Paging Iran…Israel is coming for Iran, and for its seven deadly sins

by Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet, Opinion Contributors

Mossad’s cunning attack on Tuesday, targeting 4,000 plus Hezbollah operatives by ingeniously detonating pre-planted explosives in their pagers at 3:30 p.m., is proof enough that Jerusalem has had it with Tehran and its ongoing proxy war against Israel.

On Wednesday, the Mossad followed up with a second-round of explosions targeting “thousands of [walkie-talkie] radios and other devices used by the terrorist group.” It was Israel’s second reach-out-and-touch-someone moment. Hezbollah’s senior leadership got Jerusalem’s message: We are at war, and we are escalating.

Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, is vowing revenge. Ahead of Nasrallah’s scheduled speech today, his cousin, Hashem Safieddine, claimed, “These attacks will certainly be uniquely punished; there will be a bloodily unique revenge.” Coordinating that response may be difficult though. Hezbollah’s leadership is suddenly a bit gun-shy about pagers, cell phones and radios.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei surely got Israel’s message as well, given that Tuesday’s attack targeted and badly wounded Mojtaba Amani, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon.

Tehran has been playing with fire in Israel ever since Oct. 7, and is increasingly putting its nuclear weapons program at risk. Khamenei has badly miscalculated, as Israel’s strategic patience with Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-backed proxies has come to an end.

Although Hezbollah is Iran’s most pressing deadly sin, Oct. 7 was undoubtedly the most evil. The decision to help Hamas stage that attack may have been the beginning of the end for Khamenei and his regime, or at least for its far-reaching nuclear ambitions.

Israel has systematically set about destroying Hamas, including boldly assassinating Ismail Haniyeh, its political chief, in downtown Tehran.

Oct. 7. opened the gates of Hell in Israel, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet are determined to close them. But not before Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s ruling regime permanently pass through them.

To get there, Netanyahu has been willing to defy President Biden, mostly notably entering Rafah in the Gaza Strip despite stark warnings by the Biden-Harris administration not to do so. Biden even declared in March, “[Rafah] is a red line.”

Washington should fully embrace Israel’s paging of Hezbollah and Iran. Israel is taking the fight to our enemies in the Middle East. It is fighting to win, to remove a threat, not content to defend into perpetuity.

Iran’s deadly sins are not merely Israel-centric. They are also aimed at the U.S. For too long, the Biden-Harris administration has allowed the Houthis to run amok as a deadly sin in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Bab el-Mandeb Strait.