The lessons after ten days of Iran-Israel conflict - analysis

Israel and Iran faced off in ten days of conflict this month. This is a conflict that was driven by Iranian-backed groups, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank. These ten days of clashes followed Syrian and Iranian media reports of Israeli airstrikes in Syria and also were bookended by Iranian threats to US forces in Syria.

It’s worth looking back at these ten days to see what lessons might be learned. It’s also possible these ten days were only a prelude to another round of conflict. Time will tell how important the April 2023 tensions were.  

Similarities to March 2021

One of the key takeaways from the clashes in early April is that it has striking similarity to the way Iran helped create similar clashes in May 2021, during a different ten day conflict. The conflict in May 2021 took place after Ramadan tensions led to clashes in Jerusalem and Hamas claimed it had a right to fire rockets at Israel in response.

This is the usual Hamas rhetoric about “responding,” but the overall point is that Israel had the experience of the May 2021 conflict to look at in focusing on the April 2023 tensions. It’s not clear if the lessons of 2021 were learned and this appears to have enabled another round this year.  

Considering how the May 2021 conflict unfolded it does not appear Hamas, Hezbollah, PIJ or Iran feel deterred. This problem has been noted in other reports we have had at the Post in recent days. One lesson then is that Iran is trying to strengthen the groups it backs and expand their area of operations. READ MORE