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World News See other World News Articles Title: Iran greatly underestimated Israel Israeli airstrikes that wiped out Hezbollah’s top leadership and left its internal security in tatters are a devastating blow to Iran’s decadeslong project of wielding power in the Middle East through proxies, former U.S. intelligence officials and analysts say. In a matter of weeks, Iran and its most important proxy, Hezbollah, have suffered catastrophic security failures. Israel sabotaged the group’s communications, took out multiple senior figures and killed Hezbollah’s powerful and influential longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who cannot be easily replaced. U.S. officials said the Israeli airstrikes, which continued Sunday, took out most of Hezbollah’s leadership and destroyed multiple weapons depots, causing unprecedented damage, both physical and psychological, to the militia group. Follow live updates on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict The Iranian regime viewed Hezbollah as a cornerstone of a strategy to outflank militarily superior adversaries with armed proxies, funded and trained by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Tehran dubbed the “axis of resistance.” Equipping Hezbollah with an arsenal of rockets and missiles, along with other groups in Gaza, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, Iran gambled that it could steadily weaken Israel and the U.S. and flex its muscle while avoiding a direct confrontation that it could not win. But Iran’s strategy underestimated how Israel would respond to the Hamas terrorist attack of Oct. 7 and subsequent cross-border rocket fire from Hezbollah. Tehran also overestimated the strength of its proxy network, former intelligence officers and counterterrorism analysts said. “Basically, their whole calculation has been torn to shreds,” said terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, a professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. “For Israel, this is a stunning turnaround from the events of almost a year ago." Hoffman was referring to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack that caught Israel’s intelligence agencies off-guard, killed 1,200 Israelis and resulted in 250 people being taken hostage. “Israeli intelligence has restored their aura of deterrence," Hoffman said. "They lost it after the 10/7 debacle.” Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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