Recently, the Israeli Air Force launched a new round of "Middle East crisis" after the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria and the killing of Brigadier General Mohammed Reza Zahedi, the Supreme Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force in Syria, triggered a new round of "Middle East crisis", and just a few days ago, Iran launched a large-scale missile offensive against Israel.
There is also a lot of debate on the Internet about who has the upper hand in the struggle between Iran and Israel in the Middle East.
Many netizens believe that the Israeli army is rampant and hegemonic in the Middle East, bombing the Gaza Strip to the ground if it wants to bomb the Gaza Strip, bombing Syria if it wants to bomb Syria, and it has its own "American good boy" support behind it, a one-click opposition vote in the United Nations Security Council, and aerial bombs and air-to-surface missile aid are sent to fly...... Even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' military advisers, senior commanders, and nuclear scientists have all been victimized by the Israeli army, and it is clear that Israel has the upper hand.
But in fact, if we consider it from a strategic level, Iran has an overall advantage over Israel, and this overall advantage at the strategic level cannot be compensated for by Israel blowing up a few Iranian generals.
In fact, as long as you are a military fan, have a certain understanding of military strategy, and have read Chairman Mao Zedong's "On Protracted War", you can basically understand why Iran has full confidence in Israel's struggle.
After all, in Chairman Mao Zedong's "On Protracted War", this issue has been clearly addressed, and the same situation exists between the Iranian-led arc of resistance (an anti-Israel coalition of Iran, Palestinian Hamas, Syria, Iraq, Lebanese Allah, Yemeni Houthis, etc.) and Israel, from a strategic point of view:
In terms of geographical factors, the arc of resistance led by Iran has a vast strategic depth, from the Gaza Strip, across the Fertile Crescent, through the plain of the two rivers, to the Iranian plateau, and even to the coast of the Red Sea. By contrast, Israel is only a small part of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and the United Nations defines the size of the State of Israel as just over 10,000 square kilometers, which is far from the area controlled by the Arc of Resistance, which leaves Israel with little room for strategic maneuver.
And in terms of demographic factors, Israel's population is already seriously problematic.
A significant portion of the country's population of 9.79 million are naturalized Arabs, a segment of the population that is destined to lose the full confidence of the Jews.
There are also more than 1 million indigenous Haredi Jews who originally lived in the Middle East, and who assumed some of the functions of the grassroots government of the State of Israel, but in exchange for not participating in Zionist affairs, including military service or other political life. This means that the real core population of Israel, the population that can be used to fight wars without worrying about loyalty, is more than 500 million.
In order to meet the demand for soldiers, there are also a large number of female soldiers in the Israeli army
Judging from the situation of this round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, after Israel has mobilized more than 300,000 people, serious social problems have arisen in the country, which means that Israel's population and the total number of troops that can be supported by the size of the population are only about 300,000. In comparison, this population and strength are nothing compared to the demographic potential grasped by the Arc of Resistance.
In terms of economic factors, although Israel is one of the few developed countries in the Middle East, its economy still has huge shortcomings.
First of all, Israel's dependence on foreign trade is extremely high, and Israel's foreign trade dependence coefficient is about 40%, which means that Israel's economy is almost supported by foreign trade;
Secondly, Israel's food self-sufficiency rate is too low, some data show that Israel's food self-sufficiency rate is only 4.98%, which is simply not worth mentioning, and the vast majority of food has to be imported;
Finally, Israel's freshwater self-sufficiency rate is also poor, and it relies on industrial purification of fresh water to ensure its domestic fresh water supply, and even needs to import bottled water from other countries.
Israel's dependence on foreign trade, its inability to provide food and even fresh water, and Israel's dependence on sea routes for exports have become one of Israel's biggest lifelines, as can be seen from the Houthi raids on ships in the Red Sea.
Finally, let's talk about the military element. Many people may think that the Israeli army is not the most powerful army in the Middle East? In fact, this is not the case with military elements; to be precise, every country has its own line and strategy for building its own army, and every army has its own combat system and operational principles, and it is necessary to see if it can meet the needs of the operational environment and the battlefield.
Obviously, the Israeli army now has a huge shortcoming in terms of combat capability. In the past, the Israeli army was able to maintain a short-term high-intensity combat capability, and was able to defeat the regular armies of neighboring countries in short-term operations.
But now, the Israeli army does not even have the ability to fight this kind of short-term high-intensity operations, and before the short-term operations, it could not defeat Allah in a defensive state, and now it cannot defeat Hamas in a defensive state, and the Israeli army has increasingly degenerated into an army that can only rely on "indiscriminate bombing by the air force to scare people and support the façade".
As for the long-term war, judging from Israel's demographic and economic factors, does it have anything to do with Israel? Therefore, we believe that Israel's military strength is not as terrible as we imagined.
Therefore, regardless of Israel's current fangs and claws, in terms of strategic elements, it is a country with too many strategic shortcomings: the country has a narrow land area and lacks room for maneuver, which is one; the core population is too small and its mobilization capacity is extremely poor; the economy is relatively fragile and cannot be self-sufficient in food; it is located in a corner of the Middle East and is not of our ethnic group in the surrounding area, and this is four; and the army has a weak surface and is difficult to fight for a long time, and this is five. With so many strategic shortcomings, if they are not exploited by strategic opponents, it is simply a waste of opportunities.
Therefore, the current strategy of the Arc of Resistance against Israel can be called a noose strategy or a strategy of attrition, that is, to avoid a head-on conflict with the Israeli army as much as possible. The so-called frontal conflict refers to the fact that in all the Middle East wars, the countries of the Middle East dispatched their regular armies to fight a large-scale confrontation with the Israeli army, and this style of play happened to be in the comfort zone of the Israeli army, and it also happened to give full play to the relatively strong regular combat capability of the Israeli army, especially the advantage of the air force in having a generation gap with neighboring countries.
At present, the strategy devised by the Arc of Resistance against Israel is to gradually encircle Israel geographically, to trap Israel economically, to gradually deplete Israel militarily, and to isolate Israel diplomatically.
Geographically encircling Israel, the current arc of resistance has formed the basic geopolitical pattern of Israel with Allah in the north, resistance in the Gaza Strip in the south, Iraqi popular mobilization forces in the east, and the Houthis in Yemen in the south. Of course, the geopolitical siege of Israel is not for the sake of encirclement, and each resistance organization has its own division of tasks and serves the second and third points.
For example, the Houthis are gradually trapping Israel economically, and the Houthis in Yemen are doing this job, attacking merchant ships heading for Israel in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea until they fly, and the Houthi raids on ships alone have almost turned Israel's Eilat port into a dead port, with a large number of businesses closing down and a large number of employed people losing their jobs.
If Allah forces and even Hamas are equipped with small suicide unmanned boats similar to Ukraine, released on the Lebanese coast against Israel's Haifa, Tel Aviv and other ports to engage in offshore ship raids, Israel's exports can basically be directly zeroed. This is close to extinction for Israel's economy, and it will directly threaten Israel's food security, and then it will be a problem for Israelis to eat, and the domestic situation will deteriorate further.
Another example is the military attrition of Israel, which is what the resistance groups in the Gaza Strip and Allah do. For Israel, if it cannot break the situation on the inside, the only way is to hit the outside line to seek a ray of life, so whether it is the Gaza Resistance or Allah, positioning itself is to be optimistic about the door and avoid Israeli dogs jumping over the wall to break the situation on the outside.
Therefore, these two organizations have not paid much attention to the offensive capability of the campaign, and the armored warfare capability is better than nothing, but the defensive capability is relatively strong, especially the construction of tunnel networks, which is said to have received direct guidance from the DPRK's military advisers.
Facts have proved that both Allah and Hamas have played their missions very well, and the Israeli army's attack on southern Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2023 have all returned, which is equivalent to making Israel dare not easily jump to the outside line to fight, further limiting Israel's strategic room for maneuver, and making Israel's strategic posture of being surrounded by the noose of the arc of resistance more and more obvious, which is obviously not good news for Israel.
I believe that after the above analysis, everyone can understand why Iran and the Arc of Resistance have a strategic advantage, or even an overwhelming advantage, over Israel. Strategic conspiracy is not something that you can easily deal with with tactical means, or it is more similar to a general trend, such as going to the east of the big river, can you let the big river flow backwards? Obviously, no.
The same is true for Israel, whether Israel's bombing will solve the geopolitical encirclement of the arc of resistance, or will it solve its own economic shortcomings? Obviously, it will not work, so its tactical results are meaningless to solve its own strategic dilemma.
At present, as far as Israel is concerned, there are two points that can really turn the tables strategically, one is the support of the United States for Israel, and the other is the nuclear weapons in Israel's hands, but the United States' national strength is weakening visibly with the naked eye, and Iran, which is in the arc of resistance, is not far from getting a nuclear weapon.
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