Israel is inside Iran's and Hezbollah's OODA Loop

Humiliation and power are the weapons of Middle East jungle war

David got called out to work so his usual fare will be delayed (such is the life of a professional pilot). While you anticipate his main course, nibble on this from me. —Steve

Israel, in the last six weeks, has accomplished more than the last six years in defeating its enemies. This is because the country has been fighting unchained by the niceties of politics, and free to exploit its prodigious intelligence advantage. It’s been “jungle rules”—which means power, punching back hard, and getting inside your enemies’ heads. Israelis are very direct people, and as such, well-suited for this kind of conflict, versus the endless rounds of bad-faith negotiations amid kibitzing from the U.S. and other world powers.

Of course, the U.S. does get its say, but in return for listening to big brother America, Israel gets much more in return. Months ago, nearer to the start of the retributive war against Hamas after October 7th, 2023, the Knesset greenlit the IDF going into Lebanon, all the way to Beirut if necessary, as the threat and opportunity arose. Most analysts took this to mean a wider war, with horrible consequences for the Lebanese, who are caught between Hezbollah and Israel in this conflict.

Before October 7th, Israel would never have unleashed its assassin squads to take out senior leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah with the kind of ruthlessness they’ve exhibited lately. That’s not just because of blood-for-blood; it’s because the consequences of those actions would have been unacceptable. Hamas, in planning its pogrom, was betting on the Abraham Accords to crack under international pressure, and the horror of war. Israel suffered tremendous bad press, but did not stop its war, and did not back down in its terms for release of the hostages. Many Israelis and Jews around the world disagreed with this strategy, and still do. But Israel’s security cabinet felt secure in its course.

Why? One of the reasons is that the U.S. has lent Israeli key intelligence data and assets, in real time.

Israel’s vaunted Mossad has always maintained a human intelligence presence in Iran. You might say that Iran’s government has been penetrated to the top echelons for decades by Israeli assets, which has enabled them to pull off some pretty spectacular heists, along with mysterious acts of sabotage against Iranian nuclear sites. The Mossad even managed to plant a bomb in a Tehran guest house, a month or more before Ismail Haniyeh stayed there. These things are block and tackle for Israel’s intelligence apparatus, but the retribution for them is the problem.

When you play by jungle rules, you must expect a very hard counterpunch. And the U.S. commitment to keep the war in the Middle East from widening—President Joe Biden’s unwavering foreign policy goal—has provided a perfect protective bathtub for Israel to operate at peak efficiency. Iran responded to an Israeli strike in Damascus with over 300 missiles and drones, which the U.S. (along with Jordan) shot down a majority before it even got close to Israeli territory.

The U.S. Navy has positioned top tier assets near Israel, in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Mediterranean, to defend against Houthi rockets, and to deter Iran from trying anything more than a weak test of the defensive ring. The Navy even took the near-unprecedented step of announcing the presence of the U.S.S. Georgia, an SSGN—an Ohio class guided missile boomer (formerly an SSBN, part of the nuclear triad)—in the theater. If you don’t know, boomers rely on secrecy, and even their general location is considered one of the closest secrets our government possesses.

Ensconced in such armor, Israel has the confidence to strike a bit harder. But it’s more than just American counterstrike capabilities that have given Israel the freedom to wipe out its enemies. It’s the real-time intelligence from the sharpest eyes on the planet that has put Israel well inside Hezbollah’s, and Iran’s, OODA loop.

Here’s a brief explanation of the OODA loop. “OODA” means Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. It was developed by U.S. fighter pilot Col. John Boyd as a way to understand tactical and strategic conflicts. Fighter pilots, in dogfights, always want to have the energy advantage over their foe. They ultimately want to be able to turn “inside” the bandit and therefore achieve a kill by employing their guns and missiles before the enemy can bring his to bear.

To be “inside” your enemy’s OODA loop means that you can observe, orient, decide and act faster than your enemy. As Sunday morning’s preemptive strike demonstrated, Israel observed Hezbollah moving its assets to prepare for a massive strike, it oriented itself to target the specific places where the terrorists were planning to launch, and where missile stocks and drones were positioned, it decided to arm and launch 100 aircraft to strike those locations, and it acted before the enemy was ready.

Hezbollah stores up to 100,000 rockets, missiles, and drones deep underground, in places difficult if not impossible for Israeli ordnance to reach. But when it moves these stocks in preparation for launch, especially a massive launch intended to overwhelm Israeli Iron Dome anti-missile capabilities, it is vulnerable to attack. In order to exploit the vulnerability, Israel must be inside Hezbollah’s OODA loop, otherwise, the strikes would either be too late, in the wrong place, or ineffective.

Sunday’s strikes attritted Hezbollah in a significant way—up to possibly 10 percent of its stocks of certain kinds of weapons. They will think long and hard before they try something like this again, as they know Israel is inside their OODA loop. Also, the organization has been humiliated, because instead of launching a few thousand rockets and missile as far as Tel Aviv, they only managed a few hundred rockets, which were almost entirely intercepted by Iron Dome, and caused little damage.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s speech to his people was intended to cover for an immense failure and humiliation by propagating some shaky, and false, claims. He claimed he didn’t want to escalate the war—true, but he did want to inflict damage on Israel. He claimed he wasn’t targeting civilian areas—false, as Hezbollah has targeted civilian homes and neighborhoods in northern Israel. He claimed that this was the “first phase” of retaliation and he will wait to see if “deterrence” has been restored—half true, in that it’s Israel doing the deterrence.

The strikes against Hezbollah has put Israel in a very strong position in its jungle war. Egypt has weakly—and falsely—denied that tunnels under the southern border of Gaza, through the Philadelphi Corridor were used for smuggling weapons to Hamas. Israel has maintained it wants control of the corridor even after a cease-fire to prevent Hamas from rearming. Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s military, and now political, leader, has reportedly left the tunnels where he has been eluding the IDF and is now above ground, in disguise as a woman. (Perhaps he has embraced his trans self?)

Though this story is funny on its face, it’s a huge humiliation for Hamas, and an admission that the terror group is breaking, its forces unable to ride out the storm in the tunnel system any longer. It will operate as a guerrilla militia, striking targets of opportunity, while its supplies last. Israel wants to ensure that Hamas never emerges as a professional military, ever again. Knowing that Israel is operating inside Iran’s OODA loop is a strong incentive for Hamas to cut its losses, before it loses control of the people of Gaza. It is only a matter of time before Sinwar is located and either captured or killed.

In the run up to the U.S. election, President Biden will keep American military assets very close to Israel, as a flare up or expansion of the war is bad for Kamala Harris’s campaign. Israel will continue to receive real-time intelligence and the latest that American electronic eyes and ears can provide, putting it at the edge of what’s possible to know, and way ahead of its enemies. After the election, it’s likely this level of support will begin to erode.

So it’s in Israel’s favor to push as hard as possible between now and November to crush Hezbollah’s will to fight, along with Hamas’s ability to control Gaza in any organized way, while negotiating a permanent cease-fire.

Even when American assets are no longer sitting off shore, our intelligence capabilities—Israel learns fast—will enhance the IDF and Mossad’s ability to remain inside Hezbollah’s OODA loop, and to continue to harass and deter Iran from its nuclear ambitions.

Say what you will about having a Democrat in the White House: Joe Biden has been very good for Israel. Last Sunday was a strong demonstration of how good.

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