A year after perhaps the worst military and intelligence debacle in the country’s history, its armed forces have regained the momentum. Some ask: to what end?
When thousands of Hamas-led gunmen breached the Gaza border last Oct. 7 and overran Israeli communities, army bases and a music festival, victims of the surprise assault sent desperate messages to loved ones from their hiding places and safe rooms.
“Where is the army?” they asked as they waited long hours to be rescued. For the many hundreds of those killed, the army came too late, if at all.
A year after perhaps the worst military and intelligence debacle in Israel’s history, the military is rehabilitating its image as a formidable regional power. It has penetrated the most secret and secure bastions of its archenemies with intelligence-based precision strikes, eliminated key leaders, pounded away at their assets, and largely thwarted their efforts to mount a response.
In a bombing on Friday, Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, with a strike on an underground bunker in a dense urban area near Beirut where the militant group holds sway. The military code name for the operation was New Order, hinting at Israel’s ambitious goals of changing the reality across its borders and undermining Iran’s use of proxies to surround it with a so-called ring of fire.
Now fighting on multiple fronts, Israel’s air defenses, with help from U.S.-led allies, largely blocked a huge retaliatory attack on Tuesday when Iran fired a barrage of nearly 200 missiles at Israel.
Israel’s vow to make Iran pay a heavy price for that attack suggests that the Israeli military is becoming less reluctant to engage in a broader regional war.
