Why Iran convinced Hamas to commit suicide (Part 1)
Tehran has meticulously assessed the consequences, but will not achieve the desired results, and this is not a problem for the Iranians
The following text is the first part of an in-depth study divided into two sections.
This is also an update of the in-depth study on regional balances in the Middle East "The New Face of War/Part 1."
“Yalla”
In the early morning hours of October 7, 2023, more than a thousand militiamen belonging to various paramilitary groups in the Gaza Strip carried out a series of coordinated assaults across the Israeli border.
They quickly took control of more than a score of settlements, killing more than a thousand Israeli civilians in deliberately bloody neo-medieval ways so as to unleash the anger of the population of the invaded country and force the Netanyahu government onto disadvantageous premises.
Once what were essentially indiscriminate looting, provocation and murder activities supported by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were carried out, the Palestinian paramilitary groups retreated toward the Gaza Strip with initially a few hundred hostages (later reduced to a bit more than 200 due to indiscriminate killings), leaving behind some commandos for suicide attacks and to maintain control of some conquered territories.
Many elements of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, however, remain difficult to fit properly into the puzzle of Hamas and Iran's intentions.
The use and possession of ammunition and weapons most likely from Ukraine (although the suspicion remains that Russia sent captured equipment from Kiev forces to Hamas, rather than a possible purchase by Palestinians on the black market) and certainly from Afghanistan is already well documented, and so is the co-presence of North Korean war material.
Addititionally, not only the war support of Russia and China (with the latter having to have facilitated the transport of weapons from the Korean peninsula) is extremely likely, but the continued use of short- and medium-range missiles by Hamas, and long-range ones by other groups, signals the full involvement of Iranian unconventional warfare assets, which have provided equipment through underground tunnels in Gaza and lessons on low-cost missile production (both over the past few years and in recent weeks).
But if the Iranians have already given the green light to many paramilitary groups financed and trained by the IRGC, and coordinated according to some even by the Quds Force itself (division specializing in unconventional warfare and clandestine operations), then why hasn't Hezbollah, the most powerful Shiite paramilitary group on the border with Israel, immediately gone to war.
Because Tehran lied to Hamas, first launching it to suicide and then waiting to see the reaction of the entire Middle East and North Africa (macro-region described by many by the acronym MENA), with the aim of laying the groundwork for a long-term unconventional war even within the West.
Demonstrating this is the decision of Hamas forces and other groups to remain on some conquered territories, probably waiting for an offensive from the north (Lebanon-Israel border) by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah's offensive has so far failed to materialize.
All this does not prohibit Iran from actively aiming for its direct involvement in addition to that of the paramilitary groups it supports through the IRGC, yet the more time that passes since the outbreak of hostilities the less likely it seems.
In all this, it is important to emphasize how highly credible the possible presence of the Quds Force is and how consequently the risk can become one where the line between unconventional and conventional warfare becomes first blurred then nonexistent.
By this we mean that the Iranians could gradually insert more and more IRGC troops on multiple Middle Eastern fronts in the form of members of the paramilitary groups that Iran controls or supports.
It would also lead to the eruption of multiple outbreaks of hybrid/unconventional confrontations with eventual evolution into overt open conflicts with factions of all kinds and backgrounds involved.
In other words, the Iranians could detonate all sorts of balances across the Middle East with the aim of expelling the renewed presence of United States troops and taking control of regions or states, thus placing Israel in a defensive position on a new direction.
This is precisely why the suspicion emerges that, taking into consideration the events currently unfolding, Tehran's interest was not to wage a full-fledged war, but to drag out the confrontation as long as possible, to use the (approximately) 220 hostages in the hands of Hamas as a tool to prolong the conflict, gain intelligence and put pressure on the opposing front.
This is in the hope of blowing up a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel and aggravating the position of the latter state in the eyes of the international community.
However, by throwing Hamas into the jaws of the Israelis, it is unlikely that Ryiad will end up truly backtracking regarding its rapprochement with Israel, and with the United States becoming less and less involved in the Middle East Tel Aviv will be a long-term adversary regardless of Iranian actions.
The problem for Tel Aviv/Jerusalem is that, even under these conditions, the balance is not as positive as it might appear.
Shadow games, conscious and unconscious targets
In organizing the October 7 attack, Tehran weighed the options available to it and reached a conclusion that we have already outlined repeatedly.
However, we will reiterate what the decision fork was because in terms of unconventional warfare strategy and geopolitics the plan was frankly a masterpiece.
Aware of the precariousness of the Palestinian position (that would be the population of the Gaza strip from a strictly political/self-determination perspective), Iran preferred to use Hamas to wage a contained war and test Israeli and Western capabilities. In the process Tehran provided Hamas with all the resources it needed for a long siege so it could study and possibly prod and or insert itself into the conflict at a later date.
Here we come to the focal point.
Possible Iranian entry directly into the pseudo-conventional conflict between Hamas and Israel has limited relevance and might be of interest only to compound possible U.S. humiliation. In the meantime, Tehran can obtain first-rate intelligence on Israeli capabilities (providing it to Russia and China), put pressure on U.S. military force projection capabilities, and influence with unconventional warfare tactics four continents.
Indeed, in unleashing Israeli anger and trying to blow up an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Tel Aviv/Jerusalem, the Iranians have succeeded in reversing the propaganda balance regarding the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (previously stabilized by the Abraham Agreements) and opening up recruitment among the Sunni population in North America, Europe, MENA and Asia.
In doing so, they gained the ability to infiltrate into a wide variety of contexts, including leveraging the sense of alienation of many migrants from the countries involved in the Arab Spring and laying the groundwork for influencing possible new movements within the Sunni reality. Shiites generally hate Sunnis, and the same can be said in reverse, but the now certainly continuous clash between Hamas and Israel (desired by both sides) ensures that Tehran has fertile ground to emphasize the importance of the closeness between the two interpretative matrices of the Qur'an in order to be able to fight injustices against the Umma (Islamic community).
And the punitive element of Israeli activities can hardly be denied, since the Tel Aviv/Jerusalem authorities themselves have been doing nothing but emphasizing just that since the events of Oct. 7.
Reflexively, all this is the perfect assist for Tehran.
Iran is aware that it has a long list of internal issues including: the centrifugal drives of various secularized or religious ethnic groups within its territory, the internal clashes within the various institutions that preceded or emerged from the 1979 Islamic revolution and are competing, the rejection of religious fundamentalist principles by much of Iran's youth often in favor of Western secularist values, etc.
The Tehran regime's solution is now simply to entrust the management of most of these problems to the IRGC using a simple tool: repression in all its forms.
A further element of this approach is the transfer of many young people recruited or paid by the IRGC as informants to the most disparate territories as liaison agents between Iran and the various paramilitary groups it supports.
In short: suppress dissent inside Iran by pushing dissidents and young people trained to influence other countries of interest to Tehran outside of everyday normalcy.
The strategy has so far worked like a charm.
Evidence of this, on the domestic front, is precisely the continued failure of protests in Iran, despite a partial success in reviving the Iranian diaspora in the West with the demonstrations that took place between 2022 and 2023 over the murder of Mahsa Amini, so as to foster a transition supported by the Pahlavi dynasty last representative of the office of Shah of Persia.
Tehran has had to pretend giving up some ground on various fronts, but from a western prospective the focus of attention should be on the continued successes of violent repression, not on the softening of civil resistance after some concessions that the regime authorities themselves took back shortly thereafter.
On the external front, the successes are even greater. Beyond the occasional terrorist attacks facilitated by the IRGC/Quds Force on Western, Arab and Israeli terriories, economic penetration within Western states is massive with the exception of a few countries.
Germany, France, the United States, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Canada, and Denmark are just a few of the countries where Iranian investments have found fertile ground, very often through front men from Qatar, Malta, Cyprus, Switzerland, etc. Needless to say, then, all this took place with the blessing of large sections of the European elite who were and remain stubbornly convinced that they could honestly dialogue with the Iranian regime, if not even risk becoming a target (which may have happened in the case of Spanish center-right politician Alejo Vidal-Quadras).
We have often denounced these connections through the years, aware of how they were based on a myopic and naive view.
We would also like to emphasize that our goal is not to draw a parallel between economic connections involving Russia and the EU and those between the EU and Iran.
Economic ties between the EU and Iran tend to be clandestine due to an even harsher sanctions regime than that on Russia already reimposed on Iran after the collapse of the JCPOA nuclear deal.
At this point we have entered a completely different phase, with the beginning of the collapse of the post-World War II Middle East scaffolding and dialogues and clashes between underground political entities of mainly religious matrix across the entire MENA region.
Thus, proposing the imposition of a sanctions regime on Iran similar to that favored by Washington against Moscow with the outbreak of war in Ukraine seems to us frankly unnecessary.
Precisely with this in mind, we believe that Israel will continue with the dismantling of Hamas (an idea that has already been discussed extensively in recent years), but is unlikely in any way to go about partially neutralizing Iran as was previously discussed to be done during the Trump administration.
This also creates more of an immediate security problem for Europe than for Israel, as evidenced by the cyberattacks involving the French judiciary in 2022 and in July 2023, in conjunction with the Nahel Merzouk death demonstrations.
The two attacks do not appear to have been perpetrated by the same actor, but the second event was likely supported by the Iranians and is a perfect example of destabilization and hybrid warfare. Especially given the publication of the judiciary's personal data (home address, phone number, income, name, family information, etc.) at the same time as violent demonstrations against the French judiciary were taking place.
In conjunction with the event, the authorities of France proceeded with a not particularly forward-looking campaign of threats regarding the use of spyware against the demonstrators, aware of how within five minutes gangs armed to the teeth had access to extremely sensitive information.
To date, Paris still argues with little consistency that the magistrates' data was outdated and unreliable information, has taken some steps backward regarding the massive use of spyware, but has still authorized its use by the police under a mandate from the judiciary, and continues to try to remove almost all forms of encryption from the Internet with Article 45 of the European Union's eIDAS 2.0 regulations under discussion.
Put another way, Paris continues to propose laws that do not work in order to pretend to solve a problem it cannot handle.
The eIDAS 2.0 regulation was not necessarily designed ONLY to address the surge in terrorist activity on French soil.
And that is precisely the problematic rift between Israel and the EU.
Israel will somehow manage to put a cap on Hamas activities, while the question remains as to how its shadow war with Iran will proceed and whether this confrontation will continue to remain an underground phenomenon. As already pointed out, the indications seem to be that Tehran will continue to operate through the IRGC, destabilizing various nations in the Middle East in order to take control of them, while at the same time studying an attack against the United States with the aim of humiliating Washington while hurting it as little as possible.
That is because the Iranians are interested first and foremost in manipulating U.S. public opinion without unleashing its most aggressive instincts, and even by unleashing its most aggressive instincts, polls show, the U.S. population would not be particularly interested in a new involvement in the Middle East.
But what about Europe?
Well, it is not in the best of situations. As evidenced by the scandal known in italy as “Qatargate” lobbying activities in Brussels have far exceeded certain red lines. All this is just the tip of the iceberg, but at this point a solution to the well-known internal malpractice in the EU institutions becomes quite irrelevant.
As we have already mentioned in various in-depth reviews, the Asian powers (Russia, China, Iran) are now on the warpath, and these are only preparations for much broader war activities, also motivated by reasons of internal instability and insecurity among all three players.
All of this is in line with our predictions.
Much less in line with our predictions is a very simple implication that most European capitals, in their endless masochistic tendency, have managed to achieve by pressuring Washington not to act: Iran has nuclear devices.