Iran Ready to Fight Israel Until the Last Palestinian

A few thoughts concerning Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense. (Yes, this is for you, McLean and Arlington.)

After eight days of fighting between Israel and Hamas, the cease-fire is temporary. The Hamas charter continues to call for the murder of all Jews (not just Israelis) and rejects negotiation of any peace agreement with Israel. The Hamas charter will not be amended.

Although Hamas is claiming victory, Gaza's terror infrastructure has again been shattered by the fighting. Although Hamas and friends are still thought to have more than 8,000 medium and short-range missiles and rockets, most of their long-range Fajr-5 missiles were destroyed on the ground.

Iran throughout the fighting continued its efforts to resupply Hamas with new Grad missiles via Sudan to the tunnels leading from Egypt into Gaza. It is now up to Egypt, i.e. Egyptian President Morsi, to decide whether he will continue to allow the missiles to be smuggled into Gaza.

Iran's surrogate in Lebanon, Hezbollah, did not fire a single rocket at Israel in support of Hamas during the recent fighting. Although Hezbollah's leader Nasrallah also claimed victory after a month of fighting with Israel in 2006, he was not willing to risk another showdown with the Israel Defense Forces, which then destroyed much of his Beirut enclave.

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system proved a remarkable success with interceptions in excess of 80%. Without Iron Dome, Israel's ground forces would have necessarily been forced to enter Gaza during this round of fighting, which in turn would have resulted in a much higher number of Palestinian civilian casualties.

Israel is in urgent need of additional Iron Dome batteries to protect against missiles from Lebanon. Although the Hamas long-range missile threat has at least temporarily been defanged, a possible three-front war with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran will require Iron Dome batteries in both Israel's south and north.

The fighting between Israel and Hamas served Iran's interests. The world's attention was distracted from the civil war in Syria, where Iranian ally Bashar al-Assad is holding on to power by a thread. Shiite Iran is clearly willing to encourage Hamas to continue fighting Israel until the last Sunni Palestinian remains standing.