Iran's Deadly Ambition. Ilan Berman

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СКАЧАТЬ want “an extremist Sunni regime running their eastern neighbor . . . but they don’t want us to succeed too easily either.”³⁴ Nevertheless, Iran’s assistance helped bolster the capabilities of Afghan insurgent groups, at significant cost measured in U.S. and Afghan lives.

      The Obama administration’s announcement in mid-2011 of plans for a formal exit from Afghanistan kicked Iran’s efforts into high gear. By the following year, Western observers noted the “soft power” gains made by the Islamic Republic. An October 2012 expose in the Wall Street Journal disclosed that Iran was “funding aid projects and expanding intelligence networks across Afghanistan” in anticipation of coalition withdrawal, using proxies such as the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee as agents of influence.³⁵ The formula employed by Iran was simple and effective. It offered economic aid in the form of loans, stipends, and medical supplies in exchange for loyalty and actionable intelligence on coalition activities.³⁶

      The fruits of Iran’s labor became visible in August 2013, when the two countries signed the Afghanistan-Iran Strategic Cooperation Agreement.³⁷ The significance of the deal, and the message behind it, was unmistakable: a year and a half before the coalition’s exit, Kabul already understood that Tehran, not Washington, was the long-term power broker in Southwest Asia.

      So it remains. Afghanistan’s tumultuous election in October 2014 may have seen the rise of a new president, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, and a new power-sharing coalition in Kabul, but Iran’s influence remains significant, and so does the control it exerts over Afghanistan’s political trajectory. Ghani himself said as much in September 2014, when he told visiting Iranian vice president Hossein Shariatmadari that “Afghanistan relations with other countries shall not undermine its relations with Iran,” and that “no countries will face any threat from the soil of Afghanistan.”³⁸

       A WAR ON ISRAEL

      In the summer of 2014, a new round of hostilities broke out between Israel and the Hamas terrorist movement in the Gaza Strip. Over the course of some fifty days, Hamas rained hundreds of rockets down on Israeli cities and towns, terrorizing the country’s population and precipitating a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s military forces.

      When the dust cleared, the two sides reached what Israeli officials termed a “strategic tie.”³⁹ The Israeli government proved the operational effectiveness of its new Iron Dome missile defense system, which successfully destroyed an estimated 85 percent of incoming projectiles. Israel’s subsequent incursion into the Gaza Strip, too, yielded tangible benefits, allowing the Israeli military to identify and eradicate most (although not all) of Hamas’s “terror tunnels” and, in the process, foil at least one major planned attack.⁴⁰

      But the benefits were arguably greater for Hamas, for whom the conflict was nothing short of a bid for continued relevance. Indeed, before the war, the group was on the ropes, both politically and economically. This was an unexpected development: Hamas’s sudden (and surprising) dominance in the late 2006 parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip made the group a power broker in Palestinian politics. This position was cemented several months later, when it successfully undertook a hostile takeover of the Gaza Strip, wresting control of the territory from the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and his Fatah faction. Since then, a series of reversals—including Israel’s successful Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012 and an ongoing blockade of maritime imports into Gaza—greatly dented the group’s legitimacy and mystique. But no event was more damaging to Hamas’s political and economic fortunes than falling out with its chief power broker, Iran.

      Historically, the Islamic Republic has been a longtime key backer of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. But, beginning in late 2011, the two underwent what amounted to a strategic divorce over Syria. While Iran assumed a pivotal role as a defender of the Assad regime, Hamas came out vocally against Syria’s dictator and in support of the various opposition groups organizing his overthrow. In response, an irate Iran virtually zeroed out its financial support to Hamas and ceased its military cooperation with the group.⁴¹ Adrift, Hamas became critically short on cash, unable to pay salaries for its officials or administer basic governmental functions.⁴² And in the acrimonious negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas over the creation of a “unity” government during the spring of 2014, Hamas unexpectedly found itself thrust into the role of junior partner to Abbas’s Fatah faction. Against this backdrop, the Gaza war of August–September 2014 can be seen as a last grasp for political relevance on the part of the movement.

      By all indications, the ploy worked. In the wake of the conflict, Hamas obtained a new lease on political life, proving to wealthy Gulf donors (like Qatar) that it remains an indispensable part of the resistance against the Jewish state. Perhaps most significantly, it also succeeded in mending fences with Iran.

      Even prior to the Gaza war, relations between Hamas and Tehran had begun to move toward rapprochement. In the spring of 2014, negotiations between Hamas and Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, while failing to bridge differences over Syria, did manage to establish a modus vivendi in which Hamas would again garner Iranian support. Thereafter, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani announced that Tehran was poised to resume financial support for Hamas, and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, agreed to meet with Khaled Meshaal, the movement’s political chief, in Tehran.⁴³ But the summer 2014 conflict brought the two sides closer still. Hamas had once again proved its worth as a core element of the “axis of resistance” arrayed against Israel. Iran, for its part, saw in a rejuvenated relationship with Hamas “an opportunity to improve its standing in the Islamic world, which had suffered—especially among Sunnis—thanks to its steadfast support of Assad.”⁴⁴ As a result, the strategic partnership between Iran and Hamas is now back on track—and the likelihood of a future conflict between Israel and an unrepentant, strengthened Hamas is high.⁴⁵

      Iran’s stake in the Palestinian Territories is far larger than simply Hamas, however. It dates back to the early 1990s, when the Islamic Republic—championing resistance against the “Zionist entity” as an alternative to the Oslo Process then being pursued by the West—took on a leading political role in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.⁴⁶ It did so via two primary vehicles. The first was Hamas, with whom Tehran signed a formal accord codifying cooperation in 1992⁴⁷—an arrangement that would endure until the two sides fell out over Syria. The second was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a smaller yet equally radical Palestinian group that was wholly beholden to Tehran for its existence, depending on the Islamic Republic for its entire budget (some $2 million annually).⁴⁸

      By a decade later, that influence gave Iran a major voice in Palestinian politics—and a deciding vote in violence against Israel. In the early 2000s, one Israeli analyst estimated that Iran (via Hezbollah) was responsible for “no less than 80 percent” of terrorism directed against the Jewish state in the Palestinian Second Intifada (2000–2005).⁴⁹ Similarly, Israeli officials at the time judged that Iran had succeeded in assuming “control” of terrorism carried out by various Palestinian factions against Israel.⁵⁰

      Israeli officials attempted to stem the tide of this support, with some success. In October 2002, Israeli forces seized the ship Karine A in the Red Sea, interdicting 50 tons of Iranian arms destined for the Palestinian Authority’s dominant Fatah faction, ruled by Yasser Arafat. The incident was the most public of a series of Israeli military successes preventing Iran from playing more deeply in the Palestinian arena. But Arafat’s death in 2004 and the subsequent (and somewhat unexpected) parliamentary victory of Hamas in the winter of 2006 provided the Islamic Republic with greater strategic reach throughout the Palestinian Authority.

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