Posted on 11/15/2023 4:48:03 AM PST by bert
Iran does not recognize Israel's existence, while Israel has long threatened military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to curb its disputed nuclear activity.
Iran's supreme leader delivered a clear message to the head of Hamas when they met in Tehran in early November, according to three senior officials: You gave us no warning of your Oct. 7 attack on Israel and we will not enter the war on your behalf.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Ismail Haniyeh that Iran - a longtime backer of Hamas - would continue to lend the group its political and moral support, but wouldn't intervene directly, said the Iranian and Hamas officials with knowledge of the discussions who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely.
The supreme leader pressed Haniyeh to silence those voices in the terror group publicly calling for Iran and its powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah to join the battle against Israel in full force, a Hamas official told Reuters.
Hezbollah, too, was taken by surprise by Hamas' devastating assault last month that killed 1,200 Israelis; its fighters were not even on alert in villages near the border that were frontlines in its 2006 war with Israel, and had to be rapidly called up, three sources close to the Lebanese group said.
"We woke up to a war," said a Hezbollah commander.
The unfolding crisis marks the first time that the so-called Axis of Resistance - a military alliance built by Iran over four decades to oppose Israeli and American power in the Middle East - has mobilized on multiple fronts at the same time.
Hezbollah has engaged in the heaviest clashes with Israel for almost 20 years. Iran-backed terror groups have targeted US forces in Iraq and Syria. Yemen's Houthis have launched missiles and drones at Israel.
The conflict is also testing the limits of the regional coalition whose members - which include the Syrian government, Hezbollah, Hamas and other militant groups from Iraq to Yemen - have differing priorities and domestic challenges.
Mohanad Hage Ali, an expert on Hezbollah at the Carnegie Middle East Center think-tank in Beirut, said Hamas' Oct. 7 assault on Israel had left its axis partners facing tough choices in confronting an adversary with far superior firepower.
"When you wake up the bear with such an attack, it's quite difficult for your allies to stand in the same position as you."
Hamas pleas for help from axis Hamas, the ruling group of Gaza, is fighting for its survival against an avenging Israel, which vows to wipe it out and has launched a retaliatory onslaught on the tiny enclave that's killed more than 11,000 Palestinians.
On Oct. 7, Hamas' military commander Mohammed Deif called on its axis allies to join the struggle. "Our brothers in the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Iraq and Syria, this is the day when your resistance unites with your people in Palestine," he said in an audio message.
Hints of frustration surfaced in subsequent public statements by Hamas leaders including Khaled Meshaal, who in an Oct. 16 TV interview thanked Hezbollah for its actions thus far but said "the battle requires more" .
Nonetheless, alliance leader Iran won't directly intervene in the conflict unless it is itself attacked by Israel or the United States, according to six officials with direct knowledge of Tehran's thinking who declined to named due to the sensitive nature of the matter.
Instead, Iran's clerical rulers plan to continue using their axis network of armed allies, including Hezbollah, to launch rocket and drone attacks on Israeli and American targets across the Middle East, the officials said.
The strategy is a calibrated effort to demonstrate solidarity for Hamas in Gaza and stretch Israeli forces without becoming engaged in a direct confrontation with Israel that could draw in the United States, they added.
"This is their way of trying to create deterrence," said Dennis Ross, a former senior US diplomat specializing in the Middle East who now works at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank. "A way of saying: 'Look as long as you don't attack us, this is the way it will remain. But if you attack us, everything changes'."
Iran has repeatedly said that all members of the alliance make their own decisions independently.
The Iranian foreign ministry didn't respond to a request for comment about its response to the crisis and the role of the Axis of Resistance, a term of disputed origin that has been used by Iranian officials to describe the coalition.
Hamas didn't immediately respond to questions sent to Haniyeh's media adviser, while Hezbollah also didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Issues in Lebanon for Hezbollah Hezbollah, the most powerful group in the axis, boasting 100,000 fighters, has exchanged fire with Israeli forces across the Lebanon-Israel border on an almost daily basis since Hamas went to war with Israel and more than 70 of its fighters have been killed.
Yet, like its backer Iran, Hezbollah has avoided an all-out confrontation.
The group has calibrated its attacks in a way that has kept the violence largely contained to a narrow strip of territory at the border, even as it has escalated those strikes in recent days, according to the people familiar with its thinking.
One of the sources said Hamas wanted Hezbollah to strike deeper into Israel with its massive arsenal of rockets but that Hezbollah believed this would lead Israel to lay waste to Lebanon without halting its attack on Gaza.
Hezbollah, which is also a political movement deeply involved in Lebanese government affairs, knows Lebanon can ill afford another war with Israel, more than four years into a financial crisis that has driven up poverty and hollowed out the country's governing institutions.
Lebanon took years to rebuild from the 2006 war, during which Israeli bombardment pounded the Hezbollah-controlled south of the country and destroyed swathes of its stronghold in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a Nov. 3 speech that Hamas had kept its attack on Israel a secret from its allies and this had ensured its success and not "upset anyone" in the axis. Hezbollah attacks at the Israeli border were unprecedented and amounted to "a real battle," he said.
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Then they much later come out with a story claiming they had no choice since it was all the fault of a poorly led Hamas not telling them in advance of the invasion.
Even Hezbollah to the north has made a half hearted effort knowing there was no backing for more from Iran
Iran has lost face forever
While surrogates die, Iran ignores
Mooselimb monsters. Sic em Israel. V see
“Nonetheless, alliance leader Iran won’t directly intervene in the conflict unless it is itself attacked by Israel or the United States, according to six officials with direct knowledge of Tehran’s thinking who declined to named due to the sensitive nature of the matter.”
If either Israel or the US attacked, Iran would lose, and pretty quickly, too.
These Jihadi warriors may be militant, but they are not effective fighting forces in the modern world. Advanced countries consistently wipe them off the map with little difficulty. They know this, and will do anything to avoid an all-out war......except for the dummies in Hamas, who believe their own BS.
Hamas trainesd in Iran. Unlikely that Iran wasn’t involved up to their necks. Take out their oil fields and refineries along with their nuclear sites.
Obama ordered them to go ahead to interfere with the biden impeachment.
Exactly. This time is different. The savages went too far. Hamas must and will be completely eliminated. If Hezbollah continues to annoy Israel, they will be also be eliminated. Iran understands this.
All of this is a lie by the Iranians and Leftist enablers and terror deniers. Iran knew. Iran financed and blessed 10/7. Iran trained Hamas in the dark arts.
Iran is chickenshit scared of the Lion of Judah and looks for cover. Obama/Biden will give it to them.
There is more to it than that, much, much more.
Iran fears the combined Abrams Accord coalition that is now going to assume ownership of Gaza and the West Bank
The reason Iran ordered the Hamas invasion was to bring the growing and very much publicized relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia to a dead stop. Iran assumed the Arab street would rise up. It did not.
The New York and Harvard and London rise up in the streets don’t matter
The stories in the first week were that Iran trained the Hamas attackers.
In which case, they did know.
Hezbollah is the main event. 150,000 rockets with larger payloads? This is a big problem for Israel
Iran mullahs: You and them go ahead and fight. We’ll watch.
Hezbollah is headquartered in Beruit. Rather than go after tons of rockets scattered all over, Israel will accurately target Hezbollah precisely where they live in Beruit
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