In July 1864, a Union Army planner near Petersburg, Virginia, had the bold idea of tunneling beneath the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in order to plant an explosive charge that would, at least in theory, decimate the contiguous defensive lines of the Confederacy. The tunnel was dug, demolitions planted, and the resulting explosion did indeed create an enormous cavity in the earth.
Tunnels have been a warfighting device for centuries, and I’ve often said that our enemies are better students of history than we are. Al Qaeda mimicked Japanese kamikazes when they flew suicide airplanes into targets on September 11, 2001. And today we find Hamas following the lead of combatants from millennia past.
Iran’s intention for the Oct. 7 attack in Israel was clear— they were preparing for what the Imperial Japanese in 1942 would have called the “decisive battle.” Iran’s battle plan had been developed over the course of at least a decade, supporting Hamas as they built tunnels, Petersburg-like. Iran also helped train troops and stockpile weapons and missiles, so that both Hamas and Hezbollah could initiate a coordinated attack, alongside their proxies in Syria and Iraq. Yet, Iran-backed Hezbollah has recently declared that the Oct. 7 attack was “all Hamas,” indicating that they were at least surprised by the timing of it. So Hamas may have jumped the gun before Hezbollah and the other entities were ready to simultaneously engage.
I’ve been in one of those tunnels on the Israel side of the border, and the quality of construction was incredible. One feels like a mole inside such a tunnel. I served my Navy career over a decade in submarines, and even I could not help but hope that the piped-in air and lighting wouldn’t fail while we were crawling through it. Night vision goggles don’t work in a tunnel because those require ambient light to amplify. The Israeli Defense Force officer who escorted me into a tunnel in 2015 was Col. Roi Levy, who was killed during the attacks last month.
And of course, Hamas is now using their tunnels to hide hostages, store weapons and ammunition, and maneuver beneath the Gaza terrain. But also like Petersburg, the tunnels may turn out to be a less-than-brilliant tactical device.
Iran is now choreographing follow-on operations: proxies in Syria and Iraq are conducting “holding attacks” to pin down American forces, and dozens of Americans have been injured. Hezbollah is conducting probing attacks until Israel is fully engaged in a ground war in Gaza, at which point they will open the northern front, then, and most worrisome, as Israel is fully engaged in a multi-front war, Iran may give the green light to other global attacks using prepositioned terror cells in the United States and elsewhere to keep Israel’s few allies distracted with their own defense. The intended outcome would be that “decisive battle” — a last, best push to decimate Israel and annihilate the Jewish people.
Of course, Hamas initiated this war with attacks on Israeli civilians precisely because they knew the atrocities would trigger profound, all-consuming Israeli military action. Hamas is counting on Israel rapidly losing the moral high ground by reacting in ways that threaten civilian populations in Gaza, knowing that world opinion will turn against Israel. If the Hamas terrorists had conducted a similar attack against any other nation, their actions would have been met with global outrage. But Iran counted on the fact that Israel is the only nation on earth that suffers from the fate that even when they are the victims, they will still be hated.
These events have unmasked a shocking level of global antisemitism, a dark force that was always there, hidden just below the surface, even (especially) in the United States. Naziism is alive and well, even among the modern American elite.
But as it pertains to Gaza, one can’t help but wonder that Israel is operationalizing Peter Arnett’s statement about the Vietnam Battle of Ben Tre: “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”
Extreme hawks sometimes hyperbolize that an enemy nation should be attacked in such a way that it’s reduced to a “flaming crater.” One can only hope that in the case of Gaza, the current battle does not cause that description to be literally true.
William Toti, who lives in Central Florida, is a retired Navy captain and is co-host of the “Unauthorized History of the Pacific War” podcast.
