Summer Said and Benoit Faucon
WSJ, Apr. 14, 2023
“Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli national security adviser, said Iran was seeking to spur allies like Hezbollah and Hamas “to act more boldly” in the face of perceived Israeli weakness.”
The long shadow war between Iran and Israel is moving into an unpredictable new phase after one of the Islamic Republic’s most powerful military commanders began rallying allies across the Middle East to launch a fresh wave of attacks on Israeli targets.
People familiar with the discussions said Esmail Qaani, who leads the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, has held a series of clandestine meetings with militant leaders across the region in recent weeks, including some operating in Syria and Iraq.
The Quds Force chief was in Lebanon last week, where he met with the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad at the Iranian embassy in Beirut, the people said. Around the same time, militants in southern Lebanon fired a barrage of rockets at Israel, the largest such attack since the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. … [To read the full article, click here]
