Israel's second war of independence

(JNS) — It’s been 18 months since Hamas’s invasion of Israel and the barbaric pogrom that followed. Hamas is still holding and torturing hostages. The Israel Defense Forces is still fighting not just Hamas but also Hamas’s allies, all of them guided and supported by the jihadi regime in Tehran.

That’s the bad news.

The good news: Painfully but steadily, Israelis have been making progress against enemies who intend not to subjugate but to exterminate them.

Israel’s first War of Independence, 1948-49, lasted 20 months. This one will take longer.

On a brief but intensive tour of Israel last week—from the Golan Heights in the north to the Negev Desert in the south—I and other representatives of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) were briefed by a long list of senior political and military officials. All appeared tired but resolute. All made clear that never again will they allow a “ring of fire” to burn on Israel’s borders.

Start with Gaza. On March 18, after Hamas declined to release additional hostages in exchange for extending a three-month ceasefire, Israel resumed combat operations.

Since then, according to an IDF spokesman, “We have struck more than 600 terrorist targets,” killing more than more than 250 terrorists, “including twelve senior members of the Hamas … all terrorists, all of whom took part in the Oct. 7 massacre.”

On March 25, thousands of Gazans began taking to the streets to demand that Hamas end the conflict and alleviate their suffering.

Hamas has responded by abducting, torturing and executing these protestors, calling them “collaborators” and “traitors.”

Move on to Lebanon, where the IDF last week conducted airstrikes targeting such top Hezbollah figures as Hassan Bdeir, who also was an official with Tehran’s elite Quds Force.

In Syria, the IDF has been striking military infrastructure including three air bases that now can’t be used by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that in December overthrew longtime Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, who had been Tehran’s satrap.

HTS is led by Ahmad al-Sharaa, aka his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Joulani. In January, he proclaimed himself president of Syria, a position which, he correctly perceives, requires that he wear suits and ties.

It should be recalled, however, that in 2012 he founded the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate. That fact does not bother Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Sharaa’s most significant supporter.

Since the fall of the Assad regime, Israeli troops have been stationed on Mount Hermon on the boundary of Israel’s Golan Heights. From there, they monitor activities in both southern Syria and southern Lebanon. 

Implicitly, Israel is sending a message to Erdogan, who recently called—not for the first time—for Israel’s elimination, and who may be planning to make Syria a Turkish colony with military bases that could threaten Israel.

I’ll take note today of just one more front: Israeli intelligence has facilitated U.S. airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels who occasionally fire missiles (most of them made in Iran) at Israel. The American aim, as U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said, is to end Houthi attacks on international shipping and restore freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.

These developments are encouraging but, as Israelis are now more acutely aware than ever, there can be no higher priority than preventing the regime in Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“If Tehran gets a nuke,” one senior military officer told me, “all our other military achievements will be for nothing.”

Last year, Iran’s rulers attacked Israel directly on two occasions. In April, they launched more than 300 drones and missiles. Most were intercepted with minimal damage thanks to Israeli, U.S., and other defenses.

In October, they fired more than 200 missiles at Israeli targets. Again, combined air defense systems proved astonishingly effective.

Israel retaliated with a series of airstrikes that destroyed Iranian missile production facilities and air defense systems (many of the latter made in Russia).

That has left Tehran weaker than it’s been for decades. But because Moscow and Beijing, too, are believed to be helping the regime build back better, its window of vulnerability is likely to remain open for only about six months.

President Trump has now deployed at least six B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia, an air base in the Indian Ocean. He is reminding Iran’s rulers—who continue to threaten to assassinate him—that he has the means to swiftly and effectively demolish their nuclear weapons facilities, including even those buried under mountains.

As a result, Iran’s rulers now say they’re ready for “indirect high-level talks.”

You can be sure they plan either to either drag out the palaver while making nuclear warheads that fit on intercontinental ballistic missiles, or fool Trump into accepting a deal as fatally flawed as was President Obama’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (which was neither comprehensive nor a plan of action).

The only acceptable deal would require that Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure be completely and verifiably dismantled. “They can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said on Monday. “That’s all there is.”

If that result cannot be achieved diplomatically (and quickly), Trump should fulfill his promise to take military action to ensure that Iran’s Islamists do not become the fourth nuclear-armed member of an aggressive, ambitious and anti-American axis that also includes Chinese Communists, Russian neo-imperialists and the dynastic dictator in North Korea.

Alternatively, Trump could assist an Israeli effort to cripple Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. “Without proxies and nukes,” a senior Israeli official told the FDD group, “the Islamic Republic is an eighth-rate power.”

Should that transpire, Israel will have won its second war of independence. Extreme vigilance will be required to prevent a third.

Clifford D. May is the founder and president of FDD, a nonpartisan policy institute focusing on national security created immediately following the 9/11/01 attacks on the United States. Under his leadership, FDD has become one of the nation›s most highly regarded think tanks and a sought-after voice on a wide range of national security issues.