The recent escalation of fighting between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip must be
viewed in a broader context that centers on Iran’s effort to shield its nuclear
weapons program from a possible Israeli military strike.
It is often agreed that Tehran would retaliate strongly if its
nuclear facilities were attacked. Yet the tacit assumption is that, Iran would not
seek to prevent such an assault in advance. This view is fallacious as it
overlooks the fact that Iran
can act to prevent an attack without itself resorting to military means.
Indeed, the evidence suggests that Iran is energetically pursuing a
strategy to divert and deter the IDF from striking its nuclear
installations. Iran is also
seeking the capability to preempt an IDF attack if these efforts fail. In
short, while the rest of the world dithers, Iran is preempting the preemption.
The
targeting by Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip of the Israeli city of Ashkelon by Grad Katyusha
rockets, which intensified during the recent fighting, indicates the
diversionary aim of this strategy. Indeed, introduction of the Grad into Gaza highlights the length to which Tehran will go to distract the IDF. With a range of more than twenty kilometers Iran was able to treble the number of civilians
in southern Israel
under rocket threat to some 250,000. The Iranians specifically manufactured the
rockets to fit the narrow confines of smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza.
Hamas and Iran
were certainly aware Israel
could not tolerate such a threat for long. Indeed, Iran has sought to assure
that the Gaza Strip’s Islamic radicals amas
will not retreat in its will keep up their attacks of indigenously-
produced Kassam rockets and mortars against southern Israeli population
centers, fully aware of the potential escalation a large-casualty hit can
cause. The Iran
news agency ISNA reported January 19, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called
Hamas political bureau chief, Khalid Mashal to announce that “supporting [the
Palestinian nation] is a religious duty and that Iranians would stand by their
side to the time of victory.”
Tehran
it must be concluded is not averse to the IDF launching a large-scale ground
operation to silence the rockets that will entangle it in the Gaza Strip for a
prolonged period. The idea is to sap Israel
politically and militarily elsewhere rather than allow it to focus its energies
against Iran.
While
the Islamic radicals of the Gaza Strip are used mainly as a diversionary ploy
in Iran’s preventive
strategy, Hizballah on Israel’s
northern border has been assigned the task of deterring the IDF from attacking Iran’s nuclear
sites. For this purpose Hizballah’s strategic rockets—such as the Zelzal-2 and
newly acquired Fatah 110-- are under Iran’s final say so. The haste with
which Tehran acted to rebuild Hizballah’s long-range arsenal after the IAF
destroyed most of it during the 2006 Lebanon war, and its feverish efforts to
extend the range of the organization’s rocket threat to Tel Aviv and beyond
strongly indicates its interest in restoring its deterrence vis-à-vis Israel.
In fact, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported March 5, that Brigadier General Yossi Beiditz, head of the Israel
Defense Forces Military Intelligence research department, told European Union
ambassadors in a briefing that some of the missiles Iran
transferred to Hezbollah have a maximum range of 300 kilometers, "capable
of reaching the Dimona area from Beirut."
Iran, it turns out, was not
satisfied with threatening Israel’s
main cities, but sought to directly link attacks on its nuclear program to
Hizballah’s ability to target the nuclear reactor in Dimona to deter the IDF.
The third leg in Iran’s strategy is the undertaking
of preparations to preempt conventionally an Israeli attack if one was
imminent. For example, in September 2006 during the final stages of military
maneuvers dubbed "The
Blow of Zolfaghar," Gen. Amir Amini, deputy commander of Iran's air force,
told state TV Iran test fired a one-ton flying bomb that “can be used as a
guided long-range air-to-surface missile.” He added the bomb, named
Qassed or Herald,
was “a special weapon developed for penetrating military, economic and
strategic targets located deep underground on the soil of the enemy. “
Moreover, Ha’aretz on February 8, 2008 cited “briefings
recently presented to senior [Israeli] ministers” as saying Tehran helped
Syria, its ally, to upgrade the Iranian-made Zelzal rocket and improve its
accuracy so as to become a credible threat against IDF command and control installations, air
and naval bases and military depots. With a 250 km range and a 600 kg warhead
the weapon is another indication that Iran is developing the capacity to launch a
conventional counterforce strike against Israel’s strategic targets.
The bottom line is that Iran
has been able to seize and maintain the strategic initiative in its conflict
with Israel.
It has put in place a wide-ranging preventive strategy along Israel’s
northern and southern borders designed to impede the IDF from going after its
nuclear program or at least foil an attack. Already this strategy has forced Israel to shift
vast resources to defensive missions. Yet Iran has suffered no penalty and
its strategic moves remain unhindered. Nor of course is its progress toward
nuclear weapons. Worse yet, if Israel
was to reoccupy most of the Gaza Strip even temporarily Iran would be
rewarded and its strategic plan revalidated. Given the recent hostilities, the
Mullahs must be tapping themselves on the shoulder already —deployment of the
Grad in Gaza has dragged Israel willy
nilly into the Strip, precisely as they had hoped.