Asking what Iran’s role was in the Hamas attack of October 7 seems almost too easy. Obviously, Iran arms, funds, and trains Hamas. It also coordinates relations between its terrorist groups — Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas — and facilitates “war room” strategic planning for their attacks. Whether Iran knew the exact details of the day and hour of Hamas’ massacre is irrelevant. They were certainly part of the planning for it. But there are still some questions outstanding:
What did Iran hope to gain with the Hamas attack?
Why did Iran choose not to widen the war, bringing in Hezbollah?
Why will destroying Hamas hurt Iran?
For more than 40 years, the United States has put up with Iranian terrorism; Iranian attacks on U.S. citizens and U.S. troops; Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons; Iranian human rights violations. And for more than 40 years, America’s answer has been, “yes, sanctions will fix this.”
Sanctions do not fix the problem of Iran. Obama tried appeasement. Trump tried maximum pressure. He also tried to build an Arab-Israeli coalition against Tehran. Most efforts had limited success, but when you come right down to it, U.S. Iran policy has been a failure. October 7 was proof positive.
Still, we do know a few things about Iran’s weaknesses. One of them is a lack of desire to directly confront the United States. It prefers to act through its proxies. And so, in order to leech away Iran’s power, and end its plans to annihilate Israel and dominate the Middle East, its proxies must be destroyed. That means Israel must be allowed to raze Hamas’ infrastructure and rid the world of its leadership and military structures.
The next step should be to do the same to Hezbollah, but it is likely that Israel will have little appetite for such a wider war. Nor does Iran, at this juncture; it prefers to threaten from the sidelines, but shies away from major steps, depending always on proxies from Yemen to Iraq, Syria to Lebanon and beyond. US wavering on Iranian involvement in attacks on Israel encourages that behavior.
Another Iranian weakness is fear of Israel’s normalization in the Middle East. Hence the effort to stop Saudi and other rapprochement with Jerusalem. But that normalization must continue, and the United States must do all it can to foster the continuation of Arab peace with Israel.
Absent these steps, and more — including marginalizing all extremist Palestinian groups to foster a better future for the West Bank and Gaza — the world will be forced again to confront not simply an empowered Iran, but an empowered Iran with a nuclear weapon.
HIGHLIGHTS
So, the Biden administration keeps saying it doesn’t know about Iran’s involvement in the Hamas massacre? WTH?
KP: The bottom line is that yes, Iran was heavily involved in this. It is unimaginable that Hamas was able to do this without Iran. It is unimaginable that Hamas would've tried to do it without first going to the Iranians and saying, "A, we're planning to do this. We need your help. Are we going to have your help? And we need you to backstop us as well, because we don't really know what's going to happen." But beyond that, simply the abilities that Iran has, Iran's ability to coordinate these different groups to bring all kinds of expertise. And let's also add to that, Hamas could not have undertaken this operation without stockpiling all kinds of weaponry, ammunition, food, fuel, et cetera. The vast majority of which had to come from Iran.
Whether they actually picked the date or whether they knew the date, again, I think that's anybody's guess. But we have to recognize that Iran was deeply, deeply involved in this from the get go. It's just unimaginable that Hamas could have tried to implement something this big, this complicated, and this likely to trigger such a massive Israeli and potentially American response without Iran's explicit go ahead and backing.
What does Iran hope to gain from this attack?
KP: So I think that Iran is getting exactly what it wants from this. I think that Iran has multiple angles, and I think that many of Iran's goals are shared goals with Hamas. In the sense that first the Iranians were very much looking to derail the normalization between Israel and the Arab states, this is something that has been coming for a while. This is something that is deeply threatening to Iran and all of its allies. If there were a unified Israeli Arab front, especially one backed by the United States, that would've been a formidable obstacle to further Iranian expansion in the region, a major impediment to Iran's goal of becoming the hegemon of the Middle East. So Iran had to derail that. In addition, Iran is looking for an opportunity and has been for decades, to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies in the Arab world. And finally, Iran wants its axis of resistance, its allies, its proxies, however you want to describe them, and of course, it's a range of both, to seem like they are the great threats to the region, and are able to do all kinds of things that are threatening to Israel and threatening to moderates in the region.
Is Hamas/Iran’s gambit working?
KP: Right now I think it is working, and I think that in particular, if the war were to end now, I think that the Iranians in the axis of resistance would claim a tremendous victory. Again, they mounted the attack, they surprised the vaunted Israelis, they killed 1,300 of their people with relative impunity, and they've done all of those things I've just talked about. They have derailed normalization between Israel and the Arabs. They have driven a wedge between the United States and its Arab allies. They have demonstrated that their axis of resistance is capable of taking action all across the region in ways that are incredibly dangerous for the other states of the region. Right now, Iran has succeeded in accomplishing everything it's set out to. I think the big question mark out there is whether or not Hamas will emerge intact in any form. If they do, the victory for Iran is enormous.
But what if Hamas is destroyed?
KP: So I think that Iran went into this recognizing that Hamas might be destroyed in this and they're good with that. That doesn't necessarily hurt Iran. Hurts Hamas.
And what about a ceasefire?
KP: At the end of the day, a ceasefire right now would lock in all of Iran's victories, and that's what makes it so dangerous. Because again, I know there are a lot of well-meaning people out there who just want the killing to end, but they need to recognize that a ceasefire right now, because it would lock in all of Iran's accomplishments, would simply mean more and worse wars in the future because Iran would do this again.
Did Trump do a better job than Biden with his deterrent and his red lines?
KP: Trump was good about setting a red line and a deterrent where it came to Americans. I actually don't agree about Trump more broadly with the Iranians, because he walked away from what had been our most important red line, which was that Iran does not get to interfere with oil exports from our Arab allies. It was the Reagan Corollary to the Carter Doctrine, which was that we will use force to prevent anyone internal or external from interfering with gulf oil flows. And Trump, I think horribly walked away from that completely and did nothing, when Iran started attacking the oil exports of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and ultimately led to the 2019 attacks on Abqaiq, which were just horrifying to our allies.
What should we have been doing?
KP: Iranians are very cautious of American military power. They're perfectly glad to play games with our politics, but they have tremendous respect for our military power. And whenever we've been willing to employ that military power against Iran, they back off very, very quickly. We need to stop being scared of our own shadow. We need to stop being afraid of their threats of escalation, which never come about. The evidence is quite clear that Iran is very, very respectful of America's military might, they do everything that they can to avoid it. Let's notice right now, the Iranians threaten, they've been threatening, and everyone is up in arms. My feeling is this is not terribly different from any normal day in the Persian Gulf. The Iranians threaten to do things against the United States all the time. It's just that Americans typically don't pay attention.
What are the prospects for escalation?
KP: I want to start with the caveat. The caveat is this is a war, wars are inherently unpredictable. Countries frequently start out in one place and wind up doing things that they never intended. So it is certainly possible that there will be escalation in this war. That said, I think that the likelihood is much, much less than so many people talk about. Let me start with the simple fact that as we talked about, there is no question that Iran was aware that Hamas was going to do this.
Exactly what the details are, are still unclear. But there is no doubt that Iran was aware beforehand, which means that Iran could have joined the initial attack on October 7th, and Hezbollah too. Because Iran knew, therefore Hezbollah knew. Hezbollah too could have joined on October 7th. And if they wanted a fight with Israel right now, that was the moment to do it. That was when Israel was surprised, when it was least prepared, when it was least able to respond, when they would've done the maximum damage to Israel. If Hezbollah had joined in on October 7th, it would've been like October 1973, when Israel faced simultaneous surprise attacks by Egypt and Syria. And the damage done by a joint Hamas-Hezbollah attack probably would've been an order of magnitude worse than what actually happened. So if Hezbollah wanted to fight Israel, that was the moment to do it. And the fact that they chose not to is absolutely dispositive that they do not want a fight with Israel.
So is it possible that Hezbollah gets involved at some point? It's possible, and if you want, I can spin out some scenarios, but I think that they're all much less likely than other people believe. And again, that's no reason to be cavalier, but it's also no reason to suddenly believe that this is the beginning of World War III, and therefore we have to do everything we possibly can to simply shut it down prematurely.
Could Israel win a two front war?
KP: Absolutely. No question about it, they could do so. They'd prefer not to. And I think that's why, and again, Dany and I have talked about this quite a bit, that's why they're focusing on Gaza and that's why Israel has been relatively quiet about Iran. They want to focus on Gaza. The more that they can employ the full range of their military assets against Gaza, the better off that they're going to be.
Will Israel win big in Gaza?
KP: They certainly can. The question as always is going to be casualties and their tolerance for casualties. And let's recognize it's their own casualties, including casualties among the hostages and casualties among the Palestinian people. We haven't brought it up, but I know you guys are both acutely aware of the fact that the Israeli government actually does care about Palestinian civilians, would prefer not to kill Palestinian civilians, completely contrary to Hamas, which is trying as best they can to have as many dead Palestinian civilians as they can. But I think that these are going to be considerations for the Israelis. And the big question, Marc, is as they start to do some of these bigger operations, and we're now seeing them start to do these bigger operations, they've surrounded Gaza City, they're clearly starting to either excavate or destroy some of the tunnels, we don't quite know what, but they're moving in there, what the casualty levels are like in terms of their own soldiers, Israeli hostages and potentially Palestinian civilians? I think those are ultimately going to be important considerations for the Israelis.
At some level, it might cause the Israelis to choose to pull back. That's what we saw with the second Lebanon war in 2006, where the Israelis were militarily winning, They were winning incredibly ugly. It was the worst Israeli military operation pretty much ever, but they were still doing enormous damage to Hezbollah. But they decided that the amount of casualties that they were suffering wasn't worth it for them, and so they chose to pull out. I think this time in Gaza is going to be very different.
As long as Iran is around, Hamas can be rebuilt, right?
KP: There's no question that Hamas can be rebuilt. We've seen the PLO rebuilt at least four times in our lifetime. It's very hard to get rid of these groups. But that doesn't mean that driving them out of Gaza, and from my perspective, I think that has to be the ultimate Israeli goal, and that should be the ultimate American goal, that, that isn't meaningful. It is meaningful. And it's meaningful because part of defeating Iran, part of it would be regime change in Iran, but part of defeating Iran, a lesser goal is to start taking these allies away from the Iranians, taking away the terrorist groups and the militias that Iran uses to support their effort at hegemony in the region, their efforts to destabilize the region, their efforts to overthrow all these governments and attack and destroy Israel as well.
And the only way that that's going to happen in this case is if Hamas is evicted from Gaza the way that the PLO was evicted first from Gaza itself in '67, then from Jordan in '70, and then from Lebanon in 1982. And it's worth focusing on that because that is also the only pathway to a better future for the Palestinian people.
Post-Hamas presents an opportunity for peace with Israel?
KP: Even when we have had Israeli leaders that were willing to make peace and were willing to put entirely reasonable deals on the table, we've never had a Palestinian leadership that was willing to accept it. And there are a lot of different reasons for that, but it does start with the fact that you have these rejectionists, like Hamas, out there with weapons, willing to kill any moderate leader who tries to do so. And so again, getting Hamas out of Gaza, evicting them, making it so that they are no longer in charge, and that whoever is in charge of security in Gaza is not going to oppress the Palestinian people in the same way, that's the first step on this path to a better future for both Israelis and Palestinians.
So much comes down to Iran…
KP: Ultimately, Iran is looking to do a series of things in the Middle East that are inimical to almost everyone's interests except Iran and Russia and maybe a few other countries, North Korea, to the extent they care about the Middle East. I'm actually not at all convinced that they're in China's best interest either. I just don't know that the Chinese have figured that out yet. But at the end of the day, what Iran is up to in the Middle East, trying to destroy the State of Israel, trying to become the hegemon and bring all of the Arab states under Iranian sovereignty.
We now have Iran arming Russia. I never thought I would live to see the day when Iran was arming Russia, but they are. They're providing in particular drones, but a variety of other things as well that Russia desperately needs for the war on Ukraine. And again, I don't want to suggest that the Russia-Iran Alliance was a key to Hamas' decision to attack Israel or Iran's decision to back Hamas, but it wasn't irrelevant either. I think there's no question, the fact that Iran now feels so much more closely tied to Russia, that they feel like Russia has its back, that Russia needs them, and that they can count on Russia for vetoes in the Security Council, for diplomacy on the world stage, and ultimately for military support, conceivably even to back us off. All of that is playing a role in Iran's increasing aggressiveness in the region.
Is there any peace with Iran in the offing?
KP: on't think that you can share the region with the Iranians or that our allies can share the region with the Iranians, because the Iranians don't share. They're not interested in sharing, they want it all. Second, Obama made as good faith and effort to reach out to the Iranian leadership as it was possible to make. Iran will never have an American president more pro-Iran than Barack Obama. And they were uninterested, they squandered it, they slapped him in the face. And we need to learn the lesson, the Biden administration, the United States needs to learn the lesson that what this illustrates is Iran isn't interested in a better relationship with the United States.
Full transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
CTP Interactive map of Iran & Middle East
Why a ceasefire in Israel would backfire (Ken Pollack, The Hill, November 3 2023)
The Persian-Russian Connection (Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, Lawfare, October 26, 2023)
The 1973 War Analogy Is Deeper Than You Think (Kenneth Pollack, Foreign Policy, October 13, 2023)
A Big War That Won’t Inevitably Get Bigger (Kenneth Pollack, Foreign Affairs, October 12, 2023)
Excising the danger of peace in the Middle East (Kenneth Pollack, Al Majalla, October 11, 2023)
America’s Middle East allies are watching the debate over Ukraine aid (Kenneth Pollack, The Hill, October 10, 2023)
Hamas’ Unwanted Anniversary Present: Some Worrisome Changes since Israel’s 1973 War (Kenneth Pollack, The Messenger, October 8, 2023)
Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks (Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2023)
United States Undermines Deterrent Value of Its Strikes against Iran linked Targets (JINSA, October 27, 2023)
The Case for a Counter-Iran Coalition (JINSA, October 20 2023)
Iran, Turkey Call Meeting To Avert Spread Of Israel-Hamas War (NDTV, November 1, 2023)
After Years of Vowing to Destroy Israel, Iran Faces a Dilemma (NYTimes, November 1 , 2023)
Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim attacks on Israel, drawing their main sponsor Iran closer to Hamas war
Israel-Hamas War: Iran's Role and Comments (The Iran Primer, October 28, 2023)
Decoding Iran’s position on the Gaza war (Stimson Center, October 27, 2023)
Iran's Khamenei urges Muslim countries to boycott Israel (Reuters, November 1, 2023)
How Iran uses proxy forces across the region to strike Israel and US (The Guardian, November 1, 2023)
In Cyberattacks, Iran Shows Signs of Improved Hacking Capabilities (NYTimes, October 31, 2023)
Iran’s FM heads to Turkey as Erdogan slams 'Israel's barbarity' (Al-Monitor, October 31, 2023)
What China wants from Israel-Hamas war (BBC, October 31, 2023)
Putin is Getting What he Wants (NYTimes October 26, 2023)
Putin Says US Behind "Deadly Chaos" In Middle East (NDTV, October 31, 2023)
Putin slams West over Israel-Hamas war: 'They need chaos in Gaza & Middle East' (The Economic Times, October 31, 2023)
Combating the Networks of Illicit Finance and Terrorism (US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, October 26, 2023):