THE CONVERSATION via AP — A lot hangs on whether the United States can compel Israel to cease operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. After all, an end to the Israeli military offensive was a key provision of the broad US-Iran agreement setting out a road map to end the Iran war.

And even though Israel did not negotiate or sign the deal — and opposes it for its failure to attain the key goals of eliminating Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and creating the conditions for the fall of the regime — policymakers in Washington will continue to press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abide by its terms.

Yet there’s a larger and more vexing issue for the Trump administration and its Arab allies in the Middle East that has received little attention: Israel’s long-standing “campaign between the wars” strategy and whether it threatens the prospect for long-term peace in the region.

The policy, known as “HaMa’aracha Bein HaMilchamot” in Hebrew and shortened to “Mabam,” has become a widely accepted facet of Israel’s national security. Its purpose is to degrade the capabilities of Iran and its key regional allies in any interwar period.

As the former assistant director of CIA for Weapons and Counterproliferation, I have watched Israel wage Mabam in an increasingly bold manner and widening geographic scope over the past seven years. Israel has broadened both the targets of the strategy and the instruments it uses to strike them, heightening the risk of escalation.

Save any unexpected abandonment of the policy, Israel will almost certainly continue launching limited military strikes, covert action and cyberattacks across the Middle East, regardless of any US deal with Iran.

This will likely take the form of degrading the capabilities of Iran’s partner Hezbollah, Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq and even Tehran’s unreliable ally the Houthis in Yemen. And Israel will remain willing to take military actions short of full-scale war in Iran itself.

But such outcomes will pose serious challenges for the US, which seems intent on avoiding a renewed war with Tehran. In fact, Israel’s “campaign between the wars” risks widening the split with Washington and restarting war with Iran and its allies over the long term.

Israel codified the Mabam strategy in a 2015 Israeli Defense Forces document. Its history, however, predates the official adoption of the policy, with the IDF executing “campaign between the wars” operations in the early 2010s.

Most scholars and Israeli military officials acknowledge that the strategy evolved from cross-border “reprisal operations” against Jordan, Egypt, Syria and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Lebanon in the 1950s and........

© The Times of Israel