Abstract
“The endgame in the decade-long global confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program is arriving…For most of those seven years, the prevailing assumption among Israeli and American intelligence agencies has been that an Israeli attack on Iran would trigger a coordinated response from Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, resulting in a full-blown regional war and mass casualties in Israel as well as among American troops stationed in the Middle East… This assumption was at the heart of former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan’s analysis and his ultimately public recommendation that Israel refrain from a military strike.2 But at the very moment when Tehran may be counting on its decades of investment in the two Islamist militant groups to pay its largest dividends, the upheaval in the Arab world has shuffled the deck. The current strife in Syria has sent ripple effects from the Mediterranean Sea to the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the Axis of Resistance and nominally placing Hamas and Hezbollah on different sides of the fissures that have blown open in the Arab and Muslim worlds. This geopolitical reorientation presents an opportunity for Israel and the United States to reclaim the upper hand in regional deterrence–if they are willing to act quickly and modify their own regional strategies.”
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