The US and Israel Have Sent the 'Ball' into Iran's Court

Amid increasing internal pressures against the religious government of Iran, the introduction of General Nitzan Alon as the first 'Iran Project Manager' in the Israeli Ministry of Defense is a significant event within the framework of Washington-Tel Aviv cooperation to counter the regional provocations of the Islamic Republic. Over the past two months, the Israeli government has repeatedly targeted the military forces of the Islamic Republic within Syrian territory with airstrikes, inflicting heavy casualties on their personnel and equipment. The Trump administration viewed Israel's military operations in Syria as a preemptive defense and a right to self-defense, whereas the previous US administration had always urged Tel Aviv to exercise restraint regarding Syria. Another aspect of the US-Israel cooperation concerning the religious government of Iran, which has not been officially announced, is the intensification of internal crises, widespread protests, and the use of opportunities by US and Israeli officials to express sympathy with the Iranian people and condemn the actions of the Islamic Republic. Since John Bolton's appointment as National Security Advisor at the White House, various news reports have emerged about his meetings with Meir Ben-Shabbat, Israel's National Security Advisor, in Washington, and in addition to Donald Trump's frequent use of 'Twitter diplomacy,' Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has sent two video messages regarding water issues and the success of the Iranian football team. The new Washington-Tel Aviv cooperation is based on the assumption that increasing internal tensions could influence the external behaviors of the Iranian government and gradually lead to their moderation or even cessation. The Obama administration separated the Iranian government from the Islamic Republic's system and claimed that strengthening pragmatists and moderates would be a means to moderate the government's regional behaviors, while the Trump administration has placed the entire system in one basket and is determined to weaken it by any means possible. Some analysts close to the internal reformist spectrum characterize the Islamic Republic's foreign policy as non-ideological and pragmatic, while the eight-year war with Iraq, the creation of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and the motivations for military presence in the Syrian civil war, which are generally influenced by the ideological orientations of the regime, testify to the weak reasoning of this view. The Islamic Republic is an ideological system, and its foreign policy and actions, relative to the resources it has at its disposal, have always sought to export the revolution, strengthen the Shia crescent from Tehran to Beirut, and oppose Israel. Regardless of being labeled as moderate, hardline, principlist, or reformist, the government in the Islamic Republic is part of the ideological system of Iran and cannot be considered a separate entity. The expansion of Iran's political and military activities in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen over the past two years, using the country's financial resources and frozen assets, along with the Rouhani administration's silence in preventing the increasing military presence of Quds forces in regional security tensions and proxy wars, indicates that the US has erred in its past assessments of the Iranian government. The correspondence of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the regime's foreign forces, addressed to Hassan Rouhani, expressing gratitude for the hardline propaganda positions taken during his three-day trip to Switzerland and Austria, clearly shows that the entire system, especially in a crisis situation, stands together. The Islamic Republic's hardline stances against Israel, the US, and its regional allies are ideological, and military presence in Syria and Lebanon is also aimed at implementing the theory of 'keeping the enemy occupied at borders far from Iran.' The new US plan to keep the Iranian government more occupied domestically is a reverse engineering of Iran's defensive theory to 'keep the enemy occupied in areas far from Iran's borders.' In the past, several regional countries attempted to create internal crises in Iran's peripheral provinces using its ethnic composition, but due to the lack of practical support from Washington, the depth of Iran's security defense, which the government also enjoys, and the continued opening of financial and economic breathing channels for the regime, along with the continuation of oil exports and earning foreign currency revenues for the government, these plans did not succeed. With the change of government in the US and the resulting shift in the geopolitical situation of the region, the policy of keeping the religious regime of Iran occupied domestically, while simultaneously applying maximum pressure on its foreign positions, has been implemented in close cooperation between Washington and Tel Aviv. The announcement of the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA and the re-imposition of sanctions by its Treasury Department after the 90 and 180-day periods (August 4 and November 4, 2018) and the consequences of imposing banking sanctions (despite a recent European Parliament resolution allowing European banks to interact with Iran), preventing foreign investments and trade relations of companies with Iran, and especially the imposition of oil sanctions aimed at disabling the regime's financial levers and keeping it more occupied domestically have been carried out. Anticipating potential retaliatory reactions from the Islamic Republic, including Hassan Rouhani's implicit threat to block the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a complete halt to Iran's oil exports during his recent trip to Switzerland and Austria, Israeli security and military cooperation with the US regarding Iran has increased. The elevation of the level of attention to Iranian affairs in the Israeli government, which had been focused on the security organization since Ariel Sharon's time until Netanyahu's government, and the transfer of the 'Iran file' to the Ministry of Defense and its renaming to 'Iran Project' under the management of a prominent Israeli general, who may assume the position of Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Armed Forces in the coming months, indicates a change in the level of sensitivity and importance of managing Iranian affairs at a new level. The new responsibilities of Nitzan Alon in Israel regarding Iran are roughly equivalent to the responsibilities held by Michael D'Andrea in the Central Intelligence Agency, who is referred to as 'Ayatollah Mike.' Since last June, prior to Mike Pompeo's transfer to the US State Department, he has been in charge of 'CIA's covert operations regarding Iran.' The department under his supervision is responsible for American drone operations in the region. Last week, open Israeli sources reported on the trip of General Gadi Eisenkot, along with General Nitzan Alon, who until that day was in charge of the army's operational management, to Washington and their meetings and discussions with US military commanders, including General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States. Some observers see the elevation of the confrontation level with the Islamic Republic in both the US and Israel and the transfer of the approach to dealing with the Tehran government from a covert form in the past to conventional administrative and security management circles as a result of the increased sensitivity of the new situation; a situation where the hypothesis of military confrontation with Iran is by no means ignored.