Last month, before the assassination of the Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad Airport, the IDF’s military intelligence branch presented the national annual intelligence assessment to the cabinet.
The briefing naturally focused heavily on Iran and its role in the region. It stressed that domestic unrest and the country’s economic situation would force the regime’s leadership to make difficult choices in 2020.
It is a conclusion that has been reinforced now that Soleimani, the man who implemented Iran’s regional policies over the past 22 years as leader of the Quds force, is suddenly gone.
Soleimani was seen by Israel as the man who interpreted the Islamic Revolution’s ideology into operational terms.
While officially subordinate to the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Hossein Salami, he had a direct line to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and was considered by many his closest advisor.
While Israel’s intelligence community is wary at this point of drawing sweeping conclusions from his sudden departure, the assassination has changed the way local Iran-watchers assess the region.
In recent years, there has been a power struggle in Tehran between the IRGC — which favours a more proactive and aggressive regional policy of heavy investment in pro-Iran proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Gaza Strip — and the faction led by President Hassan Rouhani, who wants to redirect Iran’s scarce resources and prop up the country’s sanctions-strapped domestic economy.
With Soleimani as the IRGC faction’s main champion, it would win the argument with the Supreme Leader, who authorised pouring billions into the proxies.
But with his death, and the fact that he was killed as a direct result of the United States pushing back against that policy, Israeli analysts believe the debate has re-opened in Tehran and Ayatollah Khamenei could be persuaded to change tack once again.
The one country where Soleimani was particularly considered Iran’s ultimate expert is Lebanon, where he has been working closely with Hezbollah since 1997.
Hezbollah’s estimated arsenal of 160,000 rockets and missiles is seen by Iran as way of deterring Israel from attacking its nuclear installations.
However, while the range of the longer-range missiles covers nearly all of Israeli territory, their targeting is relatively inaccurate. One of Soleimani’s most recent projects was a facility in Lebanon to upgrade the missiles’ guidance systems.
Israeli leaders have warned that should Iran and Hezbollah succeed in setting up such a facility, Israel could go to war against Lebanon in order to destroy it.
The warnings did not deter Soleimani but in his absence, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah will deal directly with Ayatollah Khamenei on the matter.
Should he believe that continuing the project could lead to a major conflict and wreak havoc on Lebanon, where Hezbollah is not only an Iranian proxy but also a key political player, he could advise Iran’s leader to abandon or at least suspend the guided missiles project.
