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In what way was Hamas' action incompetent or harmful for Iran?
Hamas's actions were causal for Hezbollah's decision to open the northern front artillery campaign after Oct 7, which in turn led to foursignificant strategic setbacks for Iran that made their recent performance in the 12 day war possible.
First, it drove and culminated in the bushwhacking of Hezbollah's leadership via the pager and other campaigns, neutering Iran's premier proxy-ally-extension in the region. Hezbollah is a direct partner of Iran's IRGC, which is Iran's primary power-projection force, and this lost an ally whose reason for existing (from the Iranian backing perspective) is to help out in the kind of conflict that they just did not.
Second, because Hezbollah (and non-trivial amounts of its Syria-based infrastructure) were whacked by Israel, Iran lacked a proxy militia to stabilize Assad in Syria, allowing the momentum building that saw Iran's primary state-ally/client/main supply route into Lebanon cut while Iraqi-based militia groups were trying to drive over the desert. The loss of Syria was a loss of not just an ally, but a decade of significant investments in trying to establish and protect that interest.
Third, because Assad fell, the Syrian air corridor between Israel and Iran opened up. Israel was able to access previously denied airspace with vulnerable but capability-extending aircraft (like tankers and slower drones) that enabled the air war over Iran that led to Iran losing control of its own airspace. Israel would not have been able to generate as many air sorties over Iran as it did were Asad still in power.
Fourth, because the anti-Hezbollah campaign was being coordinated from an annex of the Iranian embassy in Syria, when Israel struck that in response, the Iranian response-response was the missile campaign between Israel and Iran. Not only did this deplete a considerable share of Iran's missile force, it also led to the Israel strikes on the Iranian air defense systems that also contributed to Iran's recent not-so-great showing.
As for Hamas's incompetence, that depends whose theory you want to subscribe to. Allegedly, Sinwar (the departed head of Hamas in Gaza who led the Oct 7 attack) was planning on reaching the West Bank and sparking a general uprising / Intifada. This not only did not happen, but the West Bank was so uninvolved that Hamas' only 'direct' allies in the conflict they wanted to make into a race war were... Hezbollah (who paid a high price) and the Houthis (who blockaded most of the Arab states from benefiting from of the primary Arab ethno-nationalist interests, the Suez Canal).
In so much that Sinwar's Plan B for the conflict was to have Gaza be pummeled in hopes the world would take the Palestinian's side, he certainly got Gaza pummeled, and the actual benefits for the Palestinians are sure to manifest any
dayweekmonthyear now.A common thread I saw on the gazanow telegram channel (now deleted) was that Hamas was uploading their livestream of civilian massacres not for goreporn likes, but to prove the IDF was a hollow shell without the USA and that the entire rotten edifice was kicked open so the rest of the arab world, especially West Bank but Hezbollah and Syria too, could roll in to clean out the yahudi with no effort. I still don't know if this was a particularly inspired attempt to justify the gleeful livestreamed executions and rape aftermaths as serving some strategic reason, or if it was a sincerely held belief that Israel was nothing without the USA and Hamas had struck the singular crippling blow, or y'know, both.
The one thing that really baffles me is whether Hezbollah also failed to reign in its own militants itching for action given their lack of full greenlight from Tehran or likely Nasrallah himself. For all its failures and cosplaying at being a fighting force (uniforms for nasheed tiktoks, journalist vest for publishing in reuters, the senior Hezbollah leadership must have known that keeping its cards in reserve for any Israeli incursion was the right play no matter what Hamas did.
Maybe trading bodies for international sympathy could work as a viable end state wild card, but previous trends don't really bear it out. The intifadas didn't result in a materially improved ground condition for the Palestinians and for all the hatred Israel gets it still has a growing population and economy. If that is losing for Israel, I'm sure Israel will collapse immediately like most of the world wishes it would.
'The entire rotten edifice will go down with one good kick' ranks up there with 'and then the enemy will lose the will to fight' in my personal list of 'big indicators of really bad strategy.' There are historical examples of it happening, and you can even identify trends that make it more likely to happen, but strategies that bet on it happening, as opposed to factor in the possiblity, tend to be poor strategies.
This presupposes that they didn't have as much of a greenlight as could be expected, with the patron parties distancing themselves from Hamas's decision after it became clear it wasn't going to spark the regional bonfire. Which, from my memory of those first few weeks, was pretty apparent in the first day(s). Hezbollah in particular had a pretty big anticlimatic drawdown in which they spun up the media organs like they were going to directly enter the conflict, demurred, and then 'quietly' began the artillery campaign after a bit later.
Though to be fair to past considerations, I am on record as believing that Iran has kind of lost the plot on managing its proxy warfare strategy. The curse of the deep state / cult of the offense strikes again, conflating strategic means with strategic ends and over-leveraging a strategic asset (the proxy network) beyond diminishing returns and into outright counter-productive tendencies.
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