(DCNF)—Though the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has garnered international attention over the last year, the center of gravity of the conflict has quickly shifted in recent weeks to Hezbollah and Iran.
Iran launched hundreds of missiles into Israeli territory — most, but not all, of which were intercepted — in retaliation for Israel’s attacks against Tehran and Hezbollah in recent weeks and months. With the war against Hamas in Gaza largely coming to a close, Israel’s primary focus is now on combating Iran and Hezbollah, two much larger adversaries that threaten to throw the already chaotic Middle East region further into turmoil, national security experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Hamas is a shadow of its former self. Israel is going to continue to try to eradicate them, but it’s sort of a guerilla campaign. Hamas is being starved and smoked out. I suspect that you’re going to see Hamas go underground somewhat — more figuratively than literally at this point,” former State Department official Gabriel Noronha told the DCNF.
The Iranian strike is one of the latest developments in the ongoing regional conflict, though it is undoubtedly not the last. Israel has yet to respond to the attack but, military spokesman Daniel Hagari promised on Tuesday there would be “consequences” for Iran.
“Iran made a big mistake – and it will pay for it,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin said during a security cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
It’s not clear what route of retaliation Israel may choose to take, although it reportedly had warned Tehran on Monday — ahead of the missile salvo — that it would go after Iranian nuclear and oil facilities if it were attacked. Former Israeli intelligence official Avi Melamed told the DCNF he didn’t anticipate Israel would strike nuclear or oil sites, but that other major infrastructure — such as military or logistics sites — would be targets.
“Non-kinetic” methods could also be employed by Israel against Iran, Melamed said.
“That’s my estimation for the features of the expected Israeli response,” Melamed told the DCNF, noting that the timing of such a response would likely be sooner than later.
U.S. military assets positioned in the region provided defense to Israel during the Iranian strikes on Tuesday. U.S. officials have thus far declined to comment on what Israel’s next move might be, although they have similarly warned of “consequences.”
It’s unlikely that the U.S. would participate in a joint attack against Iran, but officials have vowed that more defenses will be provided to Israel if need be, and Melamed told the DCNF that an Israeli response is at the very least likely being coordinated with U.S. officials.
Israel is also facing a challenge in Hezbollah, Iran’s largest and most capable terrorist proxy network. Hezbollah began firing at Israel over the Lebanon border last October, out of support for Hamas’ invasion of Israel at the time, which ended in the murder of approximately 1,200 people and lit the fuse for a broader regional war.
“It’s clear that Israel is determined to rid Lebanon of Hezbollah,” senior fellow at the Strauss Center and former Pentagon official Simone Ledeen told the DCNF. “Do the Israelis need to get every single one of those Hezbollah fighters? No, of course not. They need Hezbollah to lay down their arms and surrender… the Israelis [are] really focused on getting to that objective.”
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has heated up rapidly in recent weeks. Israel has carried out sweeping airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and remotely detonated thousands of the terrorist group’s personal communication devices in September, sending explosions sweeping throughout the country.
Israel killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike in Beirut on Friday, creating further chaos for the group and raising alarm in Iran. Now Israeli forces are conducting a series of ground raids over the border in southern Lebanon, in what could be the prelude to a larger ground invasion.
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“From all accounts that I’m seeing, the next phase is, you have to launch a ground invasion and take out as many Hezbollah operatives as possible,” Noronha told the DCNF. “Hezbollah will bite back hard, and it’ll get pretty ugly, but it’s not entirely clear where this goes from there.”
As things stand, Israel is essentially in a multi-front conflict with Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Iranian-backed terror groups scattered throughout the Middle East. Arguably the least threatening actor right now is Hamas, which has been thoroughly weakened since last year. Israeli forces have killed nearly 18,000 Hamas fighters since last year, according to the most recent estimates, which is about half the manpower the group started with when it invaded Israel in late 2023.
Several Hamas leaders have also been killed or assassinated since last year. The group’s prime leader, Yahya Sinwar, has been in hiding from Israeli forces in tunnels underground Gaza, which Hamas often utilizes for operations. Many sections of those tunnels have been destroyed by Israeli forces, however.
“They’re going to be the resistance force for what they will label the Israeli occupation of Gaza, probably for a long time,” Noronha told the DCNF. “But it won’t be warfare. It’ll be an insurgency.”
Israeli forces have wrapped some of their operations in Gaza, although the prospects of a full ceasefire with Hamas anytime soon remain low. Though questions remain about Gaza — such as who will rebuild or govern over the region when the war ends — the conversation is shifting to Iran, Hezbollah and other Western adversaries, especially in light of recent developments, experts told the DCNF.
“You see the shift right now,” Melamed told the DCNF, pointing to Iran’s strike against Israel on Tuesday and the risk of an even bigger Israel-Iran standoff. “Those ramifications are much bigger than the ramifications of the story of Israel and Hamas. At the end of the day, they’re all part of the same story. But the significance of the ramifications of an Israel-Hezbollah collision, and an Israel-Iran collision are far bigger than they are in comparison to Hamas.”
As for the U.S. role in the current state of affairs, the Biden-Harris administration has been working for months in trying to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and more recently between Israel and Hezbollah; those efforts have largely failed. Biden-Harris officials have often urged Israel to refrain from military operations and instead sought diplomatic off-ramps to resolve the multiple conflicts, though the U.S. continues to provide defensive assets for Israel and has not spoken out against a possible response from Israel against Iran.
The Biden-Harris administration’s foreign policy in dealing with Iran and the Middle East more broadly has been criticized by some as misguided or incompetent. Iran has raked in hundreds of billions of dollars in recent years from oil revenues made under the eased sanctions of the Biden-Harris administration, and additional billions from sanctions waivers. Iran uses its funds to back various terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
On Hezbollah, former Pentagon official Simone Ledeen told the DCNF that the Biden-Harris administration should provide its support behind Israel’s efforts to defeat the terrorist group, but didn’t have high hopes that would be the case.
“What should we do? We should be voicing our full-throated support for Israel and providing them everything that they asked for in order to achieve a total victory in this war, full stop,” Ledeen told the DCNF. “What will we do? Nothing, practically nothing.”
The IDF and White House did not respond to a request for comment.
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