The Iranian regime is extremely strategically sophisticated (perhaps more so than any other state) and operates according to its own long-term planning. Iran seeks to build up a growing and expanding Iranian-controlled military presence and military infrastructure in southwest Syria west of northern Israel. The plan is audacious, to turn Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon into one military bloc and then launch an invasion of northern Israel, including through southwest Syria. The plan is for Iraq to be persuaded to permit the Iranian army and the IRGC to transit through Iraq on the way to the front with Israel.
At present is the Israeli military stronger than the Iranian military and Iranian tanks are mostly old and antiquated and the same is true of Iran’s air force. However this could change if China or Russia were to sell those heavy weapons to Iran (which they apparently so far have declined to do) or if Iran were to develop the domestic capacity to produce their own tanks and fighter aircrafts. Nevertheless, Iran apparently plans to somehow acquire the conventional capacity for defeating Israel at its own borders. This is clearly a long-term plan and although not an imminent threat yet still a very real strategic hostile design.
The presence of Iranian proxies in the northern Levant needs to be completely eradicated in order to terminate this long-term, yet deadly serious and nefarious plan aimed at destroying the world’s only Jewish state.