Go after enablers

Hamas and even Hezbollah do not expect direct and sustained Iranian help during a conflict.

Israel’s victory against the Hamas terrorists is inevitable, which means that the extremist group will soon be disabled, and the hostages, including two Filipinos, will be rescued.

The war to eliminate terrorism, however, will not stop with the extermination of Hamas unless its supporters, mainly key figures in Iran, cooperate in restoring peace in the region.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, for instance, said that Israel’s determined push in the Gaza Strip “may force everyone to take action,” a warning directed at both the Jewish nation and the United States.

The world has a stake in a lasting, if not permanent, solution to the conflict in Israel. Islamist extremists in the Philippines, such as the Abu Sayyaf, derive support from Al Qaeda, which has strong links to Iranian proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Hezbollah, which is among the groups that have vowed to eradicate Israel as a nation.

Hamas originated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt and has noble objectives like giving charity to the poor.

Hamas, however, has been reportedly funded, armed, and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps since the early 1990s. Hamas even opened a base in Tehran in the 1990s.

Among the chief proxy forces of Iran are Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Iran indicated that while it supports the “resistance forces,” they act independently.

Emile Hokayem, an analyst at the global think tank International Institute of Strategic Studies, said Iran acts as an enabler of the terror organizations.

“It empowers, it guides, but it rarely gives orders. Westerners have a problem because of how they conceptualize these chains of command. Iran’s partners are like junior but trusted brothers in arms,” Hokayem said, adding that Hamas and even Hezbollah do not expect direct and sustained Iranian help during a conflict.

“Iran’s partners decide and seek Iranian consent. I suspect they won’t do something Iran opposes, but they have a large margin of maneuver,” he said.

During the 2012 Gaza conflict, Hamas used long-range Iranian Fajr-5 rockets against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

After the 2021 Gaza crisis, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh praised Iran for enabling an intense bombardment, noting that Tehran “did not hold back with money, weapons, and technical support.”

A general from the leading branch of the Iranian armed forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, had “armed them and guided them,” according to the terror leader.

In January 2021, IRGC aerospace force commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh bragged: “All the missiles you might see in Gaza and Lebanon were created with Iran’s support.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also accused Iran of providing 90 percent of the funds to Hamas.

Regarding the 7 October butchering of civilians, the Wall Street Journal said in a report the attacks were planned at meetings in Beirut attended by Hamas and Hezbollah, and these regular meetings saw the presence twice of Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

As a result of the terror alliance, even with the defeat of Hamas, Iran’s support of Hezbollah will mean that the constant threat to Israel will remain.

Hezbollah’s campaign of attacks, bombings, hijackings, and direct military confrontations with Israel in the 1990s and 2000s has served Tehran’s strategic objectives without any direct military confrontations with Israel.

Since 7 October, the rocket fire from southern Lebanon has increased, and the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, reported killing Hezbollah fighters.

The Islamist militants led by Iran and its terror proxies harbor the belief that they have found Israel’s Achilles heel after the 7 October attack.

Former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif said Israel “had in a sense already lost since the myth of the country’s invincibility has been destroyed.”

Although the Arab states pressed for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, Iran had leaned towards a single Palestinian state.

The US and its Arab allies must put pressure on Iran to keep its proxy forces from escalating the situation in Gaza, while Israel leads in the challenging task of restoring normalcy in the Palestinian territory.

Credit belongs to: tribune.net.ph