If Israel Can Strike Hamas Chief in Tehran, Why Can’t India Target Terrorists in Pak?

After Israel, no country faces as continuous and grave a terror threat as India. In neither country is the terror threat organic. Iran sponsors the terror groups attacking the Jewish state, while Pakistan plays the same role with anti-India terrorism.

For decades, both India and Israel accepted terror as a fact of life. Pakistan-based terrorists would infiltrate into Kashmir and kill both Indians and foreigners. Audacious attacks stand out: Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists attacking the Indian Parliament in 2001, or the same group staging the Mumbai attacks seven years later. Pakistan-based terror groups transformed Kashmir into a no-go area for Indians and foreigners alike, decimating the tourism industry and victimising not only Hindus whom terrorists drove from their homes, but also many Kashmiri Muslims as well.

Israelis, too, lived with terror. Soldiers carry guns at the ready. Kindergarteners practice the dash to the bomb shelter, and entering a shopping mall or even pizza parlour is to face airport-like security.

In Gaza, Israeli generals long spoke of “mowing the lawn”. It might be impossible to uproot the bomb-making factories and terror infrastructure, but every few years, they could launch operations to degrade Hamas capabilities for two or three years. In Lebanon, the lawn grew wild, though.

To end the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1701 that demanded a ceasefire and the complete disarmament of non-state groups and militias in Lebanon. Rather than abide by the conditions of the agreement, Hezbollah rearmed, importing more than 100,000 rockets, missiles, and drones from Iran.

The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, forced a paradigm shift in Israeli counterterrorism. It was the greatest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The moral equivalency, if not outright antisemitism, of UN Secretary General António Guterres only encouraged the terrorists and their sponsors. UN silence as near-daily Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes and convinced Israeli officials that they could not rely on the UN or its ostensible partners to protect it. The lesson is clear: When terrorist groups acquire arsenals, their aim is to use them.

It is against this backdrop that Israel has revived its targeted killing campaign. There is strategic logic to seeking to decapitate and disrupt terror groups via assassination of leaders and commanders. I lived in Jerusalem in the academic year 2001-02 while doing both postdoctoral research and teaching Iranian history at Hebrew University. It was the height of the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign. Almost daily, I heard bombs explode within earshot. A suicide bomber detonated in the bus I normally took to campus, and less than a week after I returned home, terrorists detonated a bomb in the cafeteria in which I ate nearly every day.

Two policies ended the months of terror. The first was the border fence and, in some locations, wall to separate Palestinian and Israeli populations. The second was Israeli-targeted assassination. When Israel killed terror leaders, they threw their groups into disarray. Paranoia reigned supreme as terrorists questioned whether their colleagues were the leak. It was safer not to communicate, and that itself disrupted operations.

Assassinations also fuelled a desire for revenge. To recruit followers, terror groups must project strength. Failure to respond shows weakness and risks haemorrhaging followers. This leads terror groups to rush revenge, often at the expense of the suicide bombers’ psychological and tactical training, often enabling security forces and even bystanders to disrupt attacks before they begin.

Israel’s recent targeted assassinations against Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and “Operation Below the Belt” neutering thousands of Hezbollah members, take targeted action to new levels. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is turning upon itself in a desperate attempt to ferret out moles. The Iranian regime’s inability to react diminishes it in the eyes of the groups it supports and its own people.

The compromise of Hezbollah beepers and walkie-talkies, however, has set a new standard for counterterrorism. Hezbollah, especially is reeling. For the first time in more than four decades, it appears Israel can eradicate the group. Lebanese openly mock it. As Hezbollah faces an existential crisis, diplomats who counselled compromise and acceptance of terror threats look naïve. Hezbollah’s defeat could represent a paradigm shift both for regional security and for those in foreign capitals who consider terror sponsorship as a policy tool.

The question for Indian policymakers now is: if Israel can take out the Hamas chief in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guest house in Tehran, why can’t India take out the heads of Jaish-e-Mohammed or Lashkar-e-Taiba in ISI guest houses in Islamabad or Rawalpindi?

The same also holds true with the targeting of Hezbollah communications. If Israel can compromise Hezbollah’s supply chain, can India do likewise with Pakistan-sponsored terror groups? No terrorist who participated in the Mumbai attacks should remain alive, or should any terror leader feel safe, in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Pakistani Punjab, or Sindh. ISI leaders might bluster, but they deserve no immunity for their decades of terror sponsorship.

Indeed, just as Hamas now discovers in Gaza and Hezbollah learns in Lebanon, adulation at the point of a gun is not adulation at all. The demise of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders might give new hope to Palestinians and Lebanese to live normally. The same holds true for Pakistanis who have since 1971 at least lived a twisted ISI vision that betrays the welfare of Pakistani citizens.

Israel has learnt the hard way that ‘mowing the grass’ is a strategy that fails in the long term. Today, they are uprooting the lawn. India should do likewise.