By David Wurmser

Various senior intelligence sources in Israel over the last weeks have suggested in public that they assess the upheaval in Iran to be serious, perhaps even profoundly altering of Iran’s behavior, but in the end, that they “do not see that the regime is in danger.”² This Israeli assessment follows weeks of private signaling from the United States that it also did not believe Iran’s regime would fall. That this was indeed the US assessment was publicly confirmed by CIA director William Burns during his with PBS’s Judy Woodruff. ³  Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, added: “”We’re not seeing the regime perceive this as an imminent threat to their stability and effect,”⁴ 

The reasons for arriving at such pessimism on regime change that Israeli intelligence has given also parallels those filtering out of US governmental discussions as well: lack of centralized opposition leadership; lack of funds, and lack of internal regime defections. A revolution, they assert, needs those conditions to succeed. So it appears that Israel’s assessment reflects Israel’s increasing proclivity to defer to American judgments on the region. 

Apart from the rather unusual nature of such public intelligence assessments, these statements by Israel and the US are demoralizing to Iranians, hand the Iranian regime an unnecessary boost of confidence and squander somewhat the potential for a post-Ayatollah Iranian-Israeli rapprochement. 

So what are we to make of these statements? Are they even right? 

Israel’s intelligence structures are storied, and deservedly so. Only the passage of time will allow for the full unveiling of what Israel’s shadow services have done to understand, follow and comprehend the full nature of the Iranian threat, as well as to sabotage it. Fleeting episodes of assassinations, mysterious work accidents, and occasional top-secret archival transplantations to Israel suggest the parameters, depth and professionalism of penetration of Iran which the Israeli security structure has managed. From personal experience, while it is still classified, suffice it to say in general that the understanding of Israel’s intelligence about Iran has surpassed that of any other country’s already two decades ago.  Nobody else holds a candle to them. As such, it is with great deference and trepidation that one would dismiss their estimates.   

And yet, on the case of Iran’s potential regime collapse, it would be wise not to accept the estimates of the intelligence community as the definitive word. Indeed, on this specific question, there is no reason to believe that either Israeli or US intelligence – from which Israel’s intelligence seems to have derived its assessment — has a particularly superior insight that justifies uncritical acceptance. 

The advantage of an intelligence structure is its access both to vast information, some of which is invisible to the general public, as well as to governmental data management structures that allow for powerful substantive searches or even artificial intelligence assisted analyses.  And yet, assessments on this level of perspective must by their nature be grounded first and foremost in a strong appreciation for the context of culture, ideas and exposure to broad swaths of society – all areas in which an intelligence structure has no particular advantage.  When it comes to broader questions such as strategic interpretation and political trends, students of history (who rely on appreciating the patterns and character of culture), political theorists (who examine political systems over millennia),  and those present on the ground (inhabitants, foreigners such as journalists) have as good a sense of the context and exposure to trends operate as an intelligence officer or expatriate. In other words, there is nothing more informed about an intelligence agency’s estimate about the potential for a revolution’s success than that of a good non-intelligence agency analyst or scholar.  

It is not that US and Israeli intelligence assessments are entirely in agrrement with what the opposition appears to believe. Indeed, there appears to be a rough consensus on several points.  First, Iran’s people are fed up with the regime. They are palpably seething in their anger and their disdain.  And it is universal.  Second, the regime clearly retains the will to kill – which was absent, for example, in the 1989 annus mirabilis of eastern Europe’s liberation.  Third, there is increasing foreign intervention that helps the Iranian regime survive.  Fourth, the population generally is disarmed facing a heavily armed gendarme. And fifth, the opposition is not operating at this point in a mirrored fashion – it does not match the regime’s a centralized authority, structure of well-funded instruments of attack and foreign material support.  

But here the consensus between the US and the opposition, and even the US and Israel, seems to fray. The US also appears to believe that the threat of separatist violence will dampen popular support “to go all the way,” or in the very least will make nation-wide opposition coordination efforts difficult. This, of course, has been a theme pounded into the public debate by Iran’s disinformation networks and mouthpieces in the West. The US and Israeli governments also appear to disagree ultimately as to whether this unrest can lead to a more reformable and malleable government or not. While the US believes apparently that reform is still possible, in contrast Israeli officials and intelligence analysts fully agree with Iranians of all factions, who appear to summarily dismiss with certainty and even irritated impatience any hope of reform.   

It is these insights — over only some of which intelligence services may have some particular unique sources of information – that the US and Israel conclude that the regime is threatened but will survive.  

And yet, that is where the limits of intelligence analysis kicks in and provides an incomplete, and quite possibly inaccurate, picture. 

Those with the most sensitized understanding of where things are headed are the people on the ground in Iran – the people braving arrest, running into bullets and facing possible assassination. Even a cursory survey of opposition communications over the last three months indicate a novel and quite adamant assertion that “this time it is different.”  This sentiment was present in the week after Mahsa Amini died, and even more so now.  Indeed, the Iranian opposition both in exile and in Iran acts with such confidence that they appear to believe it is a forgone conclusion that the regime is finished, is the walking dead, the corpse of which will soon be swept aside. The Iranian opposition universally just dismisses with impatience analyses that compare this upheaval to the several failed uprisings, including the most serious ones of 2009 and 2019. 

The opposition’s confidence is matched by its actions.  The regime, even Ayatollah Khamenei himself, has at several points ominously threatened and demanded the demonstrations stop immediately; no further “or else.” The strategy was to win by injecting fear and terror on top of the fragmented and separatist,  atomized society. As Iranian scholar Damon Golriz has noted, the regime’s doctrine is called (النصر بالرعب  Al-Nasr Bal Raeb) which means winning by terrorizing people into submission, The concept refers to three Surah Anfal (12), Surah Al-Imran (151), Surah Ahzab (26).  Again, as with the separatist question, CIA director Burns admits that he has been rather surprised as well by the resolve of the Iranian people and assesses the “genuine courage” of Iranians. He also noted that his Israeli colleagues also believe that “the people of Iran have overcome the barrier of fear.”   

Indeed, after the issuance of such ominous threats by the regime, the demonstrations generally escalated rather than faded and also led to further uprisings. The government then applied the “or else” – live ammunition, executions in public, horrific and systematic torture and unspeakable brutality on a vast scale.  But this butchery failed to suppress. Rather, it only led to yet further upheaval and intertwining cycles of 40-days (the end of mourning periods in which vengeful violence often follows).  In other words, the government has the will to kill, but the population appears to be little deterred by this and escalates in response.  How does one deter a population over which one has lost the asset of fear? 

Moreover, the separatist demon which seems to be so central to shunting the analysis of Western intelligence onto the sidetrack of pessimism, but the reality on the ground suggests that the regime’s propaganda has captured Western elites, but not Iranians. Indeed, it appears to those on the ground almost entirely the opposite.   

In his interview, while at the same time Western elites bemoan the lack of a unified leadership as an insurmountable barrier to success this round and constantly raise the separatist specter that emerges from this, even CIA director Burns was forced to admit, and even underscore that he is quite surprised by the unprecedented “duration” and “scope” of these protests and that they are “cutting across” Iranian society. In other words, the totalitarian regime’s attempt to atomize society into conflicting entities (e.g. men vs. women, nation vs. diaspora, Shia vs. Sunni, Kurd or Arab vs. Persian etc.) has failed, and it is thus losing its grip in executing the divide-and-rule strategy.  

The extent to which regions are expressing solidarity with one another across ethnicities and sects, and the disciplined unified messaging of all opposition forces is stunning – despite hellbent efforts by the regime and its western apologists to incite divisions among them.  There is even a unified language of symbolism in resistance of victims (Mahsa Amini, Nika Shukarami…), songs (Baraye) and slogans (Zan, Zendegi, Azadeh—Woman, Life Freedom).  All factions of the opposition appear determined to focus on regime collapse as the highest common priority and regard the failure to achieve that as the single greatest obstacle to achieving any other goal they might hold. 

As far as the funding question goes, there is a balancing beginning not because the opposition is getting money, but because the regime is losing it. The spread of strikes and paralyzed economic activity from general unrest is clearly beginning to stress the regime. Critical industries are either fully struck or struck in rolling temporary outages – from oil workers to bazaar merchants.  There are signs this hurts: foreign disbursements of money have declined to regional terror groups, such as the Palestinians.  Indeed, The Plan and Budget Organization of the Islamic Republic announced in an analytical report, a year ago (summer of 2021) already then concluded that if the “unhealthy economic structure of the country” were not fundamentally revised, the Iranian government will be on the verge of bankruptcy by 2024 and three years after that, it will go bankrupt in 2027.”⁵ 

A concerted campaign of tightened sanctions coupled with the widespread climate of strikes could easily snowball if Western governments launch a determined effort. One could only imagine what might happen if foreign governments placed all of Iran’s frozen assets into the hands of the Iranian opposition. 

Taken together, there seems to be a momentum and intensity to the upheaval that has not abated, which to some extent even US and Israeli intelligence do seem to acknowledge. But these intelligence agencies at the same time seem to admit that they are somewhat surprised by this resilience, and did not appreciate – and apparently still do not – appreciate from where it is coming from other than sheer despair. 

Even though US and Israeli intelligence officials admit that there appears to be universal upheaval by all segments of Iranian society, and even they also admit that Iranians are showing incomprehensible bravery in charging regime forces and sustaining the revolt, the assessment of both Israeli and American intelligence communities remains; the regime is not facing an “immediate threat” to its survival, because ultimately they believe the regime’s strategy of repression is effective, and that it has not exhausted its tools of repression and brutality. In the Israeli intelligence estimate:  

“The deep change Iran is undergoing will not necessarily result in a revolution and regime change. Right now, we do not see this happening in the foreseeable future …The regime still has many tools with which to defend itself and it has not exhausted most of them.”⁶ 

In other words, though separatism, lack of funding and fear have not yet stopped the freedom revolution, they eventually will.  Despair cannot ultimately overpower fear – which will set in — and lead (bullets) – which the regime has.  

And yet, revolutions do not automatically happen just because there is widespread despair. Nor is the correlation of forces determinant as the historical record of revolutions suggest. Clearly something else is at work which US and Israeli intelligence structures are not grasping.  But what is this intangible factor that seems to be at work here that drives the opposition’s confidence with such determination, but is entirely missed by the professional analysts of Western governments? Why are those taking to the streets so confident that not only has  fear notworked for the regime, but it will it not work going forward either? 

Reading between the lines, the opposition appears to believe that a Jinn (Genie in Western parlance) has been released from his bottle, and that he cannot be shoved back into his vessel by the regime. Only by indentifying this “Jinn” can one properly understand why there is such resolve and confidence among Iran’s youth who take to the streets. 

Ironically, this “Jinn” comes from the regime itself. The very attribute that gives the regime the will to kill – its obsession with martyrdom raised to the level of being a cult of death – has been so broadly seared through all-encompassing indoctrination of children and adults alike over several generations that it now is bending back to haunt the regime.  

It is apparent that parents in Iran are tired. They are not the agents of this revolution right now.  They love and lost too many children, and with every death, there is deep mourning at the funeral.  The image that raced across the social media on December 8 when the family of Mohsen Shekari was informed of his being hanged – with screaming out of sheer agony on the street – is heartbreaking, haunting and entirely comprehensible. The parents are too worn down to sacrifice yet another generation of children to the cult of death. But that parents are not the ones leading the emerging revolution; they are broken generations.  But the youth are not. 

And this revolution belongs to Iran’s youth. 

Youth are often more absorbent of the world around them and impervious to danger, and the constant atmosphere of worshipping martyrdom has created a generation that at this young age sees the pursuit of an idea as worthy enough for which to die.  The idea for the Ayatollahs for which they hoped all would welcome death to realize was the archaic glorious expansion of a totalitarian form of Islam. But for the youth, such a vision of Islam has no appeal. Indeed, it is a violation of the ancient understanding, so the deal struck in 654 AD is now off. The idea of freedom – perhaps not fully formed, but very real – has replaced it.   

In this climate of constant martyrdom, the phrase “give me liberty or give me death,” which is so familiar but practically has become distant to young Americans has for Iran’s youth acquired a whole new imagery translated locally. “Zan, Zendegi, Azadeh” has become the cultural equivalent of Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death.”  It is one of those rare moments where the few words of a slogan capture, rather than infantilize, vast volumes of ideas and communicates them across all the people of that culture via a universally understood code. 

So ironically, the very animus propelling the regime to kill and rampage regionally – the obsession with death emerging from a cult of martyrdom – now drives Iran’s youth in seething disdain to risk everything in revolt.  Every time the regime shoots and kills, and every day there is another execution, it not only fails to deter, but the very cult of martyrdom it cultivated now swells to haunt and plague it.  With fear compromised, the central currency of terror upon which the regime relies is lost. 

This distortion is a tailwind driving the revolution to probable success – the regime lacks the means to erase the willingness to die that challenges them — but it is also a blight with which the post-Ayatollah regime will have to wrestle.  The ancient soul of Iran is of light and life, not darkness and death.  The world of Iran’s civilizational creation – the deepest reach of Iran’s soul to this day – is the world which Abolqasem Ferdowsi described and embodied in his works. As Azar Nafisi wrote, quoting her father, in the introduction to a recent translation of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh: the Persian Book of Kings, in the kingdom of imagination Ferdowsi built  

“Rostam, Tahmineh, Seyavash, Bizhan and the other fictional characters … became our brothers and sisters, cousins and neighbors…For Persians, Shahnameh is like their identity papers … Against the barbarity of time and politics, … they created magnificent monuments in words, they reasserted both their own worth and the best achievements of mankind through a work like Shahnameh, the golden thread that links one Persian to the other, connecting the past to the present.”⁷   

Simply, the soul of Iran is reflected in poetry. The idea of poetry as a vehicle of transmitting identity distant from how Americans understand ourselves, especially our youth. But poetry and songs of Iran, like e-Iran, and terms, like “Iranzamin” capture the deep and unique civilizational emotion that touches Iran’s soul and anchors them to their land – namely something akin to Abraham Lincoln’s “mystic bonds of memory.” 

Shahnameh describes not a conquest and religious conversion of ancient Persia, but a cultural rapture between very different, and indeed diametric opposite, cultures. The refined, urban and wealthy Persia was overtaken by the harsh, stark, simple and nomadic conquerers – Indeed, Ferdowsi —in a warning to the wealthy, urban and technologically superior West across a millennia and half — laments the juxtaposition in this spectacle between the gilded armor and shining military display of the Persian armies which may have looked impressive externally but whose internal will broke so easily from the rust of comfort and then surrendered to the much less armed, much less wealthy and much less clad Arab invaders.   

And yet, the symbolism of this ancient culture offers a pillar of resurrection.  The poplar tree bends in the wind, the origin of the symbol of our “paisley” was a Victorian era fascination with motifs of the orient, so it has been vastly popularized in clothing, carpets, ties and paintings throughout the world.  But this is no more art work for the Persians: it is an allegory of their culture and the moment of surrender that Ferdowsi describes.  The poplar tree, signifying ancient Iranian culture, lasts forever, but it has to bend to the wind, signifying Islam, to do so. 

Inflexible resistance would have only led to its breaking and erasure.  For the Muslim invaders, this was fine.  Although it conceded some to ancient Persia to allow some elements of its culture and its cultural memory to survive, it gained as well since attempting to control this ancient culture was preferable to the business of erasing it altogether. The Arab invaders lacked the numbers to extinguish Persia in all its complexity, vastness and influence, so the deal that has lasted over a millennium was struck.  

Ancient Persian culture, thus, still has a grip on some corner of the Iranian soul, but it has been bent and covered by the greater forces of Islam for millennia. 

So over the soul of light and life, a culture that so worships fire and light, is an overlay that has been imposed. While various forms of Islam, and various phases of Islamic evolution, upheld the ancient deal, this new form of Islam, developed over the last century and imposed on Iran in 1979, has violated the millennium-long understanding with its Persian hosts.  

The totalitarian intrusion into Shiite thought, anchored onto the idea of the Valayat e-Faqeh (Rule of the Jurisprudent) over the last decades has sought to erase the last remnants of Persia, and it is finding that this ambition is likely no easier to have accomplished now than it was in 654 AD. Ironically, while the government of the Ayatollahs tries to spin its new ideology as some deep, culminating expression of Iranian culture, the truth is more likely the opposite. A reasonable argument can even be made that this newest, modern form of totalitarian Islam is the triumph of a Greek philosophical Shibbolet – namely Plato’s idea of the “philosopher king” which is now invested with a religious fervor and pious veneer against which Aristotle argued — over the Persia represented by Cyrus.  

This twisted manifestation of Islam is a world of darkness and death, embodied by the dour, cruel and arrogantly detached leadership of these reigning Ayatollahs. It is undeniable that at the heart of all Shiism is the ongoing pain and reliving of the assassination of Ali in 661 AD, and the following martyrdom of his sons Hasan in 670 AD and Husayn a decade later in Karbala, but this regime of Iran has taken this reverence for their martyrdom and raised it to the single, defining factor of its existence. Theirs is the God of misery, where life is easily bartered for the relief of death, where the hell of earth is traded for the paradise of the afterlife. The value of emulation is taken to the extreme to striving to reach the demise that the founding three suffered. 

This grim, bleak desolation offered by the regime offers little for which to live, while at the same time its diminishing of the value of life instilled over generations also erases the fear upon which the regime depends for survival.  This duality is the Jinn the intelligence communities miss, but which the Iranian people appear to believe has been released from its vessel. 

Something profound is gripping Iran.  A twilight struggle to the death has been joined. The Ayatollahs have violated the old understanding between Persia and Islam. The intensity of the ensuing suppression and the acceleration of their attempts to erase the Persian heart of the nation have now cut so deep that it has forced Iranians, as the trustees of their ancient culture and legacy, who breathe the poetry and stories of their history to nurture their unique soul, into a battle for survival.  And yet, now as then, the forces of totalitarianism attempting to extinguish Persia simply lack the numbers. And they will thus eventually lose.  

And this is the point that both Israeli and American intelligence agencies appear to miss entirely.  It is not their fault. Intelligence operates in a world of stress and short fuses.  They are navigators to a captain in a storm. The captain cannot suffer a long treatise on fluid dynamics from a navigator; he needs an immediate judgment as to what he should do.  Yes, they should appreciate context, but immediacy and urgency does not lend itself well to the contemplation of long-term trends. And yet, in such a moment as Iran finds itself, it is only those long-term trends that illuminate for us where affairs are headed. Intelligence assessments are occasionally the consequence of such careful reflection, but usually, they are of limited value. 

As a final thought, sadly, this cult of death imposed by these totalitarians will bedevil Iran after liberation as well. It has left its scars, and scars are never easily covered, let alone erased. One can only hope that an effort to reawaken the contrasting, ancient soul of Iran — whose passing Ferdowsi documents, memorializes but also embodies — in order to create a relish for life and light to overpower this cult of death will prevail.  Indeed, this effort to erase this tormenting distortion of the soul is going to be the most important but difficult task of the post-Ayatollah Iranian leadership.  

By Dr. David Wurmser

The problem with the Israel-Lebanon maritime agreement just concluded is not only its content, but the surrounding arguments promulgated to justify it in the public eye. There may be secret provisions to the agreement that render it an achievement, but the public disclosures of the terms and rationale for the agreement fall far short, and in some cases are flat out wrong or are invented assertions. One might be tempted to excuse these as public roll-out efforts, which are often akin to putting makeup on warthogs, but some of the public statements from Israel meant to justify the agreement go beyond mere spin and become outright misrepresentations. And worse, some reveal a deeper cause for concern about the underlying defense and foreign policy conceptions informing Israel’s security establishment. 

 
The agreement at least is an historic first…Not. 

The United States negotiator, US envoy Amos Hochstein asserted the agreement as historic since it is the first agreement ever between Israel and Lebanon.¹ An impressive achievement indeed, if it true. But it isn’t.  In fact, there was an agreement – several to be accurate – between Israel and Lebanon.  The Rhodes Agreements of 1948 established a de facto demarcation line, which is what was just reset under this agreement although this is heralded as the first such line established between the two nations.  Second, like this agreement, it actually was both sides’ putting their signature to paper through an intermediary, the United States, so this agreement breaks no new ground in terms of tacit recognition of Israel. 

Indeed, there was even a previous peace treaty between Israel and Lebanon signed on May 17,  1983.  This was not a peace treaty dictated to Lebanon by Israel, but one negotiated under the auspices of the United States Special Envoy for the Middle East, Morris Draper. It contained provisions for buffer zones under the control of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and even contained security cooperation between the LAF and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to ensure deconfliction and to prevent third parties from using the territory to trigger conflict between the two nations.  The treaty collapsed because the Syrian government, who occupied Lebanon but had been momentarily thrown on their heels by the Israeli invasion, recovered and toppled the Lebanese government and then installed a puppet regime in Beirut to move parliament under a new Speaker, Hussein al-Husseini, to formally revoke the treaty. Ironically, the previous Speaker, Kamel Assad, had championed the agreement with Israel, and had come from a prominent Lebanese Shiite family in Bent Jbail in the heart of the Shiite community of southern Lebanon, so his ouster became the main target not only of Syrian efforts to sabotage the agreement but of an Iranian campaign to destroy the traditional Shiite leadership of Lebanon and seize from it the mantle of the “Shiite Awakening” (which under Imam Musa al-Sadr’s leadership preceded the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 by a half decade) and to pave the way for replacing the old elite with a new Hizballah-based Iranian Islamic revolutionary monopoly. 

In short, there is nothing new or historic about the agreement.  In fact, it aimed far lower and achieved far less than its predecessor agreements. 

Well, then it strengthens Israel strategically by codifying an American security guarantee…Not. 

The agreement erodes, and even endangers, US support for Israel for three reasons. 

First, it is rather baffling that the strongest ally of the United States in the region should need a security guarantee from the United States bought through confessions to its enemy. Israel says that were it not for the agreement, there could well be war with Hizballah, which is also one of the most inimical and murderous entities to the United States, not only Israel. Lebanon at this point is a captive state dominated by Iran through Hizballah. Standing with Israel against Hizballah and the Hizballahi-run Lebanon should emerge from an inherent American interest and should not require either Israeli concessions or the imprimatur of Lebanon to validate it.  In other words, the agreement does not display tightening and elevating US-Israeli strategic cooperation but reflects the fallen state of those relations – rather than emerging from a strictly bilateral understanding – that it now requires some sort of purchase from Israel’s enemy and a string of Israeli concessions to allow for its codification. 

Second, the agreement ostensibly codifies the red lines and casus belli for Israel’s and the US’s responses if Israel’s waters or fields are again threatened. The fact that the Lebanese government has said it recognizes no such delineation as legally binding only hours after the deal was reached is disturbing enough, but in terms of US-Israeli relations, the true parameters of danger can be illustrated through a cautionary lesson from the end of the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon/Hizballah war of how this “commitment” could easily boomerang to haunt Israel gravely and potentially even cause the United States to cross Israel strategically in the future. After a month of war with Hizballah, Israel was seeking an exit. Israel’s foreign minister at the time, Tzippi Livni, turned both to Washington and to France, since they were seen as able to sway Lebanon, to help secure a ceasefire resolution through the United Nations. John Bolton was the US-UN ambassador, and I was the point of contact for the Vice President’s office. 

France sought almost immediately to craft a UN resolution that would be legally binding – an idea onto which Israel’s security and foreign policy establishment quickly seized, believing that it would finally be able to cap and regulate Hizballah’s presence in Lebanon in such a way that its threatening behavior would be met with an international response.  In essence, Israel tried to substitute its freedom of action and the power of the IDF for an international security guarantee to leash Hizballah and secure its norther border.  

The United States, through the efforts of Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams and US UN Ambassador John Bolton, resisted the pressure of Foreign Minister Livni and the French, and torpedoed this effort. The fear that motivated us – and disturbingly not Israel’s defense and foreign affairs elite – was that it would clearly commit the US to side against the party that was internationally labeled as the violator of the ceasefire.  One does not have to be a historian or Middle East scholar to know that the international community will not declare either Hizballah’s rearmament and redeployment onto the border a casus belli and justify an Israeli – let alone international – preemptive strike.  

And then, a Hobson’s choice would be thrust upon Israel. Either Israel would have to acquiesce without any response to Hizballah’s buildup, or it would have to preempt but risk (really a certainty, not risk) its being labelled the aggressor which would trigger the legally binding provisions of response of the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1701.  In short, were UNSCR 1701 legally binding, then Israel would soon have found itself in a situation where it would be unable to act preemptively to prevent further build-up and threatening movements of Hizballah unless it would be willing do so – in the opinion of the international community – in violation of the legally binding resolution to which the United States would have been bound to uphold. To prevent this trap, US Ambassador Bolton stood his ground and forced through a tough but non-binding resolution, much to the chagrin of the French and Israelis. Of course, the moment the ceasefire was signed, Iran began resupplying Hizballah and Hizballah began deploying dangerously toward the south.  One can only imagine how impossible it would have been for Israel over the last 17 years to continuously slice Hizballah down to size as it has by using force – including against depots and shipments, let alone against leadership. Israel would long ago have been subject to the very provisions it had sought to subcontract its defense to a outside entity through legal commitments. 

Unfortunately, the current Israel-Lebanon agreement falls into the very trap which was avoided under UNSCR 1701. In fact, it is an even worse trap since this agreement fails to clearly define the behaviors by Lebanon that would trigger the security commitments. There is a failure in the agreement to define what would constitute a material violation on the Lebanese side, but it does clearly define Israeli commitments under the agreement, many of which are impossible to uphold if Lebanon or Hizballah act without such clearly defined legal restrictions.  As such, this agreement threatens the exact same nightmare scenario as the Israeli-French proposal in 2006, which was rejected as the basis for UNSCR 1701.  

Third, and perhaps most disturbing, is the assumption underlying this – that entangling the United States into a commitment to defend Israeli interests strengthens the Israeli-American relationship and reinforces the American strategic backstop – should not be taken as a given. In fact, it is worth examination. 

For years, Israel’s defense elites have been seized by the conception that the support of the US government is an essential component of any strategic move or substantial military action, the key to which the Israeli government and security establishment believes demanded launching a full court campaign of convincing Washington’s elites in the corridors of power.  

On one side, there is a” Zionist” problem with this outlook. One of the most refreshing and important aspects of the solidification of Zionism and the mooring of Israeli identity was the idea that it represented the rejection of the Diaspora “Galut” Jew – a person whose institutionalized weakness and disempowerment distorted the soul and left him at the mercy of the non-Jewish world and attempting futilely to make peace with his implacable haters. Israel’s defense establishment in recent years seems to be too burdened by the idea that it cannot act without approval from the United States in critical moments. This is most evinced by its belief that the Iran problem ultimately requires an American solution. But if it does, then what happens when the US refuses, or the US simply withdraws from the region, or the US enters an introverted or isolationist stage.  The whole point of Zionism was that Israel’s fate is in Israel’s hands regardless of what others demand of it. 

But on the other side, there is an equally large “American” problem. The support of the American leadership for Israel in America generally comes from the strong foundation of public support and sense of cultural affinity which Israel enjoys broadly in the American population. Part of this emerges from the unique Judeo-Christian roots of American identity which views itself as the New Jerusalem and seeks guidance culturally from its Christianity (even secular Americans still culturally respect their Judeo-Christian foundations).  But part of this also emerges from the respect Israel has earned through its actions and its fierce independence – and distinctly NOT from appreciation of a history of seeking prior permission.  

Indeed, Americans are increasingly displaying signs of exhaustion in bearing the burden for the defense of other nations who appear unwilling to bear the burden primarily themselves for their own defense. Very few American administrations in the last four or five decades, for example, have avoided a welling demand in the public for greater defense-burden sharing from our European allies. Israel has long stood out precisely because it never asked for American troops or entangling security guarantees.  It was precisely the idea that when Israel acts, it does so because it is so important that it bear the burden alone.  This independent determination and willingness to pay the price reminds Americans of themselves and convinces Americans popularly, and thus the leadership particularly, that they should support Israel both during specific episodes and in a more general sense.  

Transforming Israel from strategic asset to albatross – from an independently-minded ally to a dependent obligation – is perhaps one of the greatest threats to public support, and through it the leadership’s support, for Israel that can be imagined. And yet, consistently over the last several decades, Israel’s defense establishment has tried to entangle the United States in Israel’s defense structure, thankfully all stillborn, through various schemes that could damage Israel’s brand image and erode American respect. This includes through the years:  

• the idea of American guarantees in Judea and Samaria (even deployments to protect Israel) in exchange for Israel‘s withdrawal during the Oslo period,  
• Israeli acquiescence during the Obama administration in American diplomatic efforts on Iran or to entice Israel to join the International Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and accept a regional nuclear weapons free zone in the region by offering a nuclear umbrella (Hillary Clinton) in exchange for Israel’s surrendering its reported nuclear capability,  
• the idea of deploying US troops to the Golan Heights to secure Israeli withdrawal from there in the mid-1990s, and now  

These efforts all never came to be, making this agreement the first to really be accepted by Israel since Eisenhower’s security guarantee to Israel in 1957 for withdrawing from the Sinai. The fate of that guarantee leaves room for anxiousness.  

Simply put, Americans get tired of supporting nations that are not willing to defend themselves, and Israel is in danger through this constant tendency among Israel’s defense elites to slide into that category. 

Equally disconcerting, however, is that while the primacy of maintaining Israel’s freedom of strategic maneuver has been rhetorically loudly tempted by virtually every Israeli politician, it took bold leadership to act on that conviction at the political level since the underlying defense establishment conception is that securing American approval transcends strategic maneuver. This ossified conception has gripped and dominated Israel’s defense elites since 1970, and it has left along the way a horrific trail of failure behind it starting with 1973.  Strategic maneuvers and independence of action, including the ability to launch strategic preemption, is a critical, if not one of the two most critical, pillars of a proper Israeli defense strategy (the other pillar is strategic depth through buffers to allow for mobilization). Dependency and habitual reliance on “the green light” from Washington devastates that pillar. 

Ah, but it reinforces deterrence…Not 

The agreement exposes several deeply disturbing ideas that afflict the Israeli defense establishment about strategy and deterrence, some of which in truth reflect a more broadly-shared decay in Western strategic thinking. 

The logic of the specific agreement as publicly stated is deeply flawed and troubling. All of its logic and assumptions are in one form or another a rendition of the belief that by bolstering Lebanon, you will create conditions for their severing their ties with Iran — or at least reducing them below other national objectives that gravitate toward a Beirut-Tehran rupture. It rests on two assumptions.  

First that deterrence is a foundational strategy, but that the enemy might lack enough value that it renders it impossible to effectively threaten enough to deter. Thus, the more value the enemy is given by Israel which he would lose in war, the stronger the deterrent. This logic has been applied to the Palestinians as well, and it has proven entirely erroneous. The US tried a diluted and tenuous version with the Soviets in the 1970s, and it ended in failure with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan‎.   

Indeed, just this week it was revealed that one of the core conceptions underlying the German government’s support (under Angela Merkel) for the Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline from Russia was that by giving Russia so great an economic interest, it would stabilize Russian European relations, make war impossible, and increase energy security for the European continent – an almost verbatim duplicate of the Israeli arguments regarding the Lebanon agreement.  Of course, we all know how well these German assumptions panned out on February 24, 2022.  

Second, proponents rely on a bedrock assumption that the enemy, in this case Lebanon, has any agency. That somehow it has power of decision to go to war, to make peace, to cease hostility, and that only if the incentives were great enough, then they would really cast the Iranians away and enter the promised utopia. Lebanon is a captive nation and has no agency, as did neither Czechoslovakia, Hungary nor Poland and others during the Cold War. No matter what we would have given the Czechs in 1945-1989, it would never have resulted in their choosing to bolt, because ‎it was not a choice over which they had power to make. So too Lebanon. I have yet to meet a single Lebanese who does not wish dearly to rid themselves of Iran, they do not need a gas field to do so, but they are desperate because they have no power or control over any decision.  

Moreover, if Hizballah’s centrally held value is to survive, and Iran’s centrally held value is to dominate Lebanon through Hizballah, then any attempt to develop a foundation of any sort for Lebanese independence inherently becomes a target for Hizballah’s and Iran’s ire – and their determined sabotage.  In that way, it is precisely because the fields could become a foundation for reducing Lebanon’s dependence on Iran that it raises the latter’s interest in escalating hostilities, precisely to sabotage that movement. In other words, unless Hizballah is already neutralized and Iran’s clench broken, these moves toward building a Lebanese economy of separation will be still born, or even invite attack … unless the moves can be incentivized to be in Hizballah’s and Iran’s interest.  The only pathway for that would be to allow these fields to become a structure for enriching and laundering money in times when they face international ostracism and sanctions.  But that would then mean that this agreement — reached at time when the Iranian people are braving bullets to oust their tormentors – becomes a vehicle whereby Israel has allowed funding for the internally repressive and externally aggressive apparatus (including the Huthis, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, let alone militias in Iraq) serving the Islamic Revolution to be infused with new sources of income.  

Third, is a corollary to the last point.  Could perhaps it arise that if Hizballah financially benefits from the gas proceeds — since no Israeli official has as yet argued that it will be possible to insulate the money from Hizballah skimming ‎– then perhaps it might lead to a split between Hizballah (who will enjoy the revenue proceeds) and Iran‎ (which will not)? But this betrays a highly questionable assumption regarding the interwoven and symbiotic nature of Hizballah-Iranian relations. Hizballah relies on Iran on so many levels, financial being only one. Hizballah’s uniqueness with respect to other Shiite factions in Lebanon has always been that it is essentially an Iranian appendage, but that this quisling status was masked through its alignment with the reigning ideological construct of the Iranian regime, the “Valeyat e-Faqeh” or Rule of the Jurisprudent. The Valeyat e-Faqeh must be understood as a revolutionary movement within Shiite Islam, and thus does not genuinely enjoy the theological support of Lebanon’s Shiite religious establishment. Without Iranian overlay, the clerical establishment of Hizballah would be superseded and wiped out by the older Shiite establishment, much of which still exists in Iraq. Remember the founding charter of 1985 of Hizballah:  

“we, the Umma of Hizballah, consider ourselves a part of the state of Iran…We are committed to the orders of one leadership, represented by the Valeyat e-Faqeh, the Supreme leader.”   

The most prominent clerics of Lebanon, such as the Ayatollah in Tyre, have far greater following and Silsalah (pedigree), oppose the idea of the Valeyat e-Faqeh. They would seek to diminish and subordinate Hizballah clerics’ influence in a heartbeat. The same can be said of Amal against Hizballah. Indeed, in an attempt at subordinating and fusing Amal with Hizballah, Hizballah made Shaykh Subhi al-Tufayli for two years (1998-91) the Secretary General of the Hizballah. Tufayli was a valued student of the father of the Shiite Awakening, the vanished Imam, Musa al-Sadr. But he opposed Iran’s revolutionary reigning theology of Valeyat e-Faqeh, which strongly suggested – given that he was that the most senior and genuine actor that was present at the creation of the Shiite Awakening in the 1970s – that Musa al-Sadr himself would likely have been opposed to the Iran’s definition of Shiism. This profoundly threatened the Iranian regime which was trying to usurp the mantle to itself of being the father of the Shiite Awakening and the successor to Imam Musa al-Sadr.  Indeed, Iran was already on thin ice in terms of the Shiite Awakening since its key strategic ally at the beginning of the revolution in Iran was Yasser Arafat and the PLO, who is largely believed among Shiites to have ordered the assassination/disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr and executed him via his ties to Qadhafi in Libya, who was the other Arab leader with whom the Iranian regime established an early strategic partner. As such, the threat of Tufayli’s opposition to the Iranian regime was clear and present, and as such he was removed and ostracized.  Without Iran’s heavy hand, not only would old Shiite patterns almost instantly resurface and consume Hizballah, but Iran’s usurped mantle of leading the Shiite Awakening would be exposed and collapse. 

As such, Hizballah does not have an indigenous basis to survive its competition with other Shiite trends. There is no Hizballah possible without its being an interwoven part of Iran’s dominance, and vice versa, there is no Iran in Lebanon without Hizballah. As such, trying to create a Hizballah-Iran wedge is like trying to seduce an arm to sever itself from a body. Neither Hizballah nor the arm even have a central nervous system and brain independent of the mother body. 

 
Finally, as a last thought about whether this agreement strengthens Israel’s deterrence. Israel’s government has trumpeted that were there no agreement, then there would be war and that Israeli gas fields would be threatened.  This is all but an admission that Hizballah’s threats against Karish – backed up by the flying of a few unarmed Hizballahi drones that Israel shot down – drove Israel’s government to concede vast maritime rights and even its sovereign territorial waters as essentially a protection payment against the Hizballah mafiosi-like threat.  The logic underpinning the idea that this strengthens deterrence in the future frankly simply eludes me.  

‎Well, Israel is emerging as a strategic gas player, and this unlocks that potential…Not 

The Israeli government has argued that it needed this agreement to bring its Karish gas field on-line.  Hizballah, sometimes itself and sometimes channeled through Lebanon’s voice, has threatened every Israeli gas find exploration and development until now, and insists that it now has an agreement with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to attack Israeli fields in a future conflict.  Lebanon last year threatened to act against Israel’s giant Leviathan field, at times claiming it was part of its territory and at times because it accused Israel of stealing its gas through horizontal drilling. In short, there was nothing different about the Karish field from all the previous fields, and Israel has in an unencumbered way thus far developed all those fields thanks to the superior defense capabilities of its navy. And in the end, it is the maintenance of those capabilities that will continue to be the foundation for the security needed to develop Karish. It is thus hardly believable that for some reason Karish could not be developed when others were because Lebanon did not green-light it.  Moreover, even the Lebanese admit that Karish was never really on the table in these talks, and that they never seriously claimed Karish.  In other words, it is unclear how this agreement makes it easier in any way to develop Karish. 

Broadening the aperture, one notices that Israel is at the edge of perhaps one of the greatest moments of strategic good luck it has ever faced. The sudden, great dependency of Europe on finding new sources of gas, combined with the presence of gas in Israel and the ability offered to bring yet more gas through Israel to Europe, position Israel to become a critical gas transmission hub of about 60 to 80 billion cubic meters of gas per annum. But Israel is deliberately denying its territory for transmission by:  

• Sabotaging the UAE’s desire to build a transmission pipeline for gas through the Eilat-Ashqelon pipeline company rights of way,  

• Pushing export of Israeli gas through Egypt,  
• surrendering territory in which it is possible substantial more gas may yet be discovered,  
• Wasting a precious year of exploration by imposing an inexplicable moratorium, and  
• Pushing the robust evolution of Lebanese gas which will compete with Israeli gas in Europe and could itself offer as the competing‎ location of being a hub for gas from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon — thus effectively forfeiting for Israel this immense strategic gift over which it had no competition until the Israeli government created it via Egypt and Lebanon.  

Taken together, there is no way to avoid concluding that out of ideological reasons (possibly environmental), Israel’s government has deliberately retarded and diminished the potential for finding, producing and exporting gas, let alone to position Israel as a vital national asset in becoming the core east-Mediterranean gas hub. 

Indeed, Israel may have just unlocked the potential for a large alternative gas hub structure anchored to Qatar and Turkey just announced its intention to become the new gas hub for Europe (although including Russian gas).  This unlocks the potential for Qatar to lead an effort to connect its own gas structures to the eastern leveraging the Lebanese gas fields to connect to a Turkish-based pipeline structure into Europe. Six months ago, this was not a conceivable state of development since Lebanon was considered too unstable, the legal infrastructure in Lebanon was rickety, sanctions afflicted the development of the fields, as did the irresolution of the demarcation line with Israel. Israel, and Egypt — who is in tension with Turkey and would be loath to build a pipeline that crosses Turkish waters or territory — for that matter, thus had no effective competition for becoming a gas hub. And now, suddenly Lebanon may well emerge as the gas hub, leaving Israeli gas stranded beyond its current structure.  

Competition is a natural part of life, and Lebanon certainly had the potential to become a competitor along these parameters all along, about which Israel could do nothing other than expedite its own development – which it curiously has been extremely slow to do (or even outright eager to halt) over that last year.  But what is mystifying is why Israel, after having spent a year stalling its own exploration and export infrastructure development, decided to remove a pound of its own flesh to encourage Lebanon to compete with itself in a way that may render Israel’s potential hydrocarbons strategic importance for Europe dead in the water. 

In the end, why did the Israeli government agree to this deal, and why does it do so with such gusto? One can certainly attribute it to cynical political calculations — especially given that this is the annual election season in Israel. Indeed, the rise of cynicism is a phenomenon worthy of examination in and of itself because it afflicts many Israeli politicians as ideas and ideologies fade in currency in organizing political parties  

But attributing this solely to election cynicism skims over the depth of the problem herein exposed. The government’s public justifications for the deal are possibly heartfelt and genuine.  Indeed, they likely are since they reflect deeply held, but equally dangerous, flawed conceptions governing Israel’s strategic imagery, the evidence for which stretches back for decades already. One shape or form of the arguments forwarded to explain this dal have appeared at various levels of development as far back as a half century and reflect a serious, long-term deterioration in the solidity and rigorousness of Israeli strategic thinking and analysis.  Moreover, it is not one “conception” that bedevils the planners and analysists, but a collection of conceptions which have remained beyond critical examination because of a stilted historiography, or narrative, of events and Israeli strategic history that prevents either realization or reexamination of thought.  

In other words, what disturbs most about this agreement is not only its terms, but what it exposes about the problematic state of strategic thinking governing Israel’s defense establishment.