Given the events which have unfolded over the past few days, it seems we can ascribe new meaning to the phrase “every dog has its day.”
Fouad Shukr, the Hezbollah terrorist commander who orchestrated the Majdal Shams massacre wherein a 50-kilo warhead carried by an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket landed on a soccer pitch in northern Israel, murdering 12 children, has been assassinated by the Israeli Air Force in a strike in a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon.
On the heels of Shukr’s assassination, the world learned of yet another major development in this conflict.
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader, was assassinated in Tehran, shortly after attending the inauguration of Masoud Pezeshkian as Iran’s new president. Though the Israeli government has not claimed responsibility, Iran has vowed to take revenge against Israel.
Further, U. S. officials at the Pentagon have confirmed that it appears as though Iran and its proxies will launch a large-scale, coordinated attack in the coming days.
In an exclusive interview for the Toronto Sun, Eylon Levy, former Israeli government spokesman and co-founder of the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office, notes the magnitude of these assassinations.
“If Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, and it hasn’t officially taken responsibility, this would be the most stunning and audacious targeted killing of a terrorist mastermind in world history,” he says.
“It took the U.S. 10 years to find bin Laden, five years to find Abubakar al-Baghdadi, and Israel, it appears, has killed Haniyeh on day 299 of the war. (It is as if it were) June 2002, and we just killed bin Laden in the heart of Tehran on the night of the Iranian president’s inauguration, and straight after killing the head of Hezbollah’s military in Lebanon,” explains Levy.
Denoting this assertion, Levy continues, “One audacious killing of a terrorist behind enemy lines is a statement. Two in the space of 12 hours is a remarkable demonstration of Israel’s reach and its commitment that it doesn’t matter how long it takes, and it doesn’t matter how far away you are, if you are the mastermind of barbaric terrorist atrocities against our people we will get to you.”
But a question looms: What sort of Iranian response can we expect? Levy believes there are several possibilities. He explains that Iran will have to respond to the assassination of their terrorist proxy leader on their own soil.
Just a few short months ago, when one of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders was killed in a Damascus-based consulate building, they responded on April 13 “with 350 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles which were mostly intercepted thanks to the support of Israel’s allies.”
While this was their chosen course of action previously, it is but one possibility in the list of potential reprisals. Other potentialities noted by Levy include a coordinated Hamas-Houthi-Hezbolla assault, and assassination attempts on Israeli politicians and diplomats both foreign and domestic.
But the question of how Iran will respond perpetuates an inaccurate narrative. Levy notes that the assassination of Haniyeh does not mark spillage into Iranian territory of the war between Israel and Hamas, rather he claims “Oct. 7 was the opening shot of Iran’s regional war against Israel. Since Oct. 7, Israel has been fighting for its life against the Iranian regime and its proxy armies on seven fronts — eight fronts including attacks on Jews in the Diaspora.”
The seven fronts to which Levy refers are “Gaza, Lebanon where Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy army, has fired 6,500 rockets and drones and displaced tens of thousands of Israelis, Yemen, which has fired over 200 missiles and drones at Israel, one of them having crashed into a building in Tel Aviv recently, attacks from the West Bank, from Syria, from Iraq, and attacks from Iran itself, Iran has surrounded Israel with a ring of fire and wants to watch it burn.
“So the question of how Iran responds is important, but let’s not be mistaken into thinking Iran will now need to get involved in the conflict, because this is Iran’s conflict.”
Now, if we are talking about getting involved in the conflict, we must discuss Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has rather inexplicably threatened Israel with invasion.
“President Erdogan has clearly lost the plot if, as a NATO member no less, he is threatening Israel with an invasion. This didn’t come out of the blue; he has been using hatred for Israel and anti-Semitism as a cudgel to whip up domestic support and compensate for his unpopularity. He has hosted Hamas leaders on his soil.”
He says he hopes that “his increasingly unhinged remarks will cause some serious rethinking among other NATO members about whether Turkey should be in NATO.”
Levy addresses accusations of genocide and Israel’s military conduct, noting that Hamas tactics force Israel into difficult situations.
“It’s true that we have seen a huge amount of human suffering in Gaza, that is happening because their psychopathic leaders declared a needless war and decided to fight this war inside a open areas, deliberately hiding their military infrastructure under schools and homes and mosques and hospitals and UN facilities.”
Levy says he is “trying to shake the West by the shoulders and make people realize that Israel is fighting the common enemies of the free world, that Iran is attacking Israel as a way of attacking the West, that it wants to weaken Israel to weaken the West, to hurt Israel to hurt the West.
“The propaganda war against Israel is designed to hoodwink people in allied democracies to abandon their ally in the Middle East,” he adds.
— Currently in Israel, Jonathan Kahane has a Bachelor of Arts (Hon.) degree in forensic psychology and is currently studying applied neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London