Israel has assassinated the leader of Hezbollah and killed many of its members by way of booby-trapped pagers and walky-talkies. After a blitzkrieg bombing campaign, Israel once again invaded Lebanon this week to escalate its campaign against the paramilitary-cum-political party. Meanwhile, it continues to wage war against Hamas in Gaza. It has bombed various locations in Syria. And it has even attacked the Houthis in distant Yemen.

The Israeli government has never tried to hide its larger objective: weaken the sponsor of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Israel is really fighting against Iran.

At the United Nations last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a map of the region labelled “The Curse.” It showed a swath of the Middle East in black that encompassed Iran, Syria, and Iraq, with outposts in Lebanon and Yemen.

“It’s a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean,” Netanyahu declared. “Iran’s aggression, if it’s not checked, will endanger every single country in the Middle East, and many, many countries in the rest of the world, because Iran seeks to impose its radicalism well beyond the Middle East.”

Israel has not been content to launch attacks against Iranian proxies. Back in April, Israel struck Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing three senior Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) officials. Over the summer, in a brazen violation of Iranian sovereignty, it detonated a bomb inside a guest house in Tehran to assassinate a top Hamas leader. And in the most recent aerial attack on Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Israel also killed a top Iranian military official, Gen. Abbas Nilforushan of the IRGC.

These last two attacks have come after elections in July elevated a reformer to the presidency in Iran. They have come after Iran has given a number of indications that it is reevaluating its unremittingly hostile policy toward Israel. They have come after the Iranian government has showed signs of willingness to restart nuclear negotiations with the United States.

If Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November, Israel will once again have an ally that is equally committed to confronting Iran, militarily if necessary.

But if Kamala Harris wins, the stage will be set for a potential return to a détente in U.S.-Iranian relations.

Certainly, the Israeli government is interested in weakening both Hamas and Hezbollah. Certainly, it wants to push back against Iran on various fronts.

But perhaps the real motivation for Netanyahu right now in attacking Hezbollah and refusing a ceasefire in the conflict in Gaza is to goad Iran into retaliating and burying all hopes of a reconciliation between Washington and Tehran. This week, with Iran lobbing missiles at Israel, everything is so far going according to plan. What’s not yet clear is whether Netanyahu will reap a side benefit of making the Biden administration look foolish, thus elevating Trump’s electoral chances in November.

Imagine if Russia had somehow smuggled a bomb into Volodymyr Zelensky’s hotel room in Washington, DC and managed to assassinate him on his recent visit. The United States might very well use such an attack as a casus belli to declare war on Russia. The only thing that could stay Washington’s hand would be Russia’s nuclear arsenal and the potential for planetary annihilation.

Israel’s assassination of a Hamas official inside Iran at the end of July might have triggered an all-out war—if not for Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Of course, Tehran threatened revenge. Its retaliation for the attack on the Iranian compound in Syria, which took place two weeks later in mid-April, might have looked impressive: 300 missiles and drones aimed at Israel. But only a few evaded Israeli defenses, and there were no Israeli casualties.

Israel has an advantage over Iran in terms of intelligence and technology. How on earth did it smuggle a bomb into one of the most secure buildings in Iran and then trigger it at just the right moment to kill its target? And how did it manage to turn hundreds of pagers and walky-talkies into hand-held bombs that killed and injured Hezbollah operatives along with many Lebanese civilians? These were intelligence failures on the part of Iran and its proxies, to be sure, but they also reveal the patience, planning, and technological sophistication of the Israelis.

In other words, it’s not just Israel’s nukes that serve as deterrent.

In effect, Iran is practicing a policy of “strategic patience.” It knows that it’s outmatched in any conventional (or nuclear) conflict. In response to successful Israeli operations, its feckless missile attacks on Israel have been more theater than actual military campaign. In some cases, it has been even more restrained, for instance, after the death of three U.S. soldiers in Jordan in January when it instructed its allies not to escalate their attacks against U.S. targets.

In general, the successes that Iran and its allies have had against Israel........

© Common Dreams