With the assassinations of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Mohammed Deif in Gaza, along with Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr in Lebanon, coupled with a major strike on the Houthis’ oil refineries in Yemen, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has clearly decided to escalate towards actually winning the war against Iran and its terror proxies.
The timing is important.
First, Israel has largely completed its intensive operations in Gaza, severely diminishing Hamas’s capacities and punishing the Palestinians living there for supporting a terror organization.
Second, there is no strong U.S. president right now. Joe Biden is counting the days until his term ends. Democratic nominee and current Vice President Kamala Harris is in the political battle for her life campaigning.
Former President Donald Trump is on the trail as well.
Netanyahu knows from his recent meetings in Washington that if Harris becomes president, she is likely to be much tougher on Israel than Biden, who continually refers to himself as a Zionist—irrespective of whether his policies have been supportive of Israel or not.
By contrast, Harris would put major pressure on Netanyahu to abort military offensives.
While Trump is liable to give stronger backing, as he did during his previous term, he is not seeking to start or expand wars. On the contrary, he wants to restore order and end conflicts. Thus, there is no guarantee that he would give the green light to Israel to launch a major offensive against Hezbollah or Iran.
That said, if a major conflict does emerge, Trump stands to do whatever he can to support Jerusalem, both militarily and diplomatically, to help end the conflict as quickly as possible in an Israeli victory.
Trump thoroughly understands that Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror. He sees that Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are all Iranian offshoots, that not only threaten Israel but also Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the Emirates.
The latter two nations have already normalized relations with Israel—with Trump as the broker—and others are likely to do so in the future.
On the flip side, Iran has destabilized Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza.
Netanyahu is coming off of a display of force with his speech to Congress, where he called for the formation of a NATO-style defense alliance to counter Iran.
The recent assassinations further strengthen Israel’s image and position in the region.
The Jewish state may now be in the best possible strategic position to seriously degrade Hezbollah’s terror army while neutralizing Tehran’s malign influence across the Middle East.