Over the past year several factors have changed the dynamics between Israel, Hezbollah, and Iran. First, the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel dramatically increased Israeli insecurity and took a psychological toll on Israelis. Israel’s risk tolerance significantly changed. If Hamas could kill over 1,100 Israelis in a surprise cross-border operation, what could a much better organized, armed, and trained Hezbollah do? So, the fundamental driver behind Israel’s latest series of actions is that it perceives itself as facing an existential threat, especially given Iran’s imminent nuclear weapons capability. Israel believes it must re-establish in new ways a strong deterrent, lost on October 7 across the region. The pre-Oct. 7th status quo of Iran supplying Hezbollah with weapons won’t be tolerated. Israel won’t sit by in the future while Hezbollah regroups and re-arms. For this reason, Israel is prepared to escalate on multiple fronts simultaneously. The end game in our view is that ultimately either Hezbollah gives in to Israel’s attacks on it’s personnel & infrastructure and moves away from the Isarel Lebanon border OR Iran/Hezbollah tries to counter attack significantly on Israel which leads to US joining the conflict. We believe Israel will definitely attack on Iran’s ballistic missiles stockpiles as well as IRGC’s (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) senior leadership but leave oil & nuclear plants out of it. Crude because it is a sensitive issue for US especially before elections & nuclear plants because there is no guarantee if Israel could take out them completely. Middle east countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and other gulf states are secretly relieved that Iran and its proxies are being weakened by Israel. They oppose Iran and see it as sowing chaos in the region. They are also signaling to Iran not to endanger their cities in the crossfire. A Trump win in the 5th nov election could drastically change the course of this war since Trump is far more anti Iran than Harris. Israel could be biding it’s time till election time & then execute it’s attacks on Hezbollah/Iran more forcefully. This way they could have taken care of US requests not to further escalate war till elections as well as bargained concrete support measures in case it attacks Iran/Hezbollah after elections.
