Israel is coming for Iran, and for its seven deadly sins.
Mossad’s cunning attack on Tuesday, targeting 4,000 plus Hezbollah operatives by ingeniously detonating pre-planted explosives in their pagers at 3:30 p.m., is proof enough that Jerusalem has had it with Tehran and its ongoing proxy war against Israel.
On Wednesday, the Mossad followed up with a second-round of explosions targeting “thousands of [walkie-talkie] radios and other devices used by the terrorist group.” It was Israel’s second reach-out-and-touch-someone moment. Hezbollah’s senior leadership got Jerusalem’s message: We are at war, and we are escalating.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, is vowing revenge. Ahead of Nasrallah’s scheduled speech today, his cousin, Hashem Safieddine, claimed, “These attacks will certainly be uniquely punished; there will be a bloodily unique revenge.” Coordinating that response may be difficult though. Hezbollah’s leadership is suddenly a bit gun-shy about pagers, cell phones and radios.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei surely got Israel’s message as well, given that Tuesday’s attack targeted and badly wounded Mojtaba Amani, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon.
Tehran has been playing with fire in Israel ever since Oct. 7, and is increasingly putting its nuclear weapons program at risk. Khamenei has badly miscalculated, as Israel’s strategic patience with Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-backed proxies has come to an end.
Although Hezbollah is Iran’s most pressing deadly sin, Oct. 7 was undoubtedly the most evil. The decision to help Hamas stage that attack may have been the beginning of the end for Khamenei and his regime, or at least for its far-reaching nuclear ambitions. Israel has systematically set about destroying Hamas, including boldly assassinating Ismail Haniyeh, its political chief, in downtown Tehran.
Oct. 7. opened the gates of Hell in Israel, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet are determined to close them. But not before Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s ruling regime permanently pass through them.
To get there, Netanyahu has been willing to defy President Biden, mostly notably entering Rafah in the Gaza Strip despite stark warnings by the Biden-Harris administration not to do so. Biden even declared in March, “[Rafah] is a red line.”
Washington should fully embrace Israel’s paging of Hezbollah and Iran. Israel is taking the fight to our enemies in the Middle East. It is fighting to win, to remove a threat, not content to defend into perpetuity.
Iran’s deadly sins are not merely Israel-centric. They are also aimed at the U.S. For too long, the Biden-Harris administration has allowed the Houthis to run amok as a deadly sin in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Houthi attacks continue against civilian and military targets. The IRGC-backed rebels even fired a ballistic missile last Sunday from Yemen that was destroyed in flight by Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome over central Israel. The likely intended target was Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport.
Iranian-controlled militias’ attacks on U.S. troops stationed in Syria, Iraq and Jordan comprise a fifth Iranian deadly sin. They have gone militarily unchecked as the Biden-Harris administration has taken a defensive approach. Consequently, U.S. soldiers and contractors have been killed and wounded, including U.S. Army Staff Sgt. William J. Rivers, Sgt. Kennedy Sanders and Sgt. Breonna Moffett.
They were killed when Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terror group, launched a drone in January into Tower 22, a U.S. military base in Jordan. More than 40 others were injured in the attack The attack on Tower 22 was only one of nearly 170 attacks on U.S. forces in Syria, Iraq and Jordan by Iran-sponsored terrorist groups since Oct. 7.
Iran’s deadly sins extend into Europe as well. Khamenei’s “Arsenals of Evil” partnership with Russian President Vladimir Putin has wreaked havoc in Ukraine. Almost daily, Iranian Shahed drones are used by Russia to attack Ukrainian civilian targets and vital infrastructure across the country, killing and wounding countless innocent Ukrainians in apartment buildings, town squares, hospitals and places of business since February 2022. Moreover, just last week, it was reported that Tehran had shipped for the first time deadly close-range ballistic missiles to Russia via the Caspian Sea — a significant escalation.
Perhaps Khamenei’s most tragic deadly sin is being perpetrated against Iran’s women. So-called morality police run wild throughout Iran, dealing out brutal reprisals for trivial offenses. Women are beaten, imprisoned, tried and in some cases have died as a result.
Mahsa Amini, only 22, was one such victim who died after being beaten by morality police for failing to properly wear a hijab. Amini’s death led to the Mahsa Amini Human Rights and Security Accountability Act signed into law in April by Biden. It requires the Executive branch to report to Congress and sanction Iranians responsible for human rights violations.
The Oct. 7 massacre, which prominently featured Hamas raping and murdering Israeli women, was a bloody reminder of how little the Iranian regime values women. This is a deadly sin Iran readily seeks to export across the Middle East.
Israel cannot check every Iranian deadly sin, but its seventh and deadliest sin is one that Jerusalem is determined to destroy: Khamenei’s nuclear weapons program. Tehran is on the verge of a nuclear breakout, and the Pentagon is no longer able to confirm that Iran’s nuclear program is not intended for military purposes.
Indeed, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported in July that Khamenei is doing everything consistent with weaponizing his nuclear program — and “installing [even] more advanced centrifuges, further increasing its [highly enriched uranium] stockpile.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken underscored this, saying Iran only needs “one or two weeks” to build a bomb. In actuality, it is probably more like four days, five bombs.
Iran’s nuclear deadly sin is a mortal sin — a potentially decisive, game-changing and game-over sin. Neither Washington nor Jerusalem can afford to let that happen.
Netanyahu was clear when he delivered his remarks to the U.N. General Assembly in 2018, “I also have a message today for the tyrants of Tehran. Israel knows what you’re doing, and Israel knows where you’re doing it. Israel will never let a regime that calls for our destruction to develop nuclear weapons. Not now, not in 10 years, not ever.”
Israel paging Hezbollah was a good start. Now it is time to page Tehran and put a decisive end to all of Iran’s deadly sins.
Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer.