Hamas Leader Sinwar Presented Hezbollah With Multiple War Scenarios Including Jordan Front

Documents analyzed by researchers at the Amichai Institute reveal that Yahya Sinwar, the late Hamas leader, presented Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah with several possible scenarios for a campaign against Israel. Sinwar viewed Jordan as a key front and believed Hezbollah would join immediately once the attack began. The documents, examined by the Amichai Institute for Terrorism and Intelligence Research, shed light on how Sinwar perceived cooperation with Hezbollah in the years leading up to the October 7 attack.

Sinwar did not limit himself to a single scenario but proposed various alternatives involving multiple regional actors. Even in more limited scenarios, Sinwar consistently saw the Jordanian border as a central theater, alongside Lebanon and Gaza. As early as June 2022, he sought to establish a plan where guerrilla forces would infiltrate Israel from both Syria and Jordan, aiming to overwhelm Israel by opening multiple fronts simultaneously.

Nasrallah reportedly received these ideas positively, calling them "realistic scenarios" and intending to seek approval from Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. However, Iran was not expected to join the fighting directly in any scenario. Sinwar grew increasingly confident that Hezbollah was ready to engage in a broad conflict, as reflected in his June 2023 briefing to Hamas’s political bureau in Gaza, where he stated that Hezbollah and Iran had overcome their previous psychological barriers since 2006.

Despite Sinwar’s optimism, internal Hamas intelligence warned of Hezbollah’s hesitations and a psychological barrier to joining a large-scale war. Nevertheless, Sinwar maintained his belief that Hezbollah would join once hostilities commenced. On October 7, at 6:29 a.m., Sinwar sent a letter to Nasrallah apologizing for not informing him of the exact timing and urging immediate support, including rocket barrages and a major ground offensive.

However, the actual events diverged from Sinwar’s expectations. Hezbollah’s assistance was delayed by about a day and was relatively limited, not the broad offensive Sinwar had anticipated. Analysts note this gap between expectation and reality was significant. The October 7 attack was a devastating failure, but the analysis suggests that had Hezbollah joined as planned, the scale of the conflict could have been much larger, potentially including a wide-scale assault on northern Israeli communities in the Galilee region.