Many in our region and the world are aware that Iran strongly supports the October 7 terrorist attack launched by the terrorist movement Hamas against Israel.
Aside from delving into discussions about the limits of this support, and whether it amounts to participation in planning and providing information support, etc., or is it limited to sharing goals and interests between Iran and one of the terrorist arms known as the “resistance” axis that it leads, It is necessary to study Iran’s strategic gains from what is happening in Gaza.
The undoubted truth is that the mere outbreak of a military conflict between Israel and any party in the Middle East represents a definite Iranian strategic interest, and this interest is consequently deepened if this party falls under the banner of an axis that Iran leads, finances, and supports politically and strategically.
Israel is described in Iranian political discourse as a “cancerous tumor,” and therefore it always seeks to target Israel with its plans, but indirectly. Tehran has always stayed away from involvement in a direct military confrontation with Israel and has been content to employ its militia arms, from the Lebanese Hezbollah to the armed Palestinian movements, to confront and pressure Israel.
We must not forget that the Iranian military doctrine depends entirely on waging proxy wars, which is a strategy that differs from the Israeli army’s doctrine based on transferring the war to other people’s lands, due to Israel’s limited strategic depth.
Here, the terrorist militias represent an extremely dangerous element of pressure on Israel because these militias depend on launching rockets with different ranges and techniques deep into Israel, and thus represent an extremely influential and dangerous pressure element on the Israeli decision. Especially in light of the rapid development of the missile systems and drones possessed by these militias, relying on Iranian technological and training support.
My conviction is that Iran does not want to engage in a direct military confrontation with Israel now or in the future, but it seeks to keep the matter on the brink of the abyss and uses its arms to exert pressure to extract Western-Israeli concessions through Iranian influence regionally, but what happened in Gaza exceeded imaginations and went beyond the control of Iranian strategic thinking.
Because what happened inside Israel is difficult to jump on or ignore, and therefore the moment of settling the score with Iran may have come, the matter here may not necessarily mean waging an Israeli war against Iran, because Israel may not be fully prepared to wage this confrontation and bear its consequences as well. However, it is likely that efforts will begin to confront its strategic expansion that threatens the security of other countries, and efforts will focus on combating the militia terrorist arms that it funds in many countries of the region.
Iran’s relations with Israel are an issue that the regime links to its political legitimacy, a large part of which it derives from claiming to work to liberate Jerusalem and work against Israel.
We note that the idea of hostility towards Israel does not abate for the Iranian regime, even during the periods of calm that prevailed in the permanently tense relations between Washington and Tehran.
As for Iran, regardless of whether it supports Hamas’s terrorist plans to attack Israel or not, the outbreak of the current conflict in Gaza is in Tehran’s interest. Hostility to Israel, at least at the popular level, has once again dominated the atmosphere of the Middle East, and talk of coexistence, peace, security, and stability has receded.
This in itself is in the interest of its calls against the peace agreements signed between several Arab countries and Israel, especially since the Gaza crisis has caused the freeze of the most important stage of normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which is the Saudi stage.
With all the spiritual and religious weight of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its prominent regional and international status, and where it was believed that the signing of a peace agreement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel would be a qualitative milestone that would change the geopolitical map of the Middle East.
There is a deep Iranian feeling of undermining the American effort to continue the process of normalizing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Iran saw in this scenario an effort to surround it strategically through an axis of peace and regional cooperation, which culminated in the announcement of the strategic corridor project, which achieves a qualitative shift in joint trade cooperation between India and Europe, passing through the lands of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Jordan, and Israel. The accelerating strategic movement in the Middle East has achieved a goal in the goal of American global influence with the success of Chinese mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Then Tehran’s goal of postponing peace plans between Israel and Saudi Arabia was achieved.
There is no doubt that Iran does not care much about implementing the two-state solution or reaching settlements that guarantee the Palestinians’ living in dignity and humanity, but what matters most to it is that Israel remains in an internal crisis and in conflict with its immediate neighborhood, so that it does not consider launching a military strike against it or devoting itself to planning to eliminate the nuclear and missile program. Iranian.
Especially since Israel’s ability to build international diplomacy against Iran has become very complicated in light of the repercussions of the Gaza war, and attention has been completely diverted, even if temporarily, from the Iranian nuclear threat and Iran’s regional practices, and the focus of international concern has shifted to Israel and its practices in the Palestinian territories.
This in itself provides Iran with a period of time to complete the plan to obtain nuclear capabilities, in addition to Israel being preoccupied with its internal security for some time without thinking about confronting Iran, whether with cyber means or conventional war.
In light of the above, Iranian strategists look with great satisfaction at what is happening in Gaza, and they hope that the crisis will escalate until Israel is drowned in its repercussions and consequences. This in itself is completely consistent with Iranian strategic interests in the foreseeable future, at least.
Source » israelhayom