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New War Goals for Israel? No.
A general view of Tehran after several explosions were heard, in Tehran, Iran, October 26, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The successful, but limited, Israeli strike on Iranian targets has prompted some analysts to ask if Israel’s war aims have changed — or suggest that the aims should change.
Some also say that Israel didn’t strike hard enough, or strike the right targets — denouncing the choice not to hit nuclear facilities, military sites and leaders, and economic infrastructure.
A: No, they didn’t.
B: No, they shouldn’t.
C: Hard enough for what?
D: Those are targets the US did not want hit, but which Israel also had reason not to hit.
Israel’s entry into Gaza on October 27, 2023, had three immediate aims: to uproot the military and governing power of Hamas; to secure the Gaza border and the people of Israel; and to rescue the 240 hostages taken by Hamas. Those goals have not changed, although American disapproval slowed the process considerably.
What did change is the military entry of Hezbollah and Iran directly into the war. Hezbollah began shelling Israel on October 8, 2023 — well before Israel crossed the border into Gaza — and Iran has struck Israel twice with missiles.
Israel’s war aims expanded to securing the northern border and allowing 60,000+ Israelis to return to their homes in the north — and preventing Iran from getting in the way.
Israel had ignored the long-range plans of Hamas and Hezbollah and ignored their tunnel-digging and arsenal-building. A deconfliction arrangement between Israel and Russia allowed Israel to reach Syria and eliminate various weapons manufacturing capabilities and the transport of certain weapons from Iran through Damascus to Lebanon, but a low-level war had been ongoing for years.
It was an ugly and volatile mess, but Israel appears to have done its best not to expand its areas of operation. Eventually, however, it was impossible to ignore Hezbollah in the north, thus: pagers attacks, surgical strikes on Hezbollah arsenals, leaders and headquarters; and strikes on Hezbollah banks and financial bunkers.
On the Iran front, Israel saw the rise of Iranian military manufacturing — particularly after the Biden-Harris administration lifted oil sale sanctions on Tehran, increasing the mullah government’s available cash by billions of dollars. Aside from drones and ballistic missiles, some of which have gone to Russia for use in Ukraine, the nuclear program expanded as well.
In June, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors voted overwhelmingly to demand that Iran take action to resolve concerns about its nuclear work. The US was hesitant, noting that pressure could make Iran escalate its nuclear activity. But later that month, Britain, France, and Germany wrote to the wrote to the UN Security Council, detailing Iran’s violations of the 2015 JCPOA.
Iran still had a chance to stay out. It didn’t.
Keeping with its own interests and an odd sense of duty to its American patron, the Israeli air force struck military targets only:
- Air Defense Systems. This will allow the Israeli Air Force to return later, if necessary. It also probably gives the Russians hives, as the destroyed systems were Russian.
- Ballistic Missile production facilities and facilities for producing solid rocket fuel. This will reduce Iran’s ability to strike and make it less necessary for Israel to rely on the US for ballistic missile defenses. Iran will have trouble restoring production.
- Systems protecting sites including oil refineries, gas fields, and a major port — while not attacking those sites themselves. This is a warning to the mullah regime that its assets remain vulnerable to future attacks.
- Taleghan 2 in Parchin, previously used for nuclear testing activities. Although Taleghan 2 was cited in much of the media as relating to Iran’s “defunct” nuclear weapons development program, at least one analyst said that “even if no equipment remained inside,” the building would have provided “intrinsic value” for future nuclear weapons-related activities.
Iran reported four military casualties and no civilian casualties. All Israeli planes and crews returned safely.
The result is that Israel improved its position regarding Iran without assuming responsibility of overthrowing the regime or eliminating its nuclear program. These things should be done, of course, but not by Israel and not while Israel is fighting on other, close-in fronts. The US and other allies should be stepping up here, but the US has already failed to stop the Iranian-backed Houthis in the Red Sea and appears uninterested in the rest.
Israel’s primary objectives remain security of its borders and its citizenry; elimination of the arsenals of Hamas and Hezbollah — thus severely constraining (or eliminating) their power to terrorize the local population and to attack Israel; and the release of the hostages, living and dead, held in Gaza in violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
For the longer term, note Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu:
I have not given up on the Iran nuclear program; it is at the forefront of our minds. We continue to work to remove the Iranian threat. Today, Israel is seen as the most powerful country in the region.
What fateful days of a historical turn.
Iran, as well as the Israeli people, should take that seriously.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly magazine.
The post New War Goals for Israel? No. first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iris Weinstein, daughter of the only Canadian taken hostage by Hamas, pleads for the release of her parents’ bodies from Gaza
One year ago, on Oct. 8, when Iris Weinstein woke up at her home in Singapore she went into “operation mode” to find out the status and whereabouts of her […]
The post Iris Weinstein, daughter of the only Canadian taken hostage by Hamas, pleads for the release of her parents’ bodies from Gaza appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Germany Orders Shutdown of Iranian Consulates Over Execution: ‘Diplomatic Relations at More Than a Low Point’
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock speaks during a session of the lower house of parliament Bundestag, in Berlin, Germany, Oct. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
Germany will close all three Iranian consulates on its soil in response to Iran’s execution of a German-Iranian dual national, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced on Thursday.
“We have repeatedly and unequivocally made it clear to Tehran that the execution of a German citizen will have serious consequences,” Baerbock said in a televised speech announcing the closures.
The consulates are located in Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich. According to German media, the consulate employees will lose their rights to live in Germany and must leave the country, unless they have German citizenship.
“The fact that this assassination took place in the light of the latest developments in the Middle East shows that [Iran’s] dictatorial, unjust regime … does not act according to normal diplomatic logic,” Baerbock said. “It is not without reason that our diplomatic relations are already at an all-time low.”
Baerbock’s comments came after the Iranian judiciary announced the execution of German–Iranian national Jamshid Sharmahd, 69, on Monday.
Sharmahd, a German citizen of Iranian descent who lived in the United States, was sentenced to death last year on charges of “corruption on earth,” a capital offense under Iran’s Islamic laws. The Iranian regime had accused and convicted him of planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people.
Sharmahd’s family has long maintained that he was innocent. The German government and human rights activists similarly rejected the accusations against him, calling the trial a sham.
However, Iran defended the execution.
“No terrorist enjoys impunity in Iran. Even if supported by Germany,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X/Twitter on Tuesday. “A German passport does not provide impunity to anyone, let alone a terrorist criminal. Enough with the gaslighting, [Annalena Baerbock].”
Sharmahd had reportedly worked for an Iranian opposition group’s website that strongly criticized Iran’s Islamist regime. Iranian security forces seized the dual national in 2020, when he was traveling through the United Arab Emirates.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lambasted the execution as a “scandal that I condemn in the strongest possible terms.”
Germany recalled its ambassador to Iran for consultations over the execution and summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires to voice Berlin’s protest, according to the German foreign office.
On Thursday, Baerbock said Germany would seek European Union-wide sanctions against those involved in Sharmahd’s execution and called on the EU to add Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to its list of terrorist groups.
The top German diplomat also accused Iran of trying to use Germany’s support for Israel in the ongoing Middle East conflict to justify Sharmahd’s killing. Araghchi referenced German support for Israel in his tweet earlier this week in an apparent attempt to say Berlin was being hypocritical on the issue of human rights.
During her speech, Baerbock noted that more Germans are currently detained and slammed Iran for using hostages for political gain.
“Further Germans are also being unfairly held. We are also deeply committed to them and continue to work tirelessly for their release,” she said.
The post Germany Orders Shutdown of Iranian Consulates Over Execution: ‘Diplomatic Relations at More Than a Low Point’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hezbollah Rockets Kill Seven in Northern Israel
Israeli soldiers walk near the scene where a drone from Lebanese Hezbollah attacked Israel, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in Binyamina Israel, Oct. 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Itay Cohen
JNS.org — Seven people were killed and one person was seriously wounded on Thursday in two separate Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel’s north.
The first attack triggered sirens at 11:37 am, and two projectiles from Lebanon had landed in an open area outside the largely evacuated Upper Galilee city of Metula, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The fatalities were an Israeli farmer and four foreign workers, and the seriously wounded individual was another foreign worker, Metula council head David Azoulai told Israel’s Kan News public channel.
Later on Thursday, another attack from Lebanon killed two people, while lightly wounding another, in a field off Route 79 near the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Ata, Magen David Adom first responders reported.
“Paramedics provided medical treatment and CPR, following which a 30-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman were pronounced dead, and a 71-year-old man was evacuated to Rambam Hospital due to minor shrapnel wounds,” the emergency service said in a statement.
Three Israelis were wounded in Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel on Wednesday, according to medics.
A 70-year-old man was lightly wounded when rocket shrapnel hit his car in the Upper Galilee, the Magen David Adom emergency service said. The victim suffered a minor head wound and was evacuated to Ziv Hospital in Safed.
Earlier, two farmers were wounded, including one seriously, when a Hezbollah rocket struck an agricultural field near the evacuated Israeli border town of Metula. The other victim was lightly wounded.
On Wednesday morning, the Iranian-backed terror army launched a missile that triggered sirens as far south as Netanya. According to the Israel Defense Forces, the missile broke up in the air.
The IDF also reported that three drones had crossed from Lebanon into the Western Galilee, all of which were intercepted. No injuries were reported in the incidents.
Additionally, a drone strike early Wednesday in Nahariya caused minor damage to an aerospace component facility. The IDF was investigating why alarms weren’t triggered by the attack.
Hezbollah regional commander killed in IAF strike
An Israeli strike in Lebanon this week killed a Hezbollah regional anti-tank missile commander, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed on Thursday.
Muhammad Khalil Alian was eliminated in an attack in the Southern Lebanese village of Burj Qallawiyah, according to the IDF.
He led the Iranian proxy’s anti-tank missile array in the Hajir area as part of the terrorist group’s “Nasser” unit, which is responsible for attacks on northern Israel’s Ramim Ridge region.
According to the Alma Research and Education Center, Nasser is one of three geographic units operating under Hezbollah’s southern front command.
“The Nasser unit is responsible for the area between the border with Israel and the Litani River … together with the Aziz unit,” according to Alma.
“Since Oct. 8, 2023, the Nasser unit has been a very central element in the fighting against Israel. Its operatives (the vast majority of whom live in southern Lebanon) are responsible for many of the rocket, mortar, UAV, and anti-tank missile launches into northern Israel,” the Alma article continued.
On Wednesday, the Israeli Air Force eliminated a terrorist cell in Hezbollah’s aerial unit that had launched a rocket at an IAF aircraft in the area of Mazraat El Yahoudiyeh, north of Tyre.
Over the past 24 hours, 150 Hezbollah and Hamas targets were hit in Lebanon and Gaza, respectively, according to the IDF.
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