Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
| Photo Credit: AP

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Wednesday (October 2, 2024) called for a decisive strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities after the Islamic republic fired a barrage of missiles at Israel.

“We must act now to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, its central energy facilities, and to fatally cripple this terrorist regime,” Mr. Bennett wrote on X just hours after the attack on Israel on Tuesday.

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“We have the justification. We have the tools. Now that Hezbollah and Hamas are paralysed, Iran stands exposed,” wrote Mr. Bennett.

In a separate statement, Israel’s main opposition leader Yair Lapid said Iran should pay a “significant and heavy price” for the attack.

“Tehran knows that Israel is coming. The response needs to be tough and it should send an unequivocal message to the terror axis in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza and in Iran itself,” said Mr. Lapid, who also briefly served as premier in 2022.

Iran has been accused of seeking to develop atomic weapons, though the Islamic republic insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.

Israel is widely known to have nuclear weapons but has never admitted so.

Tuesday’s attack was Iran’s second direct strike on Israel after a missile and drone attack in April in response to a deadly Israeli air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

While Iran-backed groups across the region had already been drawn into the Gaza war, sparked by Palestinian group Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Tehran has largely refrained from direct attacks on its regional arch-enemy.

Mr. Bennett was appointed prime minister after elections in 2021 and oversaw a broad political coalition but he only manged to stay in office for a year.

Despite announcing his retirement in June 2022, there have been indications Mr. Bennett might be seeking a return to politics.

In July, Gideon Saar — a justice minister under Bennett who this week joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition — said he held discussions with Bennett about his desire to return to politics.

A poll taken by Israeli newspaper Maariv this week showed that if Mr. Bennett did decide to return, a party under his leadership would garner almost as many votes as Mr. Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party.

Palestinian group Hamas’ top leader Ismail Haniyeh and Palestinian Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhala meet with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran July 30, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

On July 20, Israel carried out a massive air strike on Hodeidah, the Red Sea port city in Yemen, that is controlled by the Houthi militia, in response to a drone attack by the Houthis that had hit Tel Aviv. The attack reportedly caused losses worth millions, besides killing at least three and wounding over 80 others. On July 30, Israel carried out an air strike in Lebanon’s capital Beirut, targeting Fuad Shukr aka al-Hajj Mohsen, a top commander of Hezbollah, three days after a rocket attack killed 12 young people at a football field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israel had blamed Hezbollah for the attack and vowed retaliation. On the same day, Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of Hamas, was killed at his residence in Tehran. Haniyeh, who was living in exile in Qatar, travelled to Iran to attend the inauguration of Masoud Pezeshkian, the Islamic Republic’s new President. In Majlis, Iran’s parliament, Haniyeh hugged Mr. Pezeshkian, while lawmakers chanted “Death to Israel”. Before dawn, Haniyeh was killed. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite paramilitary force of Iran, and Hamas have blamed Israel for the killing of Haniye.

The common factor of all three groups — Yemen’s Houthis, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Palestine’s Hamas — is that all of them are backed by Iran, Israel’s chief rival in West Asia. By targeting all three in a matter of days, Israel has dealt a blow to Iran’s influence and taken the region to the brink of an all-out war. Of these three strikes, the killing of Haniyeh, the most high-profile leader of Hamas outside Gaza, would be particularly seen as a victory by the Israelis. After the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas in Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed, the Israelis vowed that they would target all Hamas leaders who they hold responsible for the carnage. Haniyeh was safe while he was in Qatar, an American ally that was trying to mediate a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. But when he went to Iran, his biggest backer, the Israelis went after him.

Death by Israel 

Haniyeh was arguably the most powerful leader of Hamas after Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. The wheelchair-bound, half-blind Yassin, the spiritual and organisational founder of Hamas, was killed by an Israeli missile in March 2004. Rantisi, who was appointed his successor, was also killed by the Israelis within a month. Haniyeh, who was the head of the office of Sheikh Yassin, emerged to occupy the vacuum left by the departure of two of the movement’s tallest leaders. He played a key role in mainstreaming Hamas, which was till then seen as a radical resistance militia, among the Palestinians. When Israel was forced to withdraw from Gaza in 2005, Hamas took credit for it. In 2006, Haniyeh led the group to victory in parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza, ending the monopoly of Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). As the leader of the Hamas parliamentary party, Haniyeh was invited to form the government in the Palestinian Authorities.

But he faced two challenges. One, the PA’s international backers, mainly in the West, were not ready to accept a government run by Hamas, which was designated as a terrorist group by Israel and some Western countries. Two, Mr. Abbas and Fatah were unhappy with a Hamas Prime Minister. The PA faced a major economic crisis as financial assistance from the West dried up. Tensions broke out between Fatah and Hamas. Mr. Abbas then dissolved the elected Hamas government, a move welcomed by Israel and the West; but rejected by Hamas and Haniyeh. This led to a civil war between the two Palestinian factions, with Fatah expelling Hamas from the West Bank and Hamas capturing Gaza and expelling Fatah from the enclave.

Haniyeh would lead the Hamas government in Gaza before stepping aside in 2017 and elevating Yahya Sinwar, who, according to the Israelis, was the mastermind of the October 7 attack. In 2017, Haniyeh relocated to Doha, while Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the military chief of Hamas, ran Gaza from within the enclave. Ever since, Haniyeh had been the face of Hamas’s regional and international presence. He played a critical role in Hamas’s consensus-driven decision-making model. By killing him, Israel has dealt a blow to both the militant group and the Gaza ceasefire talks. Will Hamas now accept a hostage deal with Israel which killed its top leader?

And by killing Haniyeh in Iran, where he was a guest, Israel has both embarrassed Iran and exposed its intelligence and security vulnerabilities.

Iran’s view  

In April, when Israel bombed the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, Tehran launched a massive missile and drone attack towards Israel. A U.S.-led coalition shot down most of Iran’s over 300 projectiles on April 14. Israel’s response to Iran’s attack was meek. Iran was sending a clear message to the Israelis — Israeli attacks on Iranian officers would not go unpunished. Ever since, Israel has not targeted Iranian officers or its missions. But Israel is slowly changing the rules again. By carrying out back-to-back attacks against three Iran-aligned militias, Israel is ramping up pressure on the Islamic Republic. And the killing of Haniyeh showed Israel’s capabilities to strike even inside Iran’s capital. Iran retaliated in April when its embassy complex in Syria was attacked, setting new rules of engagement. Can Tehran afford not to retaliate this time, after Israel killed an ally in Iranian soil?  Highly unlikely. 

The fact that the IRGC blamed Israel for the attack itself is indicative that Iran would retaliate. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also vowed revenge. Tensions on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon are already high with Hezbollah’s rocket attacks. What is to be seen is what Iran and Hezbollah are going to do and what Israel would do in response. West Asia is dangerously close to an all-out war.

Smoke billows after a hit from a rocket fired from southern Lebanon over the Upper Galilee region in northern Israel on July 4, 2024. Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it launched more than 200 rockets and explosive drones at Israeli military positions on July 4 as tensions have soared amid the almost nine-months-old war raging in Gaza.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The Lebanese Hezbollah group said it launched over 200 rockets on July 4 at several military bases in Israel in retaliation for a strike that killed one of its senior commanders.

The attack by the Iran-backed militant group was one of the largest in the monthslong conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border, with tensions escalating in recent weeks.

The Israeli military said “numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets” had entered its territory from Lebanon, many of which it said were intercepted. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

It said about 200 “projectiles” were launched toward the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and over 20 drones into Israeli territory, but that it had intercepted some of them.

Israel after Hezbollah’s attack struck various towns in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah’s “military structures” in the southern border towns of Ramyeh and Houla. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported an Israeli drone strike of Houla killed at least one person. Israeli jets also broke the sound barrier over the Lebanese capital and other areas in the country.

Israel on July 3 acknowledged that it had killed Mohammad Naameh Nasser, who headed one of Hezbollah’s three regional divisions in southern Lebanon, a day earlier.

Hours after the killing, Hezbollah launched scores of Katyusha rockets and Falaq rockets with heavy warheads into northern Israel and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. It launched more rockets on July 4 and said it had also sent exploding drones into several bases.

Nasser was of great importance to Hezbollah, which said he took part in battles in conflicts in Syria and Iraq from 2011 until 2016 and fought in the group’s last war with Israel in 2006. Two other senior Hezbollah commanders have also been killed.

The U.S. and France are continuing to scramble to prevent the skirmishes from spiraling into an all-out war, which they fear could spillover across the region. Washington in its shuttle diplomatic efforts initially hoped for calm along the Lebanon-Israel border in a deal that is not linked to the war in Gaza. However, since the U.S. has called for Hamas to agree to a cease-fire proposal presented by President Joe Biden, it has said that an end to the war in Gaza would lead to calm in Lebanon and northern Israel as well.

The relatively low-level conflict erupted shortly after the outbreak of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it is striking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, another Iran-allied group that ignited the war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel. The group’s leadership says it will stop its attacks once there is a cease-fire in Gaza, and that while it does not want war, it is ready for one.

Israeli officials, meanwhile, say they could decide to go to war in Lebanon if efforts for a diplomatic solution fail.

Hezbollah’s retaliation comes a day after a senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, Amos Hochstein, met with French President Emmanuel Macron’s Lebanon envoy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, in Paris.

The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border. In northern Israel, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed. In Lebanon, more than 450 people — mostly fighters but also dozens of civilians — have been killed.

Israel sees Hezbollah as its most direct threat and estimates that it has an arsenal of 150,000 rockets and missiles, including precision-guided missiles.

In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought a monthlong war that ended in a draw.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on April 17 his country will decide how to respond to Iran’s unprecedented attack as world leaders called for restraint to avoid escalation.

The Israeli military has vowed to respond to Iran’s missile and drone weekend attack, prompting a diplomatic flurry aiming to calm a region already on the edge due to the Israel-Hamas war raging in Gaza since October 7.

Washington and Brussels have pledged to ramp up sanctions against Iran, while British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock became the first Western envoys to visit Israel after the attack.

Mr. Netanyahu told the visiting ministers that Israel “will reserve the right to protect itself,” his office said.

The pair offered “all kinds of suggestions and advice” during a meeting, Mr. Netanyahu said. “However, I would also like to clarify: we will make our decisions ourselves.”

For his part, Mr. Cameron said that “we are very anxious to avoid escalation and to say to our friends in Israel: It’s a time to think with head as well as heart.”

Ms. Baerbock emphasised that “the region must not slide into a situation whose outcome is completely unpredictable.”

Tehran has vowed to hit back if its arch-foe Israel responds to the Saturday attack, which itself was launched in retaliation to a deadly strike on Iran’s Damascus consulate building earlier this month.

Iran military parade

As Iran marked its annual Army Day, it showed off a range of its weapons on Wednesday, including attack drones and longer-range ballistic missiles, in a military parade in Tehran.

President Ebrahim Raisi has warned after the attack that “the slightest act of aggression” by Israel would lead to “a fierce and severe response”.

In the large-scale assault late on Saturday, Iran and allied groups launched over 300 missiles and drones carrying a combined payload of 85 tonnes at Israel, according to the Israeli Army.

Damage and casualties were limited as Israel’s air defences intercepted most of them with the help of U.S., British, French and Jordanian forces.

Israel’s military chief Herzi Halevi has vowed “a response” to Iran’s first ever direct attack, while military spokesman Daniel Hagari stressed that Iran would not get off “scot-free”.

It remained unclear how and when Israel might strike, and whether it would target Iran directly or attack its interests or allies abroad in places such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Israeli forces have been exchanging near daily cross-border fire with Israel since the Gaza war began.

Hezbollah said it launched drones and missiles into Israel on Wednesday, which the army said wounded 14 soldiers, six of whom seriously.

U.S., E.U. to toughen sanctions

Israel’s top ally the United States has made clear it won’t join any attack on Iran, vowing instead to level more sanctions targeting Iran’s missile and drone programme, its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian Defence Ministry.

E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Brussels was also working to expand sanctions against Iran, including its supply of drones and other weapons to Russia and to proxy groups around the Middle East.

Germany’s Ms. Baerbock said that Berlin and Paris were in favour of a European sanctions regime against Iranian drones to be extended to include “missile technologies in Iran’s arsenal”.

Mr. Cameron also urged the G7 to adopt new “coordinated sanctions against Iran,” ahead of a meeting with counterparts from the Western-led grouping in Italy.

Deadly strikes in Gaza

The sharply heightened Israel-Iran tensions have threatened to overshadow the Gaza war, even as deadly bombardment and combat raged on unabated in the besieged territory.

Talks toward a truce and hostage release deal have stalled for now, said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, a key mediator, despite months of effort also involving U.S. and Egyptian officials.

The Israeli military said Wednesday its aircraft had “struck over 40 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip” over the past day.

When one strike hit the southernmost city of Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering, Jamalat Ramidan said she “woke up to the sounds of girls shouting ‘mama, mama, mama’.”

As she fled the carnage alongside children, they stumbled over “body parts and corpses scattered all over the place,” Ramidan told AFP.

Vast areas of Gaza have been devastated by more than six months of war, while its 2.4 million people have suffered under an Israeli siege that has blocked most water, food, medicines and other vital supplies.

The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

The militants also took about 250 hostages, of whom Israel estimates 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 who are presumed dead.

Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,899 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Israel rejects famine claims

Israel has faced growing global opposition to the relentless fighting in Gaza, which the United Nations and aid agencies have warned has pushed the north of the territory to the brink of famine.

But Mr. Netanyahu rejected any claims about famine on Wednesday, saying Israel is doing “above and beyond” what is needed “on the humanitarian issue,” his office said.

The UN said it would launch an appeal on Wednesday for $2.8 billion to help Palestinians in Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war has also revived the push for Palestinian statehood as part of a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict.

The UN Security Council was preparing to vote Thursday on an Algeria-drafted resolution for full United Nations membership for a Palestinian state, diplomatic sources said.

However the veto-wielding United States has repeatedly expressed opposition to the move.

Trucks carry the coffins of Revolutionary Guard members killed in an airstrike widely attributed to Israel that destroyed Iran’s Consulate in Syria in a funeral procession in Tehran, Iran on April 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader warned on April 7 that Israeli embassies are “no longer safe” after a strike in Syria which Tehran blamed on Israel killed seven Revolutionary Guards members.

“The embassies of the Zionist regime are no longer safe,” Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

Tehran has vowed to avenge Monday’s air strike on Damascus that levelled the Iranian embassy’s consular annex, killing seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members including two generals.

“The resistance front is ready; how it (the response) will be, we have to wait,” Mr. Safavi said, noting that “confronting this brutal regime is a legal and legitimate right”.

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He also noted that multiple Israeli embassies around the region “have been shuttered”.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Monday’s attack, which Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said killed 16 people, was the fifth raid on Syria in a week blamed on Israel.

Among the dead were generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi who were senior commanders in the Quds Force, the IRGC’s foreign operations arm.

Zahedi, 63, had held several commands during a career spanning more than 40 years.

He was the most senior Iranian soldier killed since a United States missile strike at Baghdad airport in 2020 killed Quds Force chief General Qasem Soleimani.

Monday’s strike in Damascus took place against the backdrop of the Gaza war which began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel which killed 1,170 people, mostly civilians.

Tehran backs Hamas but has denied any direct involvement in the attack which sparked massive Israeli retaliation against the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-run health ministry in the Palestinian territory says at least 33,175 people have been killed there during six months of war.

Iran does not recognise Israel, and the two countries have fought a shadow war for years.

The Islamic republic accuses Israel of having carried out a wave of sabotage attacks and assassinations targeting its nuclear programme.