A second round of conflict with Iran is imminent, a former Israeli intelligence officer said on Sunday, two months after a US-brokered ceasefire ended a 12-day war between the two archenemies.
“There is a sense that a war is coming, that Iranian revenge is in the works. The Iranians will not be able to live with this humiliation for long,” Jacques Neriah told 103FM.
Israel launched a surprise military campaign on June 13 targeting Iran's military and nuclear sites, killing 1,062 people including 276 civilians.
Iran responded with missile strikes that killed 31 civilians and one off-duty soldier, according to official figures published by the Israeli government.
Jacques Neriah said that operatives from Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah had been instructed to distance themselves from their phones in what he believes might be a sign of a looming conflict.
In 2024, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies distributed to Hezbollah operatives were discovered to have been booby-trapped with explosives by Israel, resulting in a deadly, large-scale attack that disrupted Hezbollah’s operational capability and revealed critical vulnerabilities in their communication network.
Iran seeks to rebuild ‘Ring of Fire’
The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs wrote in an analysis that Iran is working to bolster ties with its “Ring of Fire” proxy forces following what it described as a humiliating defeat by Israel’s military.
The Israeli military launched the operation against Iran months after weakening Iran's regional proxies including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
The regime change in Syria also ended the rule of Iran's staunch ally Bashar al-Assad, dealing a heavier blow to Iran's influence in Arab countries.
The Islamic Republic is now dissatisfied with the Syrian government and wants to see it overthrown, Neriah said.
“Syria under the rule of Ahmed al-Sharaa has managed to break the chokehold that Iran tried to place around Israel. The fall of Bashar al-Assad led to the collapse of Hezbollah as a regional force. Iran views the al-Sharaa regime as something that needs to be toppled.”
