Just six days after the Hamas attack on October 7, some Israeli strategists realized that the attack had provided Israel with a historic opportunity to expel the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as another step toward the grand scheme of taking over the entire land of historic Palestine. In pursuing the stated goal of eradicating Hamas, this could also serve as a pretext to carry out the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza Strip.

However, a place had to be found to resettle the displaced Palestinians. The Egypt’s Sinai was considered as a possibility. The planners thought they could overcome the Egyptian government’s strong opposition to this endeavor by having the World Bank write off a large portion of the country’s international debt. Another option was “calling on West to ‘welcome’ refugees from Gaza” with generous financial support and assistance from the international community, including the State of Israel. According to the Israeli proposal, it should be a ‘moral imperative – and an opportunity’ for the West to show compassion towards the people of Gaza.

Immediately after Israel began its military operations in Gaza, the CIA set up a task force with extensive resources to help the Israelis track down and kill Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. According to the CIA director and other US officials, the killing of Sinwar could have been declared an Israeli victory against Hamas to end the war. However, far from bringing an end to Israel’s war on Gaza, Sinwar’s killing on October 16 led to an intensified Israeli assault on the starved and besieged Palestinians in northern Gaza three days later, killing 73 people. Israel has already begun implementing the first phase of the “Generals Plan,” according to which, in the words of one of its authors, Giora Eiland, “Gaza must be completely destroyed: terrible chaos, severe humanitarian crisis, cries to heaven…”

Israeli forces have also arrested dozens of medical workers at one of the last functioning hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip. With the blockade of food to cause mass starvation and intensified bombardment, Israel has embarked on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip followed by killing or rounding up the male adults labeled as “Hamas terrorists.”

If the plan to transfer Palestinians to the south succeeds, the stage is set for the final ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as was planned after October 7. At the conference “Preparing for the Relocation of the Gaza Strip”, which took place in Israel five days after Sinwar’s murder on the border with the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians were promised “another Nakba, which they will be telling their children and grandchildren about for 50 years” to come.

After Gaza, comes Lebanon

After the destruction of Gaza and the severe weakening of Hamas, it was time to turn to Hezbollah and establish a “buffer zone inside Lebanon,” as some Jewish settlers in the West Bank were “planting the seed of longing for Lebanon” in their children. As always, this was to begin with a targeted assassination to force Hezbollah to retaliate.

On January 2, 2024, Israel assassinated Saleh al-Arouri, the second-in-command of Hamas’s political office in Beirut, a “personal guest” of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah. This was a clear indication of Israel’s intention to extend its war on Gaza to Lebanon. The White House was concerned that the timing was unfavorable for Israel to engage in two simultaneous wars, prompting Biden to send his top advisers to the Middle East to prevent a full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. However, Israel continued its daily attacks on Lebanon, assassinating Hezbollah commanders while facing the occasional launch of rockets by Hezbollah into northern Israel. With the explosion of walkie-talkies that killed dozens of people and wounded and maimed thousands and the subsequent assassination of senior Hezbollah commanders and its leader Hassan Nasrallah, Israel’s war against Lebanon reached a new phase.

Some US officials appear to have concluded that the time was now “right” for Israel to destroy Hezbollah and therefore “quietly backed Israel’s military push against Hezbollah.” With US backing, Israel set out to repeat its Gaza playbook in Lebanon, killing tens of thousands, displacing over a million people, and destroying Lebanon “similar to what we see in Gaza.” as Netanyahu had warned.

With every piece of Arab land Israel occupies follows its “right to protect itself” from those who want their land back. To better protect the Jewish settlers in a newly occupied land, Israel then needs a “buffer zone” to push the original inhabitants further back. As soon as a new buffer zone is secured, the new settlers arrive, whose protection leaves Israel no choice but to establish another buffer zone. And this is to continue until “Greater Israel” is established.

War between Iran and Israel: The Drill

Encouraged by the US’s ironclad support for its military adventures, Israel attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, killing 16 Iranians, including two generals. Israel had already assassinated several commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria and a number of nuclear scientists, in addition to carrying out acts of sabotage in Iran, mostly without taking any responsibility. This time, however, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) could no longer pretend that Israel’s recent open military attack on its consulate was not a clear act of war that required some kind of retaliation.

The purpose of Iran’s retaliation was primarily to save face, in the hope that it would also serve as a kind of deterrent to future attacks while trying not to inflict damage on Israel that could lead to a cycle of retaliatory strikes. Iran managed to do this in response to the assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani by the US in Baghdad in 2020. The IRGC launched a series of missiles at the US Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq after giving the US advance notice of its attack through the Swiss government.

On April 13, Iran, based on its previous model of retaliation, in cooperation with other forces of the “Axis of Resistance” launched a volley of some 300 rockets and explosive drones and missiles at Israeli targets after informing its neighboring countries 72 hours in advance. Most of the missiles were intercepted and destroyed before landing. As intended, they caused only minor damage to an airbase, although seriously injured a seven-year-old girl in an Arab Bedouin town. In response to Iran’s symbolic attack, Israel fired missiles on an S-300 air defense system at a military base in the nearby province of Isfahan. Iran’s former foreign minister in what was later exposed as a lie, attributed that attack to some drones from unspecified sources, not worthy of retaliation.

These military strikes revealed the weaknesses rather than the strengths of both sides. Despite receiving $3.3 billion a year and an additional $17.9 billion military aid from the US since October 7, and being equipped with advanced missile defense systems such as Iron Dome, Arrow and David’s Sling, Israel had to rely on the American, British, French and Jordanian air forces to shoot down most of the Iranian missiles, which were launched with advance notice and took some time to reach Israel.

Iran has inadvertently proved that its occasional rhetoric about destroying Israel, Haifa, and Tel Aviv in retaliation for any Israeli attacks are empty threats in the face of the unlimited and most advanced military arsenal Israel receives from the US and other NATO countries. They could, at best, inflict minor damage on specific targets, not destroy cities. While the Israeli army unhesitatingly uses the most lethal U.S. bombs and missiles to kill defenseless civilians in Palestine and Lebanon and destroy their civilian infrastructure, it is so cautious in its military attacks against a country with a conventional anti-aircraft system. As for Iranians, apart from a small minority, they shed no tears for the IRGC commanders killed by Israeli assassinations, as the entire force is the main organ of the regime’s oppressive machinery responsible for killing thousands of people fighting against its tyrannical rule.

Iran–Israel war: Israel keeps pushing

After the ultra-conservative Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash last May, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who had excluded reformist and moderate candidates in the previous elections through the Guardian Council, allowed a “reformist”, Masoud Pezeshkian, to participate and win in the new presidential elections. Without going into all the reasons for this “change of direction”, it can be said that one of Khamenei’s calculations in allowing a very loyal “reformist” to head the government was to weaken the regime’s anti-Western image and open the doors to negotiations on a new deal on the Iranian nuclear agreement in order to ease economic sanctions after the next US presidential elections. The unpredictable developments in the war in Gaza were also a matter of concern.

Pezeshkian’s main foreign policy message before and after his election, as well as in his speech to the UN General Assembly, was Iran’s desire to normalize its relations with the West and the lifting of economic sanctions. He also brought back the same team of diplomats who had established a good relationship with their Western counterparts when the nuclear deal was signed under the Obama administration. However, Netanyahu’s team was alarmed about the new Iranian president, “who has signaled a willingness to resume nuclear talks with the West.” “If Vice President Kamala Harris is elected, Netanyahu believes the nuclear deal will be back on the table.”

However, Netanyahu may have more in common with Kamala Harris than he thinks, as she has now declared Iran to be “America’s greatest adversary.” Irrespective of that, when  Israeli agents assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas in Tehran, on the day of Pezeshkian’s inauguration on July 31, Netanyahu killed two birds with one stone: Forcing Iran to respond, and with that goes any prospect of Iran’s rapprochement with the West, let alone a new nuclear deal that prevents Iran’s path to the nuclear bomb which, ironically, according to Netanyahu, represents an existential threat to Israel.

The IRI leadership swallowed its pride and did not retaliate to the assassination of Haniyeh, “our dear guest”, as Khamanei called him, while promising to do so. But Israel was to make Iran’s hesitant response untenable and irrelevant to preventing its future attacks. Israel targeted thousands of Hezbollah members, killing Hezbollah’s top commanders and eventually its leader Hassan Nasrallah in late September in Beirut, alongside another senior commander of Iran’s Quds Force. Surprisingly, this time the leaders of the IRI did not even speak of responding to Israel.

The continued humiliation of successful Israeli attacks and Iran’s lack of response seriously undermined the regime’s credibility among its militant base and hardliners in the Iranian parliament and state media. They had become the loudest voice of the regime’s base thanks to earlier interventions by Khamenei himself to purge moderate voices. Some hardliners were openly expressing their shame and disgust at the regime’s inaction on the state television, which they control. Although the Iranian president has little say in military decisions that Khamenei and the IRGC ultimately make, he was being blamed for the regime’s lack of response to Israel because Khamenei could not be directly attacked. When the attacks on the inaction of the IRGC, which has always been the leading voice of confrontation with Israel, became so fierce, the IRGC’s political deputy felt compelled to respond, calling for patience. Israel’s heavy blows on Hezbollah, and especially the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, also further weakened the morale of the entire “Axis of Resistance” and led to the growing perception that the IRI had abandoned them at this crucial injunction.

With Biden’s praise of Israel’s attacks in Lebanon, which seemed to reinforce Netanyahu’s desire to expand the war to Iran, and his video message to Iranians in which he said a free Iran “will come much sooner than people think,” the Iranian regime realized that its reluctance to respond had not only undermined its credibility at home and in the region but had further emboldened Israel to attack Iran rather than prevent it. They also reckoned that fears of a wider conflict in the region ahead of the US presidential election would force the Biden administration to deter Netanyahu from attacking Iran’s oil infrastructure or nuclear facilities.[1]

Consequently, on October 1, Iran attacked certain military targets in Israel with 180 missiles, 34 of which were able to penetrate Israeli defenses reinforced by the US Central Command. This time, they managed to damage three Israeli bases in Tel Aviv.

After it was reported in Israel that the US had offered Israel a “compensation package” if it refrained from attacking certain targets in Iran, the US announced the deployment of a battery of the THAAD defense system with about 100 soldiers to operate it. In response, Netanyahu agreed to attack the Iranian military, but not nuclear or oil facilities.

On October 26, Israel conducted a series of airstrikes targeting military installations in Iran. This included three more Russian-made S-300 and air defense systems protecting energy facilities. If these systems are compromised, Israel could potentially destroy Iran’s oil and gas facilities in the future, significantly disrupting the Iranian economy. Given that Iran is unlikely to retaliate this time, this round of retaliatory actions has come to an end.

Netanyahu kept his word to Biden, as the attacks were limited to military targets. He was not going to recklessly risk losing the support of Democrats by being blamed for the possible loss of Harris in the upcoming presidential election, as Israel depends heavily on both parties.

However, regardless of who wins the election, Israel armed with the THAAD defense system will not be under much political consideration after the election, and especially during the interregnum period, not to turn Iran to another Gaza or Beirut, as its defense minister has warned. Such warnings, however, debunk Israel’s repeated lies spread by the mainstream media that the reason for the destruction of Gaza and the killing of tens of thousands of its civilians is that Hamas is hiding behind civilians. Even if this were the case, international law rejects this argument to justify war crimes.[2] Yet, an advisor to the Netanyahu family outlines a plan:

Just as we waited with [Hezbollah in] Lebanon, and with [Hamas in Gaza] in the south, now I think we will have to wait with Iran…We will get to the same point in the north, we will finish it, and then get to Iran, which is not going anywhere… We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

What this “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” means is impunity to commit war crimes beyond anything that Israel has done in the past. As Israel struggles in its ground operations, first in Gaza and now in South Lebanon, it resorts more to killings of civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure.

The ongoing genocide and its expansion are for the creation of “Greater Isreal” and domination of imperialism in the region through despotic regimes including a weaker, yet more repressive current Iranian regime or replacing it with the far- right Iranian opposition in the West. Stopping Israel’s genocide and preventing the realization of that agenda, should be the immediate task of anybody with a shred of humanity. Since the US is the driving force of the genocide, that responsibility weighs more on the U.S. Left and Americans of conscience than people in other countries. It also requires supporting the struggles of all peoples of the region, from Egypt to Iran, fighting for democratic rights and dismantling the most brutal neoliberal capitalist system across the region.

[1] A former deputy of Iran’s Parliament cites these calculations for Iran’s decision to attack Israel, without mentioning the political considerations to boost the regime’s credibility and the low morale of its supports at home and in the region., Shargh newspaper, 10/8/2024

[2] The “1977 “Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions” refer to two amendments, known as Protocol I and Protocol II, which were added to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and significantly expanded protection for civilian victims in both international armed conflicts (Protocol I) and non-international armed conflicts (civil wars) (Protocol II). The United States and Israel never ratified the Additional Protocols, lest their war crimes violate them.