Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran on July 30, presumably by Israeli forces. Less than 24 hours before, the IDF carried out an airstrike on a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut, reportedly killing the terror organization’s top commander, Fuad Shukr.

Shukr is believed responsible for Hezbollah’s many attacks on Israel since October 8, including the pivotal massacre of Israeli Druze children in Majdal Shams on July 27.

There’s no question that reprisals are coming. Israel’s enemies are making ominous threats, and many talking heads are predicting just how bad things may get.

Israelis are on high alert in case of a strike from enemies working in coalition with Iran: Hezbollah, Yemenite Houthis, Islamic Jihad, Shia militias in Iraq and more.

However, the former head of Israeli defense intelligence believes the assassinations will not lead to full-scale war and will not harm hostage negotiations with Hamas, which still holds approximately 115 people kidnapped from Israel.

“In the short run, it may freeze hostage negotiations, which are not happening anyway, but in the long run I think it improves the chance of a ceasefire because the Hamas leadership may feel [Israel is] coming very close,” said Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin at a Media Central briefing this morning.

“Hamas leaders don’t care about the two million people in Gaza or about their own military wing that’s losing tens of terrorists every day, but they maybe care about themselves. So I think the time is ripe for a hostage deal – not today or tomorrow, but in the coming months it’s really a possibility.”

Nobody wants full-scale war

Yadlin, president and founder of MIND Israel, which advises Israeli leadership, agencies, and other security entities in Israel on strategic national security issues, was formerly deputy commander of Israel’s Air Force and former executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies affiliated with Tel Aviv University.

He cautioned that although Israel has “won two sprints, we are in a very long marathon. There might be a reaction from Lebanon, from Iran, and we have to be ready. But both sides are trying to find a modus operandi for an operation that will be strong enough to make a statement but not escalate to a full scale war.”

Yadlin believes the Iranians don’t yet know how they will respond to the Israeli assassinations and that it won’t be very soon.

“They usually take time to evaluate the cost and benefit of every retaliation and then execute it. I can see them trying to attack Israelis on the global arena — embassies, tourists, as they’ve done in the past — using their proxies to make sure they don’t escalate to a direct war,” he said.

“But at the end of the day, it was not an Iranian who was killed this time. And they will not go to war for the Palestinians.”

Gaza isn’t core issue anymore

Yadlin noted that the Israeli actions in Beirut and Tehran against two top terrorists prove Israel is “learning that Gaza is not the core of the issue anymore.”

Yadlin said Israel has already eliminated four of the six people he identifies as the masterminds of the October 7 “killing, burning, beheading and raping of our citizens in the Western Negev.”

Haniyeh, a key figure in Hamas, “is usually enjoying 7-star hotels in Qatar. He was in Tehran for the inauguration of the new president,” said Yadlin.

And although “Israel does not want to open a new front with Doha because of Qatar’s involvement in the hostage negotiations, I wouldn’t sell life insurance to any Hamas leader, even in Qatar.”

Yadlin says Gaza is basically destroyed at this point, but its leader, Yahya Sinwar, “is not paying attention to his people or his infrastructure.”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s supreme leader, on the other hand, “care more about their own countries” and are in essence “sacrificing the blood of the Palestinians, which [they consider] cheap compared to their own.”

“We are fighting a war on seven fronts. And the leading forces are Iran and Hezbollah. Hezbollah started a war with Israel without any provocation on October 8 and it’s time to finish this war, one way or another.”

He said that when Israel attacked the port in Yemen almost two weeks ago, “it was not only against the Houthis. It was to show that the real architects of the attacks against Israel are in Tehran and Beirut, and that Israel still has a lot of capabilities it has not used.”

Israeli deterrence “failed miserably” on October 7, he acknowledged, “but deterrence is not zero or 1. Deterrence is multidimensional against multiple players and Israel is rebuilding it now. Anybody who thought Israel is not able to react to all these attacks will have to recalculate.”

Time for a new coalition

Yadlin said Hezbollah may be tactically defeated, with close to 400 Hezbollah terrorists killed, yet is scoring a strategic victory through a war of attrition that has sent 60,000 Israelis fleeing from their homes.

“Hezbollah and Iran’s goal is to destroy Israel, not with direct war but with a long war of attrition that will make life in Israel unbearable,” he said. Israel must find an answer to this strategic issue “because tactical victory is not enough,” he added.

“Israel cannot any longer tolerate what Hezbollah is doing in the north. It’s not only about retaliating for what Hezbollah did to the Druze kids, it is also trying to change the rules of the game. We’ll see how this plays out in the coming days,” said Yadlin.

He suggests that Israel can gain the upper hand against the Iranian coalition by “creating a counter-coalition with those who stopped the Iranian attack on the 14^th of April and make sure that Iran, supported by China and Russia, will not feel they have the upper hand. They will find a coalition willing to stop them and their attack on the state of Israel.”