v Israel has been on alert during the first two weeks of August. Iran’s threats to attack with a multi-front assault, using Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed proxies, has kept the Middle East on its toes.
Each day has brought new reports that Iran could attack in the next 48 hours. The hours have stretched by and become days and weeks.
Iran has claimed it has a right to retaliate because it accuses Israel of killing Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. The Hamas leader was in the city to attend the inauguration of the country’s new president in late July.
At the same time, Hezbollah has also claimed it has a right to retaliate because Israel killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut in late July. Iran’s threats have led to commercial flights being cancelled to Tel Aviv and have led to chaos in the region. Officials from the US, UK and other nations have flown to Israel. Israel has held an air force exercise designed to send a message to Iran.
The alert in Israel and the region is a result of Iran’s threats. This is not the first time Iran has threatened Israel or the US and other countries. Iran’s regime thrives on threats. It has also followed through those threats with numerous attacks. It attacked Saudi Arabia with drones and cruise missiles in 2019. It attacked Israel in April using more than 300 missiles and drones. Iran believes it has impunity. Now Iran is trying to make these kinds of threats the norm and force Israel, the US, UK and other countries to be on alert every time Tehran desires to gain attention. This must not be allowed to happen. Iran must be prevented from expanding the tools that it already uses to threaten the region and create this kind of chaos every few months.
Both Hezbollah and Iran have tried to carve out this new normal of threatening Israel with escalation, when in fact it is Iran and Hezbollah that started this war. Iran backs Hamas and supported the October 7 attack. Haniyeh celebrated that attack publicly in Doha where he was living with Hamas leaders. He prayed and pointed to a television screen on that dark day in a video then posted online, in which he and other Hamas men smiled as they watched the massacre unfolding in Israel.
Hezbollah began to attack Israel on October 8, the day after the Hamas attack. It has since carried out more than 7,500 rocket attacks on Israel and launched more than 200 drone attacks.
The drone attacks have become increasingly deadly. IDF chief warrant officer Mahmood Amaria was killed on August 19 in a Hezbollah drone attack on Ya’ara in northern Israel. He is the latest casualty of Hezbollah’s endless war on Israel.
However, it’s worth remembering that Hezbollah also massacred 12 children in an attack on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights in July. It was that attack that precipitated Israel’s retaliation, which killed Shukr in Beirut.
Israel has been living under a cloud after October 7. The size of the Hamas attack and its unprecedented death toll has led to a recalibration in the region. Hezbollah, which was wary of attacking Israel, used October 7 as an excuse to open the floodgates of rocket attacks. Iran has also prodded the Houthis in Yemen to attack ships. Iran and its proxies’ goal is to test the resolve of Israel and its allies. Israel faces so many threats on so many fronts today that it has not been able to deter them all. Iran senses this and this is why it has tried to make these kinds of attacks, modelled on the April attack using drones and missiles, the new norm.
For Israel this new situation is not acceptable. Israel has known since the 1950s that it must deter enemies and not be drawn into long wars of attrition. Israel has a hi-tech economy and is closely linked to the West. While Iran and its proxies don’t mind being bankrupt and destroying countries such as Lebanon or Yemen, Israel does not want its economy to suffer.
Israel has more to lose in these confrontations. Iran knows this. It knows that it can threaten and then wait. This waiting game is not in Israel’s interest, or in the interest of Israel’s allies.
The first two weeks of August illustrate the challenge Israel faces. As the one-year anniversary of October 7 approaches, it is important to understand that Israel must not be drawn into a war of attrition in the region where Iran can dictate the tempo. Iran has been dictating the tempo for much of 2024.
The death of Haniyeh was a setback for the Iranian axis. However, Haniyeh reaped what he sowed and Iran knows this. Iran used his death as an excuse to threaten Israel and then it climbed down from the threats to try to keep the region on edge. It’s time for the Middle East and Israel to stop living by Iran’s clockwork.
Seth J. Frantzman is the senior Middle East analyst for the Jerusalem Post, an adjunct Fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza (2024)
