Opinion | Benny Gantz: What the World Needs to Understand About Iran

Oct. 7, 2023, marked the worst tragedy for the state of Israel and the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Some 1,200 people were murdered in Israel, and approximately 250 people were taken hostage on a single day; 101 of those souls are still held captive in Gaza. Hezbollah in Lebanon began its attack on the north of Israel the very next day, forcing nearly 70,000 Israelis from their homes. Iran, launching attacks first on April 13 and again on Oct. 1, has sent millions of Israelis into the safety of their shelters.

A year later, one must ask: What were Hamas’s leaders hoping for, and what are Iran’s leaders seeking to achieve?

What the Israeli military and political establishment failed to understand, in part, was the extent to which Hamas was driven by the goal of waging religious war. “The intel was there, but I underestimated the jihadi component of Hamas’s and Sinwar’s calculus,” a senior Israel Defense Forces intelligence commander told me early in the war, referring to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader.

We also failed to act on the warning on the extent to which Hamas interpreted Israel’s domestic instability as a weakness that would impede Israel’s resolve and ability to respond to an attack. Intelligence has since shown how the heads of Hamas believed that at our weakest, we would not be capable of uniting.

According to Hamas’s plan, after its attack on Israel, the remaining components of Iran’s axis of evil — Hamas in the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Shiite militias in Syria, Iraq and Iran — would join in a regional war with the ultimate goal of destroying the one and only Jewish state. A secret Hamas document reportedly uncovered in Gaza testified to such assertion: Written by the Hamas leader on Jan. 8, 2023, in it he claimed to have received a commitment from Iran that the axis would join the attack against Israel once Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood plan to invade Israel was activated.

So three rationales stood behind Hamas’s attack: jihadi fanaticism, an assessment that Israel was at a point of weakness and loyalty to Iran and its axis of evil. It is for these reasons that Oct. 7 and Iran’s subsequent attacks on Israel must serve as a stark warning to the region and the world regarding the Islamic republic’s uncompromising intentions and its outlook on the West.

Iran’s religious leadership is devoted to exporting its fundamentalist ideology, driven by the pursuit of hegemony and captivated by the thought of its opponents’ violent subjugation. I ask that other nations not make the same mistake we made and underestimate this component of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s calculus.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has established around Israel, neighboring states and international forces in the region a “ring of fire” of terrorist armies with capabilities comparable with those of nations. They have tens of thousands of rockets, drones and commando forces ready for attack. The same capabilities with which Iran targets Israel were previously used by Tehran and its proxies against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen. Furthermore, while it consistently displays acts of regional aggression, it continues to rush to acquire nuclear capabilities, covertly and overtly.

Hamas’s leader and Ayatollah Khamenei share the same ambition: to annihilate Israel. But Ayatollah Khamenei only had greater strategic patience, leading him to a different conclusion on the right time to launch a full-scale attack on my nation. Make no mistake: Iran is preparing, building and waiting for the right moment of weakness to pounce. It did so in Lebanon, using Hezbollah to exploit the state’s economic hardships to strengthen the organization’s national foothold. It did the same in Syria, amid the havoc of Syria’s civil war. It did so in Yemen as well, exploiting the political vacuum and dire humanitarian conditions, and is currently expanding its reach, exploiting the instability of Africa’s Sahel region.

In a post-Oct. 7 reality, it is clear that Israel must — and the world should — be proactive and determined in the face of the threat the Iranian regime poses to Israel’s existence and the region’s future. The world cannot overlook Iran’s role in the strangling of freedom of navigation and the harming of global commerce in the Red Sea or its technological and military support for Russia in Ukraine. The regime and its axis must face a strong and united Middle East, led and supported by the United States, that is ready to take the initiative to prevent the realization of the Iranian vision of a regional Oct. 7. Now is the time to bolster regional cooperation and make a broad effort to confront Iran.

On the military front: Governments must engage forcefully and proactively with Iranian aggression and systematically degrade its proxy capabilities. This is the responsibility Israel has undertaken this week in its military action against Hezbollah and the Houthis and as it weighs how to respond to Iran’s latest missile attack. We must also prepare for the right moment to remove the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon, should that clear red line be crossed.

On the regional front: We must strengthen the regional architecture founded on the Middle Eastern Air Defense (MEAD) mechanism and the Abraham Accords. We should continue developing Middle Eastern aerial coordination while exploring the prospects of offensive coordination to be deployed if and when needed.

On the economic front: Nations must cut off the financial pipeline that funds terrorism by strengthening sanctions, targeting key Iranian industries and pursuing its assets abroad.

On the legal front: Governments that have not done so already should place the Islamic republic and its branches, including the Revolutionary Guards, on their terrorist lists. They should also stamp out Iranian cells operating globally.

On the political front: They should empower the Iranian opposition and isolate the Iranian regime in major international forums.

Such a concerted campaign will require time and resources and a solemn, enduring, united commitment. Israel, along with Ukraine and Taiwan, is a democratic outpost threatened by an axis of subversion. If one falls, a domino effect will ensue, and nations caught in between will need to choose a side.

Israel experienced its most painful tragedy on Oct. 7 but also underwent a ringing awakening: A fundamentalist terrorist state cannot acquire lethal capabilities and be expected to act rationally, as we once expected of Hamas. As someone who has served as Israel’s minister of defense and the 20th chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, I believe Israel is the strongest nation in the Middle East, fighting a just war for the nation’s future and its citizens, and that’s why it will emerge victorious.

Israel learned the lesson of Oct. 7; we now bear the responsibility of sharing the lesson with the world. The time to act against Iran is now. It’s not only a matter of necessity for Israel but also one of strategic imperative for the region and moral clarity for the world for the sake of peace and prosperity in the Middle East.

Benny Gantz is a former Israel minister of defense and is the chairman of the National Unity Party.

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