New IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir did not wait long to put his stamp on the military.

In a flurry of decisions on Wednesday evening, only hours after being sworn in, he made a variety of major and medium-level changes to the IDF.

The Iran threat

Iran: Zamir publicly said that 2025 was the year of war focused on Gaza and Iran. This was an incredibly explicit and forceful statement. It should put Iran on notice that the clock is ticking on reaching a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear standoff. And yet that statement was potentially less significant than the decision to close down a special full IDF command portfolio that has been part of the high command since 2020, specifically focused on Iran.

Why close down the Iran command when Tehran is only becoming a more serious and more immediate issue than it has ever been before?

Despite repeated requests, the IDF spokesperson’s office did not provide any comment or guidance.

However, the Jerusalem Post spoke to various defense sources who noted that closing such new commands is not infrequent. They noted that previously there was a Depth Command for strategy that was closed and converted.

They said that military realities often change in radical ways.

However, in the post-October 7 world, they said that even if it is still necessary to have senior officers who spend all of their time thinking about strategy related to Iran, that the IDF’s emphasis in terms of funding and human resources must return to combat fighters regarding border threats.

In any event, the current and outgoing IDF Strategy and Iran Command Chief Maj. Gen., Eliezer Toledano (he is due to retire) had recommended to Zamit to close down the command.

2. Checking into closing the Northern Corps (separate from the Northern Command):

The idea of the Northern Corps is to be ready to immediately command and vastly multiply mandatory and reservist forces in the North in the event of a conflict far beyond the expected capacity of what the Northern Command can manage on its own. The current commander, Maj. Gen. Dan Goldfus, was the key general who took over Khan Yunis and played many other critical roles in the war in Gaza.

The Northern Corps was closed before in 2006 by then IDF chief Dan Halutz, but he was criticized for this heavily when the IDF failed to properly manage all of its land forces in the North during the Second Lebanon War. Shortly after Halutz was forced to resign the Northern Corps was reopened.