The War Israel Was Ready to Fight - The Atlantic


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Strategic Miscalculation

Israel's prioritization of countering Iran and Hezbollah over Hamas led to the devastating October 7, 2023, attack. The lack of intelligence and preparedness regarding Hamas' capabilities resulted in significant casualties and a prolonged, brutal conflict in Gaza.

Decisive Victories

In contrast, Israel's actions against Hezbollah and Iran demonstrated effective strategic planning and execution. The neutralization of Hezbollah's leadership and the preemptive strikes against Iran's military leaders and infrastructure showcase Israel's capabilities when adequately prepared.

The October 7th Attack: A Turning Point

The attack highlighted the severe intelligence gaps regarding Hamas and their capabilities, forcing a shift in Israel's strategy. The subsequent successful operations against Hezbollah and Iran demonstrate that when prepared, Israel can effectively neutralize significant threats.

The Iran Strike

Israel's recent attack on Iran, following the playbook used against Hezbollah, indicates a shift in focus to a preemptively planned conflict. While Israel's actions were decisive and effective, the power disparity between Israel and Iran suggests a potentially lengthy and destructive conflict.

Unintended Consequences

While Israel achieved strategic successes after October 7th, the unexpected nature of the Hamas attack and the subsequent war in Gaza underscore the dangers of miscalculating threats and the unpredictable nature of warfare. The war in Gaza has also seen the far-right gain significant power, potentially leading to further instability.

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On October 7, 2023, Israel suffered the most catastrophic assault in its history when Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,000 people and took hundreds of others hostage. Almost a year later, Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the most powerful militia in the world, along with the entire leadership of his organization. Last night, it did the same to the rulers of Iran, eliminating the heads of the regime’s armed forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and regional proxies.

How could the same country that was bested by a ragtag militia in its own backyard turn around and ravage multiple regional powers with devastating decapitation strikes? The dissonance between these events has fomented confusion and conspiracy theories. But Israel’s successes and failures in the past 20 months stem from a single source. A very specific plan to stop Iran led to both the disaster of October 7 and the triumphs since.

For decades, Iran’s theocratic leaders have called for Israel’s destruction, denying the Nazi Holocaust while urging another one. The regime funneled millions of dollars and thousands of missiles to proxies on Israel’s borders and beyond: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen. Iran’s authorities constructed monuments to their predicted victory, displaying missiles emblazoned with the words Death to Israel and even erecting a countdown clock to Israel’s end.

Read: What Trump knew about the attack against Iran

Israel, a nation born out of the ashes of an attempted Jewish genocide, took these threats seriously. Just as Iran labeled America “the Great Satan” and Israel “the Little Satan,” Israel’s security establishment conceived of its adversaries in tiers: Iran was the biggest threat, its fearsome proxy Hezbollah ranked next, and the smaller Hamas posed the least danger. The Israelis prioritized their resources accordingly. Their best people—and best exploding beepers—were put to work countering Iran and Hezbollah, which had formidable arsenals of advanced weapons. Hamas, by contrast, was treated as an afterthought, contained behind a blockade of Gaza that was maintained less by manpower than by advanced security technology.

October 7 exposed this folly, as Hamas and its allies disabled that technology and stormed across the border on land, meeting little resistance as they rampaged through civilian communities. This was a war Israel did not expect and was not prepared to fight. That fact was evident not only in the casualties and hostage-taking during the massacre, but in the grinding, brutal, and haphazard war in Gaza that has followed. Simply put, Israel was flying without radar. It did not know Hamas’s capabilities, had not infiltrated its leadership, did not have widespread intelligence sources on the ground, and was largely ignorant of the group’s sprawling underground infrastructure in Gaza. This operational ignorance has resulted in a horrific meat grinder of a war with thousands of civilian casualties and still no end in sight. It’s also why Israel’s military took more than a year after October 7 to find and kill the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

By the time that happened, Israel had already taken out Hezbollah’s Nasrallah, a far more protected and high-value target, after neutralizing many of his elite forces via exploding beepers and walkie-talkies and blowing up many of the group’s missiles while they were still in storage. The very resources that had not been brought to bear on Hamas, thus enabling the disaster of October 7, achieved the neutralization of Hezbollah within weeks.

Hezbollah had joined in the attacks on Israel after the assault on October 7, apparently believing that Israel was too hobbled to respond beyond token tit-for-tat strikes. Likewise, the group’s patrons in Iran may have misread the events of October 7 as evidence of fundamental Israeli weakness, rather than a terrible but isolated error. For months, Tehran continued to supply its proxies in Lebanon and Yemen with advanced missiles to fire at Israel, seemingly under the belief that it would be immune from similar incoming in response. That mistake, like Israel’s on October 7, proved costly.

Last night, Israel began running the same playbook it used on Hezbollah against Iran. Key military leaders were reportedly assassinated, drone factories were targeted, and missile depots and launchers were eliminated before they could be used. In retrospect, October 7 wasn’t a preview of an Israel-Iran war—the mysterious strike last July that killed the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an Iranian Revolutionary Guard guesthouse in Tehran was. That audacious assassination revealed that Israel had clandestine capabilities within Iran’s most fortified strongholds of a sort it never had in Gaza. After last night’s initial assault, Israel’s Mossad released rare footage of its agents operating inside Iran.

Read: In the game of Spy vs. Spy, Israel keeps getting the better of Iran

When Israel went after Hezbollah in Lebanon last September, American and Israeli officials characterized the move as “de-escalation through escalation.” That line was mocked by many, but it is largely what happened, because Israel was prepared for the conflict—unlike in Gaza—and achieved a decisive victory. Within months, Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a cease-fire, and Hezbollah was effectively disabled. Israel did the heavy lifting, and the U.S. acted as the closer with its diplomacy.

By contrast, Israel’s unplanned war in Gaza has seen no such resolution and steadily devolved into a messianic power grab by Israel’s far right. No Israeli faction has religious or territorial designs on Tehran, which makes this outcome less likely in Iran. Nonetheless, Iran is a far more powerful adversary than any Israel has yet faced, making a protracted and profoundly destructive conflict likely. This is the war Israel had prepared to wage, but in war, preparation is no insulation from devastation.

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