However, the October 7 military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and Iran’s recent missile and drone attacks against Israel have seriously challenged the regime’s aura of invincibility.
Over 1,100 people were killed when Hamas conducted Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in southern Israel and more than 250 others were taken captive. Dozens of the captives still remain in Gaza.
Soon after Hamas launched the surprise attack, Western media acknowledged that the operation exposed the Israeli military’s fiasco.
Le Monde wrote at that time that the Israeli army's defenses “collapsed like a house of cards” in the face of the Hamas attack.
Following the Hamas operation, the Israeli army declared war on Gaza with the aim of uprooting Hamas and returning captives.
Nearly 200 days into the war, the regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to achieve “total victory” over Hamas and “destroy” it.
Netanyahu has tried to paper over the regime’s vulnerability and weakness in the face of the Palestinian resistance by vowing to continue the war until eliminating Hamas.
Endless Hamas
Since October 7, Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi has generally spoken of “dismantling” rather than eliminating or eradicating Hamas, a term implicitly acknowledging that even a protracted war will not be able to destroy the resistance group.
In mid-February, assessments by Israel’s military intelligence showed that even if the regime dismantles Hamas’s organized military capabilities, it will continue to operate in Gaza.
The assessments also indicated that “authentic support remains” for Hamas among Gazans.
In March, the U.S intelligence community said in its annual report that Israel will likely face Hamas resistance "for years to come”.
Western officials have also acknowledged that Israel won’t be able to overcome the Palestinian resistance.
The EU foreign policy chief said on February 18 that Israel needs a political, not a military, solution to the conflict with Palestinians.
Speaking during a panel discussion on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany at that time, Josep Borrell warned that Israel cannot defeat Hamas through military means.
Israel has been starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and killed more than 34,000 people in the besieged territory but it has failed to achieve its military goals.
In the wake of the Gaza onslaught, Israel has carried out frequent attacks in Syria. The regime’s air raids have killed Iranian military advisors who had been deployed to Syria at the invitation of the Arab country to help it fight terror groups such as Daesh.
Several Iranian military advisors including a top commander were assassinated after an Israeli strike demolished Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1st.
Two weeks later, Iran launched a salvo of more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation for the Israeli bombing. The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) dubbed the operation “True Promise”.
The Iranian large salvo transformed geopolitics in West Asia.
Israeli miscalculations
Following Iran’s reprisal strike, multiple American officials asserted that the Israelis had badly miscalculated, thinking that Tehran would not react strongly, that’s according to The New York Times.
“After it became clear that Iran would retaliate, U.S. and Israeli officials initially thought the scale of the response would be fairly limited, before scrambling to revise their assessment again and again,” the American newspaper reported.
Former Israeli air defense commander Brigadier General Zvika Haimovich also acknowledged that Iran is a “superpower in tactical ballistic missiles and UAVs.”
His comments are reminiscent of a similar admission made by former U.S. Central Command chief Kenneth McKenzie.
In an April 2021 testimony before the
Senate Armed Services Committee, McKenzie said the U.S. is “operating
without complete air superiority” for the first time since the Korean
War because of Iran’s drone capabilities.
Israel vulnerability
Former veteran American diplomat Chas Freeman, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1989–92), said Iran carefully hit Israeli military targets during its drone and missile attacks.
“It appears that in a major base in the south, where they struck, they were able to achieve a level of accuracy that was quite extraordinary,” he said.
Freeman, now a senior fellow at Brown
University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs,
added that Israelis lie about the damage caused by the Iranian attacks.
“What they showed was they had the capacity to clog and render Israeli
defenses overburden. They now know where all the radars and missile
sites are,” he added.
The retired U.S. diplomat noted that Iran’s drone and missile attacks have exposed Israel’s vulnerability.
“Iran succeeded in panicking the Israeli population….it can overwhelm Israel’s defenses if it chooses to do so and Israel cannot defend itself without the active participation of the United States, the UK, France and in this case Jordan,” he said.
Freeman added, “From a strategic point of view, from a soft power point of view, it was a huge success; Iran accomplished its objectives and it left Israel with an intolerable dilemma. Israel cannot continue to behave as though it can act with impunity.”
If Israel now assassinates an Iranian, Tehran will retaliate in kind, Freeman said.
He pointed out that Iran has achieved the neutralization of the American forces in the Persian Gulf that it long sought in the wake of the attacks on Israel.
Operation True Promise and Operation Al-Aqsa Flood have shaken the Israel regime to the core.
The operations made it clear that the rules of engagement in West Asia have completely changed.
Operation True Promise proved that Israel which has been perceived as an absolute military and intelligence power, is nothing more than a paper tiger.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood also shattered the image of Israel’s invincibility and highlighted the fact that the era of hit-and-run has ended.By Shahrokh Saei
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