Israel Prepares for a 'Long War' Against Hamas to Thwart Iran

The Israel Defense Forces is preparing for a long-term confrontation with Hamas in the Gaza Strip with the overarching goal of disrupting what Israeli forces believe to be Iran's strategy of surrounding Israel with Tehran-aligned militias.

"It will be a long war," Michael Edelstein, a retired IDF major general who has returned to service with the Southern Command, told reporters Friday during a screening in New York City of footage compiled by the IDF purporting to show atrocities committed by Hamas in its unprecedented October 7 attack against Israel.

"How long will it be?" he asked rhetorically. "It will be as long as we need to achieve the sense of security and the security for our people."

As the IDF continues its largest-ever bombing campaign against Hamas-led Gaza, Edelstein said Israeli forces are now "preparing the next stage" of operations, which include "maneuvering into Gaza." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Wednesday that such a ground incursion was in the works, but would not reveal the date.

Edelstein too provided few details, though he said the IDF faced a major challenge in weighing the aims of both destroying Hamas as a functioning military and political entity and safeguarding the lives of over 200 hostages believed to have been seized by the group during the opening stages of its historic assault.

He did, however, point to an Iranian role in Hamas' operation, something that has thus far been downplayed by both United States and Israeli officials as well as denied by Iran itself.

"They were trained by Iranians," Edelstein said. "They were equipped by the Iranians but they were also trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard."

Though he said he "cannot share too much" on the intelligence supporting such claims, he said there was a significant "Iranian footprint" on the October 7 attack and that more was likely to be revealed in time.

Israeli Permanent Representative to the United Nations Gilad Erdan also took aim at Iran during the event.

He accused the Islamic Republic of trying to "surround Israel with terror armies" including both Hamas and the powerful Lebanese Hezbollah movement, whose forces outnumber even some Western militaries, according to Erdan.

As these militias, which also include "Axis of Resistance" groups in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, become emboldened, Erdan said, "one day when Iran becomes a nuclear power, it can provide a nuclear umbrella" to these forces.

While Iran has openly touted its ties to such militias, most of which, with the notable exception of Sunni Muslim Hamas, are Shiite Muslim, Tehran has always denied seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iranian officials have also distanced themselves from the October 7 attack, though they have praised it.

Just a day after hostilities erupted, the Iranian Mission to the United Nations told Newsweek that Israeli officials "find it very difficult to accept that in the intelligence community it is being narrated that they were defeated by a Palestinian group," so "they are attempting to justify their failure and attribute it to Iran's intelligence and power."

"The success of this operation was the fact that it was a surprise," the Iranian Mission said at the time, "which makes it the biggest failure of the Israeli regime's security organizations during the life of this usurping regime."

Days later, the Mission acknowledged to Newsweek that it provided Palestinians with certain "skills" put to use against Israel, though it maintained that attempts to assign responsibility of the operation to Iran were intended to identify "a scapegoat to shift the blame."

As to the potential use of Israel's own nuclear weapons, the existence of which the country officially neither confirms nor denies, Erdan dismissed the notion.

"I don't think we're there; I don't think we have to discuss it," Erdan said. "Our military is powerful enough to use our conventional capabilities."

And while the senior Israeli diplomat said that the IDF was "prepared" to handle the potential outbreak of hostilities on multiple fronts, he acknowledged that "that doesn't mean we are not concerned."

Clashes continue between the IDF and Hezbollah across the Israel-Lebanon border and a growing number of "Axis of Resistance" groups across the region have issued direct threats to Israel and its allies. U.S. troops are now facing daily rocket fire in Iraq and Syria, even after the U.S. conducted airstrikes on positions said to be tied to Iran's Revolutionary Guard and its affiliates in eastern Syria late Thursday.

Meanwhile, Hamas too has expressed it readiness to confront an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip.

"The resistance is preparing with all it has to defend our people," Hamas spokesperson Bassem Naim told Newsweek last week. "Certainly, the enemy's entrance into the Gaza Strip will not be a cakewalk. Likewise, all possibilities on the part of the resistance are open."

Prior to the current conflict, the IDF had fought three wars with Gaza since disengaging in 2005 from the territory it seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. The longest of these conflicts, which occurred in 2014, lasted for about a month and a half. The latest war has already become the deadliest as it nears the three-week mark, and is set to only intensify.

Speaking in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad on Thursday, Revolutionary Guard commander-in-chief Major General Hossein Salami hailed the ongoing Palestinian fight. With the IDF set to soon move into Gaza, he asserted that, "if the Israelis fight on the ground, they will be swallowed."