beginning of the war.

Most recently, Israel targeted Hamas’s Chief of Operations Ra’ad Saad, who held the fourth highest rank in the military wing of Hamas, possibly killing him in an airstrike in Al-Shati, northern Gaza.

Iran leverages its proxies to do its dirty work. It has learned the hard way to not take Israel on directly. It relearned that lesson on the evening of April 13, when Tehran launched more than 300 missiles and drones toward Jerusalem in response to an Israeli air strike on its consulate office in Damascus. Israel struck back on April 19, but rather than delivering a proportional response against the Iranian regime, it chose instead to send a message that it knows where Iran's most sensitive nuclear facilities are located — in Natanz — and can strike them at will.

Message delivered, despite threats from Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, who warned that, “If the Zionist regime [Israel] or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response.” Iran’s military chief, Major-General Mohammad Bagherim, told state TV that a “much larger” response awaits Israel “if it retaliates against Iran.” 

Neither came to fruition. 

Israel’s ability to open air corridors in Iran’s air defense network silenced the Islamic Republic's threats, but not those of its proxies.

When Israel achieves its objective again Hamas in Gaza, it will redirect its attention to Hezbollah. Nasrallah understands this. So does Iran's Supreme Leader, Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei. 

The Israeli approach is deliberate — the end state is a secure Israel. A nuclear Iran and Lebanon as its launch base are not on the cards. Just as Heracles defeated the hydra, so too will Israel overcome this existential threat.

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.