Israel enables Iran’s war of attrition

In 2017, Iran unveiled a digital clock counting down the days until Israel’s destruction in 2040. The display, located in Tehran’s Palestine Square, embodies the Islamic Republic’s long-held promise to destroy the Jewish state. Some see the promise as nothing more than a rhetorical exercise to mobilize support at home and across the Muslim world. But as the Gaza war drags on and threatens to escalate, many in Israel, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, see it as an actionable plan that Iran is committed to implementing, no matter the consequences.

The drive to destroy Israel is rooted in the Shiite eschatological belief that the Mahdi, the twelfth Imam and Islamic messiah, will resurface at the end of the world. The Iranian regime increasingly views the destruction of Israel as a necessary step toward the return of the Mahdi. The founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, attributed the historic decline of Islam to a foreign conspiracy and accused Western powers of using Zionism to invade the Middle East. From this perspective, liberating the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem from Israeli control and destroying the Zionist regime would redeem and renew contemporary Islam.

Worryingly, many in the Iranian regime have suggested that the time is ripe to achieve this sacred goal. In 2020, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, called the Zionist regime a “cancer” that must be “undoubtedly uprooted and destroyed.” Late last year, Hossein Salami, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, vowed to “wipe Israel out of existence” after an Israeli airstrike in Damascus killed a senior Iranian general.

From Adolf Hitler to Vladimir Putin to Osama bin Laden, history has taught us to take threats of ideologically motivated attacks at face value. But the Islamic Republic has proven its caution amply; being radical does not necessarily mean being irrational and suicidal. Rather than a historic confrontation, be it nuclear or conventional, Iran appears to be waging a long-term war of attrition against Israel.

The Gaza war has illustrated Iran’s strategy of encircling Israel with a network of proxy forces, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq. The goal is to wear down Israel while avoiding direct confrontation. While Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel in April was a notable exception, it was necessary to maintain its credibility as the leader of the so-called Axis of Resistance and among its conservative voters.

Iran’s recent decision to increase pressure on Israel through its proxies was influenced by Hamas’ surprising ability to isolate the country and expose its weaknesses. In particular, Iran could not ignore the fact that Hamas’s October 7 attack had thwarted Saudi Arabia’s plan to join the Abraham Accords and normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. The murderous attack and the war that followed have shattered President Joe Biden’s grand vision of a US-backed Sunni Arab-Israeli alliance, which Iran views as an existential threat.

In addition, according to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, Iran has recently made “worrying and unprecedented progress toward a military nuclear program.” This does not mean, however, that Iran would drop its first bomb on Tel Aviv. Rather, with this nuclear shield, Iran could redouble its efforts to weaken Israel and bring about its collapse by conventional means. Given Israel’s alleged second-strike capabilities, Iran realizes that a nuclear confrontation would likely lead to its own annihilation.

When Iran warns, as its mission to the United Nations did on June 28, of a “devastating war” if Israel attacks Lebanon, it wants to deter Israel and prevent a non-nuclear war that could destroy its Lebanese assets. Hezbollah entered the war against Israel only to save face with the Palestinians and would be happy if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would agree to a ceasefire in Gaza that would draw the Shiite militia out of the conflict.

Against this backdrop, the Israeli government is the key factor in Iran’s war of attrition. Netanyahu’s unrealistic goal of achieving “complete victory” in Gaza serves Iran’s strategy of engaging Israel in a fruitless conflict while orchestrating a long-term plan to destroy the Jewish state. By needlessly prolonging the war and rejecting a role for the Palestinian Authority in administering Gaza, Netanyahu’s government has isolated Israel, strained relations with its US patrons, and undermined its own strategic deterrence.

It turns out that the only truly irrational, trigger-happy fanatics in this deadly equation are Netanyahu and his theofascist allies, who are determined to wage an apocalyptic war in Gaza and Lebanon. As northern Israel burned under Hezbollah’s largest rocket attack to date and civilians were evacuated, Orit Strock, the Religious Zionist Party’s minister of settlements and national missions, proclaimed that this was a “time of miracles” for the West Bank settlements. Strock was referring to the belief that God would destroy Israel’s enemies and bequeath the land to them.

These messianic hallucinators have a willing collaborator in Netanyahu. Together they are contributing more to the destruction of the Jewish national project than Iran could ever achieve alone.