The Iranian Nuclear Program and Hezbollah’s Firepower Arsenal Should be Viewed as a Synergetic Threat

 The strategic logic of Iran’s nuclear program should be seen through a wider, holistic lens – one in which Hezbollah plays a central part.  

The first reason that the Islamic Republic has, for decades, been developing the building blocks of a nuclear weapons program is to create an insurance policy for the existence of the radical regime. The second and no less important reason is to extend a nuclear umbrella over Tehran’s regional axis of terrorist proxies and allies.

In Tehran’s thinking, a nuclear insurance policy would both establish a new level of deterrence against the US and against the countries of the region that Iran views, mainly for radical ideological reasons, as its mortal adversaries. At the top of the list is Israel, which Iran is fully and genuinely dedicated to destroying, and which it is attempting to surround with a ring of fire, made up of hybrid terror-armies with formidable ballistic firepower arsenals.

Iran’s hitlist also includes pragmatic Sunni states, whose governments Iran wishes to weaken, topple, or to cow into accepting it as a hegemonic Shi’ite-Muslim power in the Middle East.

The recent normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran has little impact on this fundamental clash between the core interests of the Iranian-Shi’ite axis and those of the Sunni-Arab bloc. These interests remain in collision. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been targeted by UAV and missile attacks by Iranian-backed Houthis from Yemen, and in Saudi Arabia’s case in 2019, by UAVs fired directly from Iranian territory. Riyadh likely opted for normalization as a hedge against what it views as an unreliable American superpower ally, and to boost the regional status of China – and not because it suddenly stopped seeing Iran as a threat.

An Iranian nuclear umbrella will, according to the Iranian playbook, embolden Iran’s proxies to attack Israel and, if necessary, Sunni-Arab states with a great deal more audacity, in the knowledge that a nuclear power backs them, and can threaten to come to their assistance in the event of major escalations that they provoke.

In Israel’s case, this synergy between a future nuclear umbrella and frequent future attacks by Iranian-backed terror-armies is designed to erode the morale of the Israeli people, and contribute, according to Iran’s hopes, to the eventual collapse of the Israeli state and society, in line with the fundamentalist Shi’ite Islamist vision – as established by the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Despite Iran’s progress in Iranian uranium enrichment, however, Iran is still roughly a year and-a-half to two years away from having nuclear warheads at its disposal. Iran is not a nuclear armed state yet – and that’s where Hezbollah’s primary current role comes in: To deter Israel from carrying out a military attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.   

While Hezbollah’s leadership has independent leeway to make decisions on launching or refraining from attacks on Israel, in line with its own current situation assessment, which includes taking into consideration Hezbollah’s status in the crumbling Lebanese state, Tehran does likely expect its proxy to find the balance between harassing Israel and avoiding an all-out war, at lease before Iran makes further nuclear progress.

History teaches that such expectations may not be realistic, since any tactical or small-scale incident, or miscalculation involving Hezbollah can easily escalate into a full-scale conflict. The 2006 Second Lebanon War, which was triggered by a Hezbollah cross-border raid on an IDF patrol (an attack that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah viewed as tactical at the time) is a clear demonstration of this principle of unintended consequences.

Nevertheless, Hezbollah is likely aware of its assigned role for this stage in the history of the Iranian – Shi’ite axis, to deter Israel long enough for Iran to enter the nuclear threshold zone. Hezbollah balances out its own prerogative with expectations by its Iranian sponsors.

It is therefore vital to recognize the connection between Hezbollah’s conventional arsenal of over 200,000 projectiles and Iran’s nuclear development.

Both Iran and Hezbollah understand that the Lebanese-Shi’ite terror army could find itself at war with Israel before Iran becomes a nuclear weapons state.

Yet both the Iranian Islamic Republican Guards Corps (IRGC), which shapes Iran’s regional policies, and Hezbollah’s leadership in Beirut also likely assess that this would be a highly negative scenario.

A war that would come ‘too soon’ between Israel and Hezbollah could allow Israel to unleash devastating firepower and ground offensives against Hezbollah in Lebanon – at considerable cost to Israel itself – and later to take on Iran’s nuclear program in the future, without the threat of a major regional war, which would have already occurred. This scenario would see Iran losing its greatest deterrent power against Israel.

An intermediate scenario also exists, in which Iran is content to remain at the vague nuclear threshold sphere it is currently entering, from which it can threaten to assemble nuclear bombs in relatively little time, and from this position, to encourage Hezbollah to become more aggressive against Israel. The March 13 roadside bombing in northern Israel, conducted by a terrorist who infiltrated from Lebanon, could be a reflection of such an emerging posture.

Either way, Hezbollah’s current posture is intended to dissuade Israel from taking action against Iran, and Iran’s nuclear program is ultimately intended to dissuade Israel from taking action against Hezbollah.

Since it is impossible for Israel to currently strike Iran without getting into a full-fledged conflict with Hezbollah, as well as Iran-backed Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and possibly Hamas and Palestinian Islamic  jihad in Gaza, Israel may need to weigh the option of disrupting Iran’s planned strategy by removing the core of Hezbollah’s firepower in Lebanon from the regional equation, through a preemptive wave of strikes.

The status quo, which has been useful until now in maintaining stability and quiet since the 2006 war, may now be losing its attractiveness in the overall strategic cost-benefit analysis.

If the status quo continues as it is proceeding, this would mean allowing Iran to continue to creep ahead on the nuclear front, and allowing Hezbollah’s arsenal, including its precision strike missile program  (the top conventional military threat to Israel) to continue to make gradual progress.

This situation resembles the slowly boiling frog analogy. Israeli red lines in regards to the force build up processes of its enemies, both conventional (Hezbollah’s precision guided missiles) and nuclear (Iran’s program), are therefore crucial, and should be discreetly communicated to both of these adversaries, as a final attempted deterrent measure.

Extreme scenario – if this deterrence fails, and if Iran and Hezbollah ignore Israeli warnings, Israel may have to consider attacking Iran and Hezbollah simultaneously if necessary, even at the cost of a devastating regional war, over the scenario of having to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. In this scenario, it will be necessary to prepare the Israeli public opinion for the price of the war in order to have the support of the Israeli public for such a difficult move that will result in many losses.

The Gazan arena could become involved in both kinds of scenarios, and therefore, multi-arena conflict will need to be the core scenario shaping Israeli force build-up programs – irrespective of which scenario might come to pass.

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Yaakov Lappin

Yaakov Lappin

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