Were Israel’s hawks right all along?

Benjamin Netanyahu has long spoken of achieving a “decisive victory” against Israel’s enemies.

It is a phrase that has been dismissed in Washington and by Yoav Gallant, the prime minister’s own defence minister.

But following the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the hawks within Israel are celebrating – and even Mr Netanyahu’s critics are wondering if a decisive blow has been struck against the terrorist group.

Could the violent series of strikes by Israel reshape the country’s position in the Middle East, pushing Iran’s proxy forces back from the border and seeing Tehran shy away from conflict?

Israel’s hawks have long argued that only such bombastic military action can protect Israel.

They see a world where Hezbollah and Hamas are degraded to the point they pose no threat to Israel. And one in which Iran is sufficiently cowed that it stops funding its so-called axis of resistance for fear of inviting Israeli strikes on its ports and fragile water infrastructure.

That world remains a long way away, even though Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, has reacted to the carnage wrought upon Hezbollah by Israel in recent days without the blood-curdling threats of old.

In his speech on Saturday, he merely called on Muslims to stand up to “the Zionists” and insisted, despite growing evidence to the contrary, that Hezbollah is far too strong for the Israeli army to damage in any meaningful way.

His call for the 57 countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to come together and hold an “emergency meeting” on the Zionist threat is also unlikely to immediately concern Israel’s generals.

What seems clear is that Iran has miscalculated badly. Its strategy of surrounding Israel with a so-called “ring of fire” - proxy groups in Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon - has been directly challenged, and, so far, Tehran has not hit back.

There are limits, it seems, to relying on militias in bankrupt states, with only varying levels of capability.

According to reports, Hezbollah last week asked Iran to respond to Israel on its behalf, but was refused. Relations between the region’s principal sponsor of terror and its terrorist proxies may be about to unravel, or so the hawks hope.

“We have reestablished our deterrent after Oct. 7 when it seemed to our enemies it was lost,” said Sima Shine, the director of the Iran and the Shi’ite Axis research programme at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv.

“Iran now has a huge problem. Everyone in the regime is in shock. They have no option but to recalibrate.

“Iran and its proxies understand now Israel is not in the mood for an attack from anyone any more and that if it comes, there will be consequences.”

Israel’s strike on Hezbollah’s nerve centre may have “fundamentally altered Iran’s strategic ambitions” in the region, added Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official.

He said: “This incident offers the Lebanese – previously held hostage by Hezbollah – the chance to liberate themselves from Iranian influence, while also likely compelling Iran to reevaluate its plans for regional control.”

No wonder then that Mr Netanyhu’s popularity ratings are once again approaching a historic high, the turning point being his first assassination of an Iranian general in Damascus in April.

Taking the fight to the enemy works for him because it distracts from the disaster that was Oct 7, notes Dahlia Scheindlin, the respected Israeli pollster .

All this will be hard to take for the doves – most notably Joe Biden and Antony Blinken, his secretary of state. But it would be dishonest not to give some credit to the hawks’ strategy.

Of course, the war is not over yet, and much could change in the coming days and months. Iran might, for example, choose to invest in its nuclear ambitions more heavily, now that its deterrent by proxy strategy appears to be hanging by a thread.

Israel’s defence establishment typically avoids Mr Netanyahu’s talk of “decisive victory”, operating more in shades of grey.

For example, the Israeli navy is over the moon about Friday night’s much less publicised destruction of Hezbollah’s land-to-sea missile capability, something it has feared for years, not just as a threat to its ships, but to Israel’s offshore gas production.

“The defence establishment of course welcomes the destruction of Hezbollah’s military capability. But this is not the same as its terror capacity. This is where the politicians and the generals differ,” said one Israeli analyst.

“The threats facing Israel have not disappeared but have been transformed” added Orna Mizrahi, a retired lieutenant colonel now a Lebanon and Hezbollah specialist at INSS.

“It is essential for Israel to understand these evolving threats in order to prepare effectively and to identify opportunities that offer strategic advantage.”

There are few modern wars that have been settled decisively with brute force, with perhaps Sri Lanka’s terrible but decisive victory over the Tamil Tigers in 2009 being the most recent example.

Of course, the West’s misadventures in Iraq – where George W Bush got carried away with his own shock and awe and celebrated his own “victory” far too early – show the other side of the coin.

Following what were supposed to be overwhelming and, yes, “decisive”, interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq against the “axis of evil”, the US and its allies spent two decades fighting Islamic State and other terrorist insurgents.

It’s something that British and American troops are still very much involved in to this day.

But Israel’s future need not follow the same path.