ANALYSIS: The state of affairs in Israel’s multi-front war
With exaggerated focus on Gaza, most people have forgotten that it’s one small part of a much bigger war.
Despite an abundance of media reporting on the war in Israel, many people outside the country appear to be no longer able to get a proper idea of the situation in the multi-front conflict in which the Jewish state is embroiled.
This is mainly due to the obsession that the media, but also many foreign politicians, have with the front in Gaza. However, even when it comes to Gaza, reporting focuses on the humanitarian side of the conflict and not on the military aspects.
In this analysis, I will attempt to provide a more complete picture of the current situation in the multi-front war, which began with the horrific pogrom carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
First of all, we must realize that this war is in fact a major conflict between Israel and Iran, which is the main sponsor of terrorist movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah and has proxies in many Middle Eastern countries.
The war against Israel is led by the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its commander Ishmail Qaani, the successor to Qassem Soleimani, who the CIA liquidated on January 3, 2020, during a visit to Baghdad.
At the time, Soleimani had drawn up a phased plan for the destruction of Israel. This plan officially had three phases, but experts on Iran say there is a fourth phase in which Iran moves toward a nuclear weapon.
Shortly after the outbreak of war in October 2023, I wrote an analysis about this four-phase plan that I recommend you to read again, because we see that Iran is continuing to act according to the plan and has now come close to a nuclear weapon, as the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna has again indicated.
The core of Soleimani’s plan was to create “a ring of fire” around Israel, in other words establishing multiple fronts at once that would overwhelm the IDF.
Hamas effectively scuttled the Quds Force’s strategic plan by launching an attack on Israel that was actually reserved for Hezbollah in Lebanon, without consulting Tehran.
This was the work of the stubborn and extremely brutal leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahiya Sinwar, and his sidekick Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas commander in Lebanon who was liquidated by the Israeli Air Force in Beirut on January 2.
According to Soleimani’s plan, Hezbollah was to launch a surprise attack and occupy northern Israel under an unprecedented hail of rockets (more than 1,500 per day).
Looking back at what happened in October last year, one can say that it was a blessing in disguise that Sinwar took this idiosyncratic decision.
After all, the IDF was surprised, but was able to keep things more or less under control because Hamas is of a different caliber than Hezbollah. Moreover, it was quite easy to interrupt the flow of weapons that Iran sent to the jihadist terrorist movement because Gaza is quite isolated, and Israel has now surrounded the enclave from all sides.
Phase three – the heartland
When we now look at the state of affairs on various fronts, we see that Iran has entered the third phase of Soleimani’s plan.
This phase is characterized by attacks from five to six fronts, namely Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Judea and Samaria, the Biblical heartland of Israel, which is regarded as a critical front by the Iranians because of its location and the complexity of defending it.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, personally ordered the terrorist movements in Judea and Samaria to be better trained and armed over the past two years. Iran has thus established a smuggling line through Syria and Jordan to send better weapons to terrorist movements in the region.
Then there is the northern front with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Until now, the battle there has been characterized by mutual attacks, with Hezbollah carrying out daily attacks with rockets and unmanned kamikaze aircraft, and the Israeli army carrying out air strikes and artillery bombardments.
However, there are now strong indications that the nature of the battle there will soon change as the IDF is currently mobilizing reinforcements and has completed exercises aimed at a ground war against Hezbollah, while the Lebanese Iranian proxy has significantly escalated its attacks.
A delegation from the Ministry of Defense visited Washington last week to discuss the supply of more ammunition and weapons with an eye on the expansion of the war against Hezbollah.
When the ground offensive against Hezbollah begins, Iran will almost certainly open a new front on the Golan Heights through the so-called Golan Liberation Brigade, a force of almost 100,000 fighters that, in addition to members of the Quds Force, consists of Shia militias that were transferred to Syria by Soleimani from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and local Syrian militias.
In preparation for this possible new front, the IDF is now clearing minefields on the Golan Heights that have been there since the 1967 Six-Day War.
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