Eyal Zamir Archives - Dr. Rich Swier

Iranian negotiators have made clear to the Trump administration that while Iran is willing to discuss possible limits to its nuclear programs, it will not discuss the other items that the Americans demand be considered, including ending Iran’s ballistic missile discussion, its support for proxies, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen, and its murderous response to the millions of protesters who recently turned out in cities across Iran to shout “Death to the Dictator.”

Meanwhile, Israel watches in dismay as the Americans seem willing to continue negotiating with Tehran, even after it has said it will only negotiate on the nuclear issue. More on that Israeli alarm, and the possible unilateral action by Israel to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile threat, can be found here: “Israel warns Trump: We may act alone if Iran crosses ballistic missile red line,” by Avi Ashkenazi, Jerusalem Post, February 8, 2026:

Israeli defense officials recently told their US counterparts that Iran’s ballistic missile program represents an existential threat, and that Jerusalem is prepared to act unilaterally if necessary.

According to security sources, Israeli intentions to dismantle Iran’s missile capabilities and production infrastructure were conveyed in recent weeks through a series of high-level exchanges. Military officials outlined operational concepts to degrade the program, including strikes on key manufacturing sites.

In early February, both the head of the IDF, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, and the new Commander of the Israeli Air Force, Major General. Omer Tishler, visited Washington D.C. to meet with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, to discuss operational plans regarding Iran.

“We told the Americans we will strike alone if Iran crosses the red line we set on ballistic missiles,” the source said, adding that Israel is not yet at that threshold but is continuously tracking developments inside Iran.

The officials stressed that Israel reserves freedom of action and emphasized that it will not allow Iran to restore strategic weapon systems on a scale that threatens Israel’s existence.

One defense official described the current moment as a “historic opportunity” to deliver a significant blow to Iran’s missile infrastructure and neutralize active threats to Israel and neighboring states.

During recent talks, Israel also presented plans to target additional facilities connected to the missile program, according to the official.

It is not just Iran’s remaining store of ballistic missiles that the Israelis plan to target, but also the plants, spread across Iran, where they are being manufactured.

The worry in Israel is that Trump will be satisfied with hitting just a few targets — say, some Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commanders and their military bases — without engaging in the kind of sustained bombing campaign that would put paid to the ballistic missile program, which is Israel’s chief worry at this time. Trump will then take a victory lap, claim “total victory,” as he did last June when he declared, much too optimistically, that the one-day bombing by American planes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program and “set it back for many years,” but some ballistic missiles may remain intact in tunnel hideouts, and some of the plants that manufacture those missiles might also escape destruction. This would be an unacceptable result for Israel, which would find itself compelled to finish the job by itself.

With both the Prime Minister and the Israeli Air Force Commander arriving in Washington, just a few weeks after Zamir had been in discussions with Caine, it is likely that a failure by Iran to respond favorably to America’s three demands will lead to a “kinetic” response. But what will be on the target list? The IRGC commanders? The command-and-control centers of both the IRGC and the Iranian army? The supreme leader, whose death will so hearten the protesters that millions more will appear in the streets of cities across Iran? How long will it take the Americans to harden their bases around the region, the very bases that Iran has threatened it will strike in response to any American attack? And will such an attack include both American and Israeli forces, or will the Americans want the Israelis to hold back?

In Iran, what’s to come still unsure, but as Shakespeare famously counseled, “in delay there lies no plenty.”

So we are left anent Iran the Famous Five Questions for study and discussion: Quis? Quid? Quibus auxiliis? Cur? Quomodo? Quando?

AUTHOR

Hugh Fitzgerald

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Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamiar and his associates, the Jerusalem Post has learned, want the war in Gaza to end within two to three weeks. Their thinking is as follows: first, in such an arrangement all of the living hostages, not just a few as is currently being discussed, would come home, ending the stress and divisions in Israel society over their return; second, there are so few Hamas targets left to hit in Gaza, so that the law of diminishing returns has set in; three, Israel has, alas, been losing the battle of public opinion, as videos of killed or wounded children in Gaza, and the endless rubble, are shown on television, while Hamas-provided numbers on casualties in Gaza, and on the makeup of those casualties (women and children seem remarkably to predominate) are uncritically accepted by the media. Israel is also being accused of deliberately killing aid seekers, though it is Hamas that is doing the killing in order to make sure that the GHF distribution of aid will fail; the IDF fires warning shots at some Gazans, but only when they ignore commands not to approach too closely to those guarding the aid; the Israelis have also been accused by Hamas of poisoning — with expensive oxycodone! — the food the GHF hands out. Why the Israelis would wish to sabotage their own delivery of aid by poisoning recipients so that others will stay away is not made clear; it is, of course, complete nonsense.

The IDF wants to return some of its hundreds of thousands of reservists to civilian life, where their absence from work has had economic consequences. It also wants to concentrate, after 21 months of war in Gaza, on its other fronts. With Iran, it may renew its strikes on the Islamic Republic if it shows any signs of trying to restart either its nuclear program or its ballistic missile program. The IDF still has to bomb the Houthis into submission, as they have shown themselves to be remarkably resilient, and continue to lob missiles and drones towards Israel. In Lebanon, the IDF has built five outposts in southern Lebanon that it intends to hold onto, and has been attacking Hezbollah fighters who have not pulled out of southern Lebanon, as they had agreed to do. Israel wants to so weaken Hezbollah that the Lebanese National Army can take over and finish the job, pushing to disarm Hezbollah throughout Lebanon and to turn it into a purely political movement. Israel intends to hold onto the territory on the Syrian side of Golan it took over just after Assad’s fall, and it has also seized all of Mt. Hermon, which looms over Damascus; the IDF is not about to relinquish control of those commanding heights. It also has to worry about Turkish forces in northern Syria, where Ankara has seized control of Syrian territory in order to keep watch on the restive Kurds in Syria, for fear that their separatist dreams might also inspire Kurds in Turkey to make common cause with them. So there’s a lot for the IDF to worry about, and getting out of Gaza would free up many tens of thousands of troops for deployment elsewhere.

More on the security establishment’s hope to end the Gaza war soon can be found here: “Israel’s security elite want end of Gaza war in two-three weeks, sources tell ‘Post’ – analysis,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, July 3, 2025:

With senior sources telling The Jerusalem Post the defense establishment wants the war to end within two to three weeks, and US President Donald Trump pushing for a potential end even sooner, might the current dizzying Middle East conflict of 20 months finally come to an end?

Or will continued opposition from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir once again extend the war?

Alternatively, might Israel and Hamas reach a third temporary ceasefire, which only freezes hostilities for two months or longer, but with the sides eventually resuming the conflict later in 2025 or early 2026?

In addressing the issue, the first question is: Why might the war finally end this time, when earlier negotiations – November 2023 (first ceasefire), May 2024 (close to a deal), August 2024 (close to a deal), and this March (second ceasefire) – did not end it?

While Israel may also get some improved terms in negotiations with Hamas, the most important elements here are: IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, Trump, and the 12-day Iran war.

Zamir is in a completely different position than his predecessor, Herzi Halevi, who had major achievements during the war, but also had the albatross of the October 7 massacre permanently stained on his name. He was never trusted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, because he was appointed while Netanyahu was out of office….

Unlike his predecessor, Herzl Halevi, Eyal Zamir was not tainted by the October 7 failure. Herzl resigned because it was widely felt that he had, along with some others, failed to foresee, or prevent, the Hamas atrocities carried out that day. General Zamir came into office having played no part in the October 7 debacle.

During General Zamir’s short tenure in office as chief of the general staff, the results have been spectacular. The IDF has seized far more of Gaza in a few months than had been seized by the IDF in the 18 previous months when Halevi was still in charge. And then in twelve days, the IDF hammered Iran, destroying a dozen nuclear sites and damaging three more — at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan —- after which the American bunker-busters bombs delivered what appears to have been the coup de grâce of all three. The latest judgement, from both the CIA and the Israelis, is that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back by several years.

Zamir is untouched, as Halevi was not, by the October 7 debacle, and furthermore, he has been so successful militarily, both in subduing Hamas and cornering it in 25% of the Gazan territory, and in dealing a colossal blow to Iran, that he is in a position to push Netanyahu to accept his, Zamir’s, view of the IDF’s continued war in Gaza. It is General Eyal Zamir who is now unassailable, and if Netanyahu crosses him — by, say, ordering him to continue fighting in Gaza when Zamir thinks it now makes more sense to stop — he will do so at his own political peril. Besides, if all of the hostages will now be returned in a ceasefire agreement, Netanyahu can take the credit.

And once out of Gaza, the IDF can concentrate on the following: first, holding onto the territory it has seized from Syria on the Golan and on Mount Hermon, which is now completely in Israeli hands, while hoping to persuade Al-Sharaa that Israel will be a useful counterweight to Turkey, which has seized territory, in order to control the Kurds in Syria; second, keeping the five outposts it has built in southern Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from remaining anywhere south of the Litani River; third, keeping up military pressure on the Islamic Republic — including repeated bombings of Iranian nuclear sites, perhaps even with bunker-buster bombs and B-2 bombers that the Americans might now be willing to lend to Israel, should Tehran show any signs of restarting its nuclear program.

AUTHOR