Master Tacticians, Strategic Lunatics

Iran is tactically brilliant in always seeing opportunities to expand its influence but it must be kept in mind that it is strategically lunatic in seeking world rule for the Hidden Imam as its ultimate strategic goal. Hezbollah’s intentions have been much debated within the Israeli intelligence community. What is Hezbollah? Hezbollah is a franchise of the IRGC and acts on “requests” from Tehran which it cannot decline since most of its funding comes from Iran. Hassan Nasrallah claims that it is not certain that Hezbollah will attack Israel in response to Israel and America destroying the Iranian nuclear weapons program and some in the Israeli intelligence community seem to believe that. It could be argued that Hezbollah should wait with attacking Israel until it has built such a ferocious arsenal of projectiles that they will be able to destroy the Jewish state. But Iran already believes that Hezbollah has the capacity to do exactly that and constantly repeats that assessment. To be sure, Iran is in no hurry to unleash its forces of terror in the region and worldwide but Israel and America attacking its nuclear weapons program is a red line for Iran, a red line which in the view of Tehran must not be crossed without a disproportionate Iranian response of regional and global WMD apocalyptic mass terror to deter a second destruction of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran has substantial tactical patience as seen in its non-response to the constant Israeli attacks on its forces in Syria but strategy is a different matter since this belongs to the realm of eschatology. Israeli military intelligence often claims that it deters Hezbollah and it certainly does so tactically but not so on the strategic level. It appears that Israeli military intelligence is once more severely underestimating the Khomeinists.