The New L’Affair Dreyfus: the Jewish Lesson for Zionists

January 22, 2024

By Dr. David Wurmser

The suit brought forward to the International Court of Justice by South Africa and backed by Jordan — claiming that Israel has committed war crimes and is conducting a genocide in its war against Hamas — is riddled with more holes than fabric. Most Western countries have backed Israel and dismissed the accusations as without foundation.

Israel is accused of willfully engaging in the mass slaughter of innocents. And yet, virtually all objective military analysts in the West have outlined how Israel’s behavior in the conduct of this defensive war has been, in the context of the threat, exemplary. It has followed all the rules of war, established humanitarian safe zones, given ample warning to evacuate legitimate military targets, and often forewarned and cancelled strikes that show signs of continuing to have civilians present. Israel’s cautious tactics have cost them the lives of many soldiers. Compared to the tactics of any other military in the world, it has operated to the highest standards of humanity.

Israel is accused of genocide – a crime defined after World War II in reaction to the slaughter of the Jewish people in the Holocaust by the Nazis. To forward this current claim against the Jewish people, South Africa has seized on a Biblical passage cited by Prime Minister Netanyahu in the early stages of the war on the Amalekites. While there is a passage in the Book of Samuel in the Bible that calls for erasing the seed of the Amalekites, that is not the passage quoted by Prime Minister Netanyahu. He quoted another verse from Deuteronomy, which not only does not call for the annihilation of the Amalekites, but it calls the Jewish people to remember those who commit genocide. It is such a powerful and apt verse that in is in fact enshrined on a plaque on the building of the very same International Court of Justice that now has brought suit against Israel. And in Kafkaesque inversion, it is Hamas – who is the real force behind this accusation through its alliance with South Africa’s ANC movement – that in words has trumpeted genocidal intent, in subversive networks has mobilized global antisemitism to threaten the survival of Jews, and in actions committed horrific war crimes as a down payment on its intent to not only kill all Jews, but do so in the most depraved and torturing manner, and then to erase the very legacy and history of the Jews’ peoplehood. Indeed, so spurious was the claim put forth by South Africa that it had to invent a new crime to justify squeezing the Jewish nation into it unsustainable accusation: domilicide – the destruction of houses so that people have no homes, amounting to an attempt to kill a people. Although Israel has not expelled any Palestinians from the territory, and indeed over decades of accelerating demographic growth under Israeli control, the idea that destroying structures in a war used for cover for terrorist tunneling is an Orwellian twisting of reality.

Israel is accused of imperial aggression. Israel had once controlled the entirety of the territory, but surrendered it all in order to be left alone. There was a ceasefire in place. Israel allowed all non-military goods into Gaza, as well as funds from various sources. But Hamas, one day out of the blue, launched its murderous attack, after years of periodically and unilaterally ending previous ceasefires and launching lesser attacks. If Israel is accused of a war of imperialism, then this would be the first war of imperialism that was started by a “victim” given all the territory the Palestinians had claimed but which never was legally deeded to them to begin with (indeed, the territory has been deeded to Israel in the 1922 Mandate) but who repeatedly and consistently launched unprovoked, murderous waves of attacks.

Every aspect of this case before the International Court of Justice is thus a travesty. And yet it proceeds, and the accusations against Israel have a reasonable chance of resulting in a verdict against Israel.

So what are we to make of this? How can the unfolding of this episode even be possible? For that, we must look to history.

Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. It has become the modern ideological form of attacking the Jewish people through the thinly veiled attempt to legitimize it by claiming it is only against Israeli evils. The veil is indeed more than thin; many of the advocates of anti-Zionism engage in rhetoric as well as attacks that fail to differentiate between Jews and Israel. The Hamas charter calls for killing Jews, not Israelis, and the Palestinians refer to Israelis as al-Yahud, or “the Jew.” Jews are attacked in Western cities for being Jews, and Jewish institutions and structures are vandalized in clearly antisemitic graffiti. Swastikas have been used by Hamas, Palestinians, and Hitler’s war on the jews glorified by its supporters. You do not need the IHRA definition of antisemitism to know that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

But if anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, then it is natural that Israel will eventually have its l’Affair Dreyfus. The Dreyfus affair was a trial in 1894 in France – seen at the time as one of the most enlightened and tolerant of nations in the world to its Jews – where a highly decorated Jewish war hero, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was accused of treason in passing state secrets to the Germans. There was no evidence for his guilt, and indeed, two years later, the real spy, Ferdinand Esterhazy, was caught, but he was quickly exonerated in order not to reverse the conviction of Dreyfus. Indeed, not only was he not acquitted, but a new show trial was organized against Dreyfus, where additional charges were brought and he was again convicted without evidence. So transparent was antisemitism involved in this trial and conviction that it resulted in a public scandal that convinced many Jews that they have no future in Europe. One Jewish reporter there – an advocate of Jewish assimilation – was so shaken by the transparency of the antisemitism that he, Theodore Herzl, became convinced that there was no future for Jews any more in Europe and that they have only one hope for survival: a return to their homeland.

If Israel is the Jewish nation, then it is clear that Israel at the International Court of Justice now passes through its collective Dreyfus Affair. Its innocence is immaterial, as it was for Dreyfus. The transparency of the accusations against it are irrelevant, as it was for Dreyfus. Its conviction is predetermined, as it was for Dreyfus. But so too now are the lessons collectively learned from the Dreyfus Affair applicable to Israel today.

The Israelis have learned that every attempt they undertook to be accepted as other nations has failed. Their obsession with assimilating as a nation in the community of nations as Herzl himself had originally believed Jews among other citizens should was futile. Every effort to act in exemplary ways to prove its worth as a people — as exemplary as was Dreyfus’ patriotism did not convert the “conditional” right to live into an inherent right. No amount of objective evidence shielded him from false conviction. Indeed, nothing Israel can do — neither hi-tech nor Nobel Prizes, neither reasonableness nor flexibility, neither inventions nor medical aid, earthquake and relief missions, neither self-restraint nor our hyper-morality in war — will ever convince the community of antisemites that the Jewish people have a right like all others to be treated with respect and dignity and that as a people, they have an inherent right to exist and defend themselves as any other people. This is so because the hatred of the haters, the venom of the antisemites, is not based on either behavior or guilt, but on who the antisemites are and the darkness of their souls. Antisemitism is the handmaiden of evil.

The realization of that, and the understanding that only independence, agency and self-defense will protect Jews is the collective “Herzl moment” that Herzl personally had reached in 1899 after Dreyfus’ final conviction. Israel has now for over five decades abandoned the Zionist anchor to its strategic imagery. It has increasingly surrendered agency and independence in its strategic doctrine and convinced itself that it can be accepted as a normal nation by integrating into global collective defense as a highly responsible member of the international community. It has displayed exemplary behavior in war and exercised self-restraint, employed deterrence and enhanced defensive measures rather than preemption, and embraced a reactive strategy rather than proactively suppressing threats. It has become largely reactive and self-restrained because it had hoped such passivity would shield it collectively from international ostracization and condemnation and more broadly win acceptance and legitimization. In other words, Israel internalized the idea that its very existence was contingent on its behavior rather than inherent to its very being

But on October 7, 2023 – culminating in the trial at the International Court of Justice in the Hague – Israel has learned otherwise. It was the victim of an unprovoked, genocidal onslaught for which it stands now accused. The murdered and raped stand now accused of murder and rape. The nation grieving and burying its babies and toddlers who were beheaded and baked in ovens alive by Hamas stands now accused of infanticide.

The trial is more than unfounded; it is a twisted addition to the psychological warfare being waged and the dehumanization via vilification of the Jewish people as the embodiment of evil rather than its victim.

Have Israel’s elites truly digested that? They certainly realize the ICJ trial is a gross injustice – a twisted inversion of the truth. But it is unclear whether they have taken the next step and internalized the futility of further attempts to prove their (Dreyfus’) innocence by reducing war aims, increasing humanitarian shipments, and employing extremely cautious tactics in dense urban warfare above and underground amidst a large civilian population turned into a vast human shield by Hamas. It is true that rules of war in Judaism are surprisingly extensive, ancient in tradition, and quite limiting, and thus Israel has its own reasons to exercise such caution. And yet, have its elites digested that the purpose of such tactical restraint, strategic withdrawal or surrender of the claims and rights, if intended to convince others of how selfless and harmless they are, has not only failed but along the way instead tarnished among many the respect they had for Israel’s long-cultivated reputation of dogged adherence to conviction and self-reliance?

In other words, does the Israeli security and political establishment have the gumption to say it has had enough, and that the criticism is so detached from either reality or morality that anyone saying it has no leverage any more? Has Israel’s security elite and political establishment now truly returned to Herzl’s realization: while there are those in the world who agree and are Judeophilic — and are welcomed with warmth to help the Jewish people thrive another 4000 years – but as a people, they are done trying to prove the extraordinary, indeed unique value of themselves as Jews or as nation as a precondition for his right to live?

Israel as a nation appears to have come to this conclusion. The Israeli elites, however, as with elites everywhere, seem to be the last to figure it out.

Face reality, ‘democracy advocate’ Biden: Taiwan is already independent

January 16, 2024

Taking advantage of a split opposition, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party won an unprecedented third straight presidential victory in Saturday’s elections.

President-elect William Lai and his vice-presidential running mate, Bi-khim Hsiao, are savvy and experienced, capable of leading Taiwan through potentially perilous times ahead.

On domestic issues, the DPP is generally to the left of its largest opponent, the Kuomintang, once led by Chiang Kai-shek, who brought the Republic of China government to Taiwan in 1949 after repeated defeats by Mao Zedong’s Communists.

nternationally, however, the DPP view of Taipei’s place in the world is comfortable with Reagan-style Republicanism.

Given the threats Lai’s incoming administration will face, it needs full support from its American friends and across the global West.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is undoubtedly outraged that Beijing’s latest effort to subvert free elections failed once more, likely again backfiring and increasing DPP support.

Through political and military threats and intimidation, media influence operations and outright efforts at subversion and corruption, China worked hard to prevent another DPP presidential victory.

Thwarted by the voters, Xi will undoubtedly turn to far more dangerous methods to gain control over Taiwan.

He has already stressed to President Biden that’s his objective.

He is serious.

And since the opposition holds a small majority in Taiwan’s incoming Legislative Yuan, the Lai administration will face political constraints that outgoing DPP President Tsai Ing-wen did not.

Beijing and its Western sympathizers endlessly argue — they continue after the campaign — that Lai and the DPP are reckless, risking war across the Taiwan Strait, and, in any case, America long ago agreed that Taiwan is part of China.

This is entirely wrong, but even many Americans, including the Biden administration, accept this disingenuous rendering of the “One-China” policy.

In the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, President Richard Nixon agreed that America “acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.”

Translated from diplo-speak, this means we recognized the reality that, in 1972, Chiang and Mao each still believed in ultimately prevailing over the other in China’s civil war.

Those days are gone. Also gone are any ideas of what “all Chinese” in Taiwan believe.

Its citizens have come to see themselves as a different people, not unlike Americans transitioning from seeing themselves as English, pointedly so in 1776.

After 30-plus years of Taiwan opinion surveys, the latest results are that only 2.5% consider themselves Chinese; 62.8% Taiwanese; and 30.5% Taiwanese-Chinese.

Taiwan meets the key tests of international “state” status: defined territory and population and a fully functioning government.

This reality constitutes de facto Taiwanese independence, whether China likes it or not.

President-elect Lai doesn’t have to declare independence since Taiwan already has it. Only if China succeeds in conquest will that change.

Standing firm for Taiwan’s freedoms is provocative only to Beijing’s Communist authoritarians, who fear the spread of ideas totally antithetical to the autocracy they desperately hope to preserve.

The right policy for America here is to recognize reality: Taiwan is independent.

I recommended as far back as 2000 that Washington extend full diplomatic relations to Taipei, unsuccessfully so far.

Unfortunately, we already have Biden’s knee-jerk reaction to Saturday’s elections: “We do not support independence.”

Making Xi’s day, that Biden, a real democracy advocate!

Whatever Taiwan’s abstract political status, it is critical to American national security for many reasons, from geopolitics (the “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in Douglas MacArthur’s words) to economics, as a key American trading partner, particularly in vital semiconductor chips.

These US national interests have been consistently reaffirmed ever since the guarantees embodied in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.

Today, Taiwan is more threatened by China than ever.

Following Russia’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine in February 2022, many rightly saw Taiwan’s increased precariousness.

With the Iranian-backed aggression in the Middle East now consuming Washington decision-makers, Beijing may be irresistibly tempted to take advantage of Taipei’s incoming government.

What Biden should do, with allies like Japan, South Korea and Australia, is make clear that we expect China to keep hands off, period.

America’s November elections are also problematic because Taiwan may be at greater risk in a second Trump term.

Donald Trump never said he fell in love with Xi, as he did with Kim Jong Un, but it’s close.

Trump’s view of national security focuses invariably on what brings the greatest attention to himself, not US national interests.

This will not be an easy year for Taiwan’s new government.

This article was first published in New York Post on January 16, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Oct. 7 was the opening attack in Iran’s ‘ring of fire’ war against Israel

January 14, 2024

When Hamas launched its blitzkrieg from Gaza on Oct. 7, it did not mark the onset of yet another Arab-Israeli war. Nor was it a war of Palestinians against Israel. Instead, the barbaric onslaught marked the beginning of an Iranian war against Israel, carried out by Tehran’s terrorist proxies. The war’s future course and duration are murky, but the ayatollahs’ underlying strategy is clear: close their long-envisioned “ring of fire” around Israel, permanently weakening or even paralyzing the Jewish State.

Jerusalem’s leaders and most neighboring Arab rulers grasp this reality. Sadly, however, the threat has not fully registered throughout the West. Instead, too many decisionmakers see only unrelated regional crises. They worry about an imminent “wider war,” heedless that the wider war began Oct. 7. The West is not thinking strategically about defeating Iran’s coalition, but is distracted by criticisms, often implicitly or explicitly antisemitic, purportedly expressing “humanitarian” concern for Gazans or the hostages Hamas kidnapped.

Also unclear is whether Israel has sufficient resolve to persevere until achieving true peace and security for its people. What Thomas Paine wrote of America now applies to Israel: “these are the times that try men’s souls.”

Consider the politico-military battlefield as it now stands.

Gaza remains the most active front in this multi-front war. Since the Oct. 7 surprise, timed almost exactly to the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, which also caught Israel off-guard, Israel Defense Forces have made steady progress. Right after Oct. 7, U.S. military advisers cautioned the IDF to proceed prudently, minimizing its own and Gazan civilian casualties.

Ironically, given current White House pressure to conclude major Gaza operations quickly, Americans stressed that their campaigns in Iraq to subdue Fallujah and Mosul took between nine and 12 months. This counsel proved wise, especially given the extraordinary tunnel system Hamas had spent 15 years digging under the Gaza Strip, not to benefit Gazans economically but to enable Hamas and its patron Iran to wage war against Israel. Accordingly, diversionary arguments like whether Hamas had command operations under the al-Shifa hospital, which it did, are beside the point. Al-Shifa hospital management and many others undoubtedly knew about Hamas’s activities and intentions.

The continuing debate over whether Iran “ordered” Hamas to attack on Oct. 7, or whether Hamas acted independently, obviously implicates Iran’s role in the broader conflict. Initially, Iran and Hamas vehemently denied Tehran’s leading role, awkwardly coupled with fervent pleas of mutual support. Now, even this pretense is gone.

Iran’s foreign minister recently threatened that, “if the U.S. continues its military, political and financial support of Israel and helps manage Israel’s military attacks on Palestinian civilians, then it must face its consequences.” Qassem Soleimani and his Quds Force worked for years to bring Iran’s terrorist proxies across the Middle East into closer alignment, arguing correctly that greater coordination and joint strategies would increase their collective threat to Israel. That has now come to pass.

Moreover, debate about Iran “ordering” Hamas is misplaced. Politico-military alliances rarely have rigid hierarchical structures. America leads NATO, but no one seriously believes Washington “orders” the other allies. Extensive planning and coordination precede most NATO decisions. Doubtless, senior political and military leaders in Tehran are frustrated with Hamas and others not seeing things exactly as they do, but friction and contention among coalition members cannot obscure the ultimate locus of power.

The other belligerent terrorist groups also act at Iran’s behest. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, for example, could not endanger commercial shipping or Western naval vessels in the Red Sea without Iranian arming, equipping, training and financing. The Houthis’ geographical location affords them enormous leverage over the southern Red Sea, and therefore the Suez Canal, through which 12 to 15 percent of the world’s trade (and some 30 percent of container-shipping traffic) passes. Insurance rates and prices on a wide variety of goods are rising and will increase as the conflict continues.

In recent years, Houthis launched Iranian drones and missiles against civilian airfields and oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, giving Iran launching platforms in the backyards of its Gulf Arab foes. The Houthis are a threat because of what Iran provides. Iran is not doing so as charity for Houthis, but to advance Tehran’s own interests. On January 11-12, after months of inaction, a U.S.-led coalition finally struck at Houthis targets in Yemen. Whether this long-delayed military response will suffice to deter further Iran-Houthi depredations remains to be seen.

Hezbollah, in Lebanon and Syria, is the crown jewel of Iran’s decades-long effort to create terrorist networks with global reach. Hezbollah’s shelling of Israel resumed after Hamas’s initial attacks, but the group has not yet launched an all-out war. Some therefore say Hezbollah is a reluctant Iranian partner, which may have some basis. But, as with the Houthis, the tens-of-thousands of Iranian-supplied missiles are not to empower Hezbollah but to extend Iran’s striking power against Israel.

We do not know Iran’s next steps; perhaps even Iran is uncertain. But when Tehran decides the hour has come, Hezbollah will do what its paymasters demand. The same is true for Syria’s Assad regime, although its military capabilities are much less consequential.

Understandably, many Lebanese fear more intense conflict, but Hezbollah and Iran may leave Israel few options. Hezbollah’s massive missile arsenals could overwhelm Israel’s air defenses, causing untold destruction, which Jerusalem, also understandably, will not passively await.

Westerners constantly calling for “avoiding a wider war” are blissfully free from the consequences if their focus is mistaken. Objectively, limiting Israeli or U.S. self-defense only benefits the aggressors, who see restraint not as a sign of goodwill but of weakness, thereby inviting future attacks. Israeli preemptive strikes may be unavoidable, without which this conflict’s trajectory remains under Tehran’s control.

In Iraq and Syria, Shia militia groups, also fully supplied and financed by Iran, form another front, directed primarily against American military and civilian personnel. Since Oct. 7, there have been well over 100 militia attacks, including the rocketing of America’s embassy compound in Baghdad. Casualties to date have thankfully been low, but Pentagon officials attribute that relative good fortune to luck — hardly an adequate strategy. Washington’s military responses have increased gradually, most recently eliminating a militia commander in Baghdad, but these minimal actions have not deterred further assaults.

Iran’s own naval and air assets constitute a potential fifth front. Tehran has seized oil tankers and other ships in its vicinity for years, unfortunately not effectively challenged or deterred to date. Accordingly, Iran can decide when to raise the stakes in the region yet again — and, as if on cue, it did so last week.

Significant developments outside the Middle East have also been unhelpful. Most notably, Moscow seems to be switching sides, moving from relatively good relations with Israel (stemming from Russian Jewish emigration) to outright hostility and alliance with Tehran. Almost immediately after Oct. 7, Russia’s UN ambassador asserted that, as an “occupying power,” Israel had no legitimate right of self-defense against Hamas. While Vladimir Putin later walked that comment back, the argument spread widely among Hamas advocates.

Russia also ordered the Wagner Group to supply Hezbollah with sophisticated Russian air-defense systems, obviously to protect against Israeli strikes. Moreover, Moscow’s foreign ministry condemned Israeli raids against shipments of sophisticated Iranian weapons to Hezbollah as violating Syrian sovereignty and international law. Previously, so long as Israel deconflicted with Russia’s military before entering Syrian airspace to avoid Russian casualties, Moscow gave Jerusalem a free hand. If that has changed, it is a significant new military reality, highly adverse to Israel.

The United Nations role in the current conflict has been all but invisible. As in Cold War days, the Security Council is in near-total gridlock. With Russia and China providing Iran and its proxies political cover, it is impossible to hold to account Hamas’s barbarism, Houthi interference with freedom of the seas, Hezbollah’s looming menace or Shia militia terrorists. Instead, protecting Israel from the antisemitic performance art and propaganda now displayed at UN headquarters falls mostly to Washington. The UN bureaucracy remains riddled with anti-Israel personnel, and UNRWA, its relief agency in Gaza and the West Bank, appears to effectively be an arm of authoritarian and terrorist Palestinian rulers.

What Israel, the United States and other allies will do in coming days is as uncertain as Iran’s war plan. To restore lasting international peace and security, Israel must accomplish its stated objective of eliminating Hamas politically and militarily. The same could be said about Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Shia militias.

The real problem, of course, is Tehran. Until a sane government, even if not Jeffersonian democracy, replaces the mullahs, there will be no peace and security for anyone in the Middle East.

This is a hard truth for many to swallow because it inevitably requires regime change in Iran. Yet, inarguably, that is what Iran’s people want. Not since the 1979 Islamic Revolution itself has the regime been so weak and threatened. Success for Iran in the current conflict, after facing down Israel, America and the West generally, will only strengthen the ayatollahs’ rule. That’s why Winston Churchill’s World War II admonition to Britain applies today to Israel: “without victory, there is no survival.”

This article was first published in The Hill on January 14, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

In Moldova, Kremlin imperialism is on the ballot

January 04, 2024

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Moldova’s much larger neighbor, has overshadowed the dangerous reality that Moldova itself is also a battlefield between Russia and the West for dominance in the territory of the former Soviet Union. And while Moldova is small (population of about 3.25 million), its politics are just as complex as other independent states once part of the USSR.

When the USSR and the Warsaw Pact fragmented, there was talk in both Moldova and Romania, a former Moscow satellite, of reuniting as one country. Interest in reunification dissipated for a variety of reasons, however, from disputes about their long history to practical difficulties to lack of popular support. Many factors that kept the countries separate continue to manifest themselves in Moldovan politics today, often intermixing with critical contemporary issues. In hindsight, reunification might not have left Moldova as vulnerable as it now is, but the moment has passed for the foreseeable future.

An even more intricate, more threatening problem is the status of the pro-Moscow rump “state” of Transdniestria, which still had Russian troops on its soil, although not at levels like the Red Army’s prior garrison. Transdniestria, on the left bank of the Dniester River, is one of several “frozen conflicts,” remnants of the chaos from the USSR’s dissolution, and a convenient way for the Kremlin to keep Moldova unstable and imperfectly sovereign. It is an open sore both for Moldova’s legitimate government and for bordering Ukraine: a locus of smuggling, trafficking, and other criminal behavior.

Not only is it a thorn in Ukraine’s side because of the illegal activities, but because it could also cause trouble “behind the lines” for Kyiv and its military in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Had Russian forces reached Transdniestria during the invasion’s early stages, or even today, they would likely have been given free rein there, outflanking Ukraine’s defenses.

Moldova’s current president, supported by a parliamentary majority coalition, is Maia Sandu. I had the occasion to meet her in late August 2019 in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, just months after she became prime minister. An economist, she had worked in Moldova’s Ministry of Economy and Trade and briefly at the World Bank in Washington, and she later served several years as minister of education. Then and now, she was perceived as pro-American and anti-corruption.

After leaving the Education Ministry, Sandu formed her own political party, Action and Solidarity, and contested and lost Moldova’s 2016 presidential election to Igor Dodon of the pro-Russian Socialist Party. Dodon was still serving in 2019, and I met with him after seeing Sandu on the trip. Dodon rejected the view that he was pro-Russian, saying he wanted to be neutral between Russia on one hand and NATO and the European Union on the other.

Exemplifying the complex politics of former USSR states, after the 2016 election, Sandu and Dodon formed a parliamentary coalition, supported by the U.S., the EU, and Russia, to oust then-incumbent Prime Minister Vladimir Plahotniuc. Plahotniuc, an oligarch, presided over enormous corruption, including what Moldovans call “the heist of the century,” involving more than $1 billion disappearing from three Moldovan banks. Curiously, this political struggle did not implicate Transdniestria, notwithstanding the high stakes involved.

As prime minister, Sandu’s principal objective was to recover from “the heist,” reduce corruption, and make Moldova attractive for foreign investment, which is critical for economic growth.

When I spoke with her, Sandu was interested in working with newly inaugurated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with whom I had met the day before in Kyiv. They were discussing digitizing customs enforcement to help squash illicit commerce through Transdniestria, thereby increasing Western confidence in their respective anti-corruption efforts, and bolstering legitimate economies in both countries. Sandu was sufficiently successful and adept enough politically to defeat Dodon in their second contest for the presidency in 2020. Her anti-corruption, anti-Russia-subversion programs have had mixed success — COVID obviously wasn’t helpful, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine produced substantial economic problems, especially high consumer energy prices.

Nonetheless, Sandu has declared for reelection and has committed to hold a referendum on membership in the EU, which her base supports. Her supporters did well in November’s local elections, but not well enough to signal clearly she will be returned as president later this year. It now appears that Sandu and Dodon will face off for the third time, although no one predicts victory in November’s first round of voting, which will have the usual plethora of candidates. Almost certainly, therefore, there will be a Sandu-Dodon runoff in December, as in 2016 and 2020.

Whether Sandu can win a second presidential term is uncertain. What is certain is that Moscow’s efforts to subvert Moldova’s government as part of the effort to reestablish the Russian empire are real and substantial. Sandu’s defeat is central to this strategy’s success, and we will find out by the end of 2024 whether the Kremlin prevails.

This article was first published in The Washington Examiner on January 4, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

The West may now have no option but to attack Iran

December 28, 2023

Tehran will only accept it has miscalculated if it faces significant costs for its recent acts of aggression

Houthi attacks on commercial shipping and US Navy vessels in the Red Sea threaten the global economy, endangering the vital Suez Canal trade route. As if 14 such attacks in the past month, and against Israel directly, were not enough, Iran has now joined the fray. The Pentagon said on December 23 that an Iranian-launched drone struck an Israeli-affiliated merchant ship in the Indian Ocean.

This marks the first time since October 7 that Washington has directly blamed Iran, even with over 100 attacks on US personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iran-dependent Shia militia, on which the White House has fudged in assigning responsibility. Tehran denied the Indian Ocean attack, repeating its mantra that Hamas operates independently in warring against Israel. Nevertheless, India deployed guided-missile destroyers to the region, and seeks more evidence on the vector of the attack.

Just after Christmas, however, Iran committed the classic “Washington gaffe” – i.e., telling the truth accidentally – when the Revolutionary Guard Corps reportedly described Hamas’s barbaric assault as “one of the acts of revenge for the assassination of General [Qassem] Soleimani by the US and the Zionists”. Hamas immediately denied the linkage, no more credibly than the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ subsequent effort to walk back its revealing “revenge” declaration.

The critical truth here is that Iran has directly committed an act of war against what it believed was an Israeli target. While hardly comparable to Hamas’s barbarity, Hizbollah and Houthi attacks, or Iran’s own massive arms and intelligence support, Tehran has now crossed the line of armed hostilities. The West’s operating assumption should be to expect more of the same. Iran has, for example, recently threatened shutting down commercial shipping across the Mediterranean. It is Iranian belligerence driving potential escalation, not Western self-defence.

The Biden administration, much of the media, and Iran’s propagandists will probably continue ignoring the reality of who is calling the shots in this conflict. But the evidence is growing inexorably that October 7 was intended to draw Jewish blood to implement Soleimani’s “ring of fire” strategy, with Iran pressing Israel on multiple fronts, directing operations via terrorists and state actors it has armed, trained, and financed.

Iran’s near-term objectives remain opaque. Was Hamas’s brutal surprise attack a one-off gambit, to see if Israel’s government collapsed; to assess Western support for Israel; to block an Israeli-Saudi exchange of full diplomatic relations; or some combination? Was Iran waiting to see if Israel became bogged down militarily in Gaza, and then decide its next step? Or was Hamas simply the first Iran surrogate to launch? Hizbollah has fired rockets and mortars ever since, forcing Israel to evacuate civilians from a two-kilometer-wide strip along the Lebanon border. While Hizbollah has not yet initiated a full-fledged attack, it has husbanded its arsenal, perhaps awaiting the opportune moment.

Both Houthi and Shia militia attacks have been met with only feeble and ineffective Western responses. Neither Hamas, nor Houthis, nor Iraqi militia have yet prompted the US or Israel to retaliate directly against Iran. Obviously, Tehran does not feel pressured enough to restrain its expendable surrogates, proving that the West has not established conditions for deterrence, thereby potentially cooling the conflict down. The White House and its media stenographers repeat endlessly that they do not want the current hostilities to spread, but Biden’s non-strategy, based on hope, will not succeed.

Only if Israel, America, Britain, and others show they possess the resolve and capability to impose significant costs on Iran, as punishment for its aggression, will they persuade the ayatollahs that proceeding further will bring them intolerable pain. Very likely, only direct military force, applied against critical targets inside Iran, will impose such costs, proving to Tehran it has miscalculated not only about Israel, but on President Biden and the West more generally. That is why the evidence of a direct Iranian attack on a commercial ship in the Indian Ocean is potentially so important.

It has been clear for years that overthrowing the mullahs, replacing them with some other form of government that enjoys the support of Iran’s citizenry, is central to decreasing insecurity throughout the Middle East. Arab funding of terrorist actions against Israel is hard to find today, especially as full, open diplomatic relations with Jerusalem continue to expand. If Iran’s line of credit to the likes of Hamas, Hizbollah, the Houthis, and other barbarians disappears, their ability to survive except in remote Afghan encampments will palpably decrease.

That is the outcome Washington and London should seek. Instead of pushing Israel for more “pauses”, “truces”, “ceasefires” or the like, allow Jerusalem to achieve its legitimate objective of eliminating Hamas as a military and political force. That is one sure way to convince the ayatollahs their gambit has failed, and their own end may be near.

This article was first published in The Telegraph on December 28, 2023. Click here to read the original article.

Iran’s growing aggression against America shows Biden’s weakness

December 20, 2023

John R. Bolton was national security adviser under President Donald Trump and is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” which will soon be published in paperback with a new foreword

President Biden’s justifiable focus on the Hamas-Israel conflict is perilously diverting his attention from acts of war by other Iranian proxies against American targets in the Middle East. We must answer Iran’s belligerence with more than words, thus demonstrating plainly that these acts must cease.

For two months, hostile acts have accumulated. Since Oct. 17, when the attacks began, Shiite militias have struck U.S. military and civilian targets in Syria and Iraq more than 100 times, most recently rocketing our Baghdad embassy for the first time in over a year. Thus far, there have been at least 66 casualties. Yemen-based Houthi terrorists have made numerous attacks against commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea. A U.S. destroyer recently shot down a suspected Houthi drone headed its way during one such attack on a commercial vessel.

Only the credulous doubt that Iran’s regional surrogates are acting in concert in the current crisis. Iran’s surrogates explicitly see these disparate attacks as retaliation for Israel’s efforts to eliminate Hamas in Gaza. Senior Biden administration officials have unambiguously stated that Iran is not only financially supporting but also directing and helping plan Houthi attacks. And Iran’s foreign minister was even more blunt, recently telling the New York Times that “if the U.S. continues its military, political and financial support of Israel and helps manage Israel’s military attacks on Palestinian civilians, then it must face its consequences.”

To date, Biden’s responses have been minimal and inadequate. Infrequent, pinprick attacks against Shiite militia positions in Iraq signal weakness, not resolve. They have failed to reduce militia attacks. While it’s true that these Iranian attacks have yet to produce mass casualties among our armed forces, it’s not for lack of Iran trying. “They are aiming to kill,” one defense official recently remarked. “We have just been lucky.” And as former Central Command head Frank McKenzie put it recently, “we’ve given them no reason not to continue” attacking.

The Biden administration is not only failing to establish even minimal deterrence; it seems incapable of thinking strategically about U.S. interests in the region, dismaying friends and allies alike.

Protecting freedom of navigation has always been a core U.S. security priority. Ships transiting the Red Sea, from the Suez Canal to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, have proved to be convenient targets for the Houthis. Roughly 12 percent of global trade, amounting to as much as 30 percent of global container traffic, sails this route. The 2021 blockage of the Suez Canal by a ship that ran aground severely disrupted global markets.

The persistent attacks have already spiked maritime insurance rates. Four of the world’s largest shippers, after direct hits or near misses on their vessels, have “paused” entries into the Red Sea. Oil giant BP has followed suit with its fleet of tankers. Smaller shipping companies won’t be far behind. Ships will be sent around Africa, adding costs and delays to a still fragile international supply chain. Oil prices are already rising because of the uncertainty.

The Biden administration has sought to set up a multinational force to escort commercial traffic. But this is a purely defensive measure and therefore insufficient. Like the pinprick attacks against Shiite militias, it will not deter the land-based, mobile Houthis or their Iranian weapons suppliers. The administration has asked Houthis to stop their attacks and imposed limited sanctions. That, too, will not do much.

Biden delisted the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization within a month of taking office in 2021. For starters, he should immediately redesignate them as such. And he should overcome any compunction within his team about striking the Houthis directly.

But he should also think more broadly. Iran is incontrovertibly behind all these escalations, and it needs to receive a strong signal that its behavior is unacceptable. Washington must establish clear deterrence, including through using force. By imposing costs on Iran now, it will lessen the odds of more extensive escalation later.

Iranian military assets in the Red Sea or naval bases along the Persian Gulf are logical deterrence-establishing targets. Even attacks against Iranian territorial air defenses or Quds Force bases in Iran would signal resolve but not regime-threatening intentions. Let Iran worry for now whether its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs are also at risk.

Iran is not looking for ways to live with America in the Middle East. Tehran wants us out, particularly from our gulf military bases. Tehran also wants Israel further isolated and ultimately eliminated. None of this should be acceptable to the United States.

To the mullahs, U.S. restraint shows not good faith but civilizational decline. We never strike Iran, and the mullahs draw the appropriate conclusions. Powerful retaliatory strikes against Iran’s surrogates alone might establish deterrence, but Washington is not even trying that.

Deterrence is based not on rhetoric but on power and performance. Time is running out for Biden to get the point.

This article was first published in The Washington Post on December 20, 2023. Click Here to read the original article.

Clarifying US relations with Israel

December 04, 2023

By Dr. David Wurmser

The United States explained the purpose of Kamala Harris’ trip this week to Dubai. Among the points were that the US will have conversations with Israel to “shape the next phase of the war” in Gaza. While this is clearly further pressure on Israel to avoid greater civilian casualties – a reasonable but unnecessary request since Israel has already gone to impossible lengths to protect Palestinian civilians — it is also suggests how the US expects to leverage the course of this war to affect post-war outcome.

There has been confusion regarding the nature of American support for Israel. It was the consensus in Israel in the first weeks that the United States under the Biden team had two common goals: remove Hamas and help Israel focus on the south and avoid a two-front war immediately. True enough. But Israelis of all stripes projected their hopes further and welcomed the impression that the US now “gets it” the same way as has been seared into Israel’s soul through the horror of October 7. Not only that Washington “switched its diskette” on Hamas, but on Palestinians, Hizballah and Iran. As such, American actions — including moving carrier battle groups and reinforcing US bases region-wide — were assumed first to be support on helping Israel survive initial attack and second to adopt a muscular, if not even threatening policy on Iran. In essence, Israelis believed that Israel and the US were traveling along the same line, or at least two closely tracking parallel lines.

The problem is they are not.

The United States and Israel travel on intersecting and not parallel lines. The distinction is important. Parallel lines never touch, but they always run together. Intersecting lines on the other hand, converge at one point but eternally diverge afterwards. The point of convergence between the United States and Israel has now yielded to the inevitable divergence, and the strategic implications could not be graver. Moreover, the vast chasm emerging is both on the issue of Palestinians and the larger threat of Iran.

The divergence is most evident through the increasing tone of statements coming from Washington about how to “shape” this war. There is a tension — strategic and moral –between a war narrowly focused on defeating Hamas and extending the Palestinian Authority, and a broader strategic war to change Israeli security on every border let alone advance a regional defeat of Iran and its proxies, which remain the ultimate source of the problem.

Israel’s population has undergone a traumatic paradigm shift. It fights this war informed by a broader and grounded understanding of the region and its dynamics that unfortunately indicts policy on the region that both Jerusalem and Washington had indulged for the last thirty years. Washington, however, proceeds as if nothing has changed. It remains in paradigmatic stasis. It still labors under the delusion that the exit to all this is a combination of some sort of Oslo 2.0 and JCPOA 2.0 (Iran deal). Hence its engagement with Abu Mazen and its cultivated restraint and lack of meaningful responses to nearly 80 attacks on US bases across the region and regional attacks by Iran’s proxies from Yemen to Iraq.

Because the US now focuses on “the day after” plans for Gaza, and because Secretary Blinken reportedly demanded that Israel not expand the geographic parameters of the war, it has essentially made support for Israel conditional — specifically as long as the goal of the war remains laser-focused on the removal of Hamas to facilitate restoring Palestinian Authority (PA) control over Gaza.

Stripped of all the noise, essentially this is less support for Israel than support for the Palestinian Authority via Israel, while ignoring Hizballah and Iran. The US is using this war — and all Israel’s sacrifice — to revive Oslo by making Palestine safe for Abu Mazen.

For the US, this is a war to save a paradigm in Washington. For Israel, it is a war for survival against a vast Iranian threat and Palestinian irridentism. As long as the United States fails to appreciate the war in this context, then it bodes ill about the future of Israeli American relations.

Or does it?

In my many years as a senior US official dealing with Israeli officials, it always struck me that they regard State Department corridor messages as the definitive word on US policy for Israel. Yet, Americans strongly support Israel. Congressional support is strong and growing. No President can afford to abandon Israel as long as the American people view it as a close ally fighting darkness. The belief Israel is acting fiercely to defend its independence and freedom — alone if necessary – taps into classic American imagination in popular culture as the epic hero. The irony missed often by Israelis is that the more they act in deference to the State Department, the more they damage their brand in the American public’s psyche, and the more they surrender popular support now and affinity in the long run.

The President does have a problem with progressives’ pressure to confront Israel. As long as Israel defers to American demands, it yields the field to progressives to dominate cost-free. If however, this president is forced to choose, the Democratic leadership understands that the party will lose swing districts in the 2024 Congressional elections as well as possibly the White House. Progressives cannot deliver the floating center of American politics. They have nowhere else to go; centrist liberals do.

As such, Israeli deference is self-defeating. Israel suffers self-deterrence.

The stakes could not be higher. Israel must decisively win this war, secure its citizenry country-wide, strategically devastate Iran’s regional reputation, and establish Israel as a powerful regional actor. The viability of the state depends on it.

Israel Faces Pressure to Yield to the ‘Terrorist Veto’

December 01, 2023

The strategic consequence of any pause, truce or cease-fire is to increase Hamas’s odds of survival.

There is a tension between Israel’s two objectives of eliminating Hamas as a political and military force and recovering the innocent civilians kidnapped on Oct. 7. Weighing these competing priorities, Israel decided to pause its anti-Hamas military campaign in exchange for the return of some hostages. This policy’s wisdom is debatable.

A greater hazard, however, imperils Israel’s legitimate right to self-defense. I call it the “terrorist veto,” and with every passing day, Israel’s chances of escaping it diminish, notwithstanding Friday’s resumption of hostilities. For many people, the not-so-hidden goal of the hostage negotiations is to focus international attention—and emotions—on pausing hostilities indefinitely and tying Israel’s hands militarily. Whether labeled a pause, truce or cease-fire, the strategic consequences are objectively pro-Hamas. Using human bargaining chips and fellow Gazans as shields, Hamas seeks to prevent Israel from eliminating its terrorist threat.

Success for Hamas means merely surviving with a limited presence in Gaza, particularly a Gaza rebuilt as it was before Oct. 7. This result is a terrorist veto, even if military-pause supporters resist this painful but accurate term.

If the Hamas veto succeeds, other barbarians such as Hezbollah and Tehran’s mullahs (the ultimate enemy here) can insulate themselves from the consequences of their terrorism. Even worse, the terrorist veto can be copied by barbaric nation-states, with victims of aggression rendered unable to vindicate their sovereignty and territorial integrity. Ukraine and Taiwan come to mind as potential victims of this new paradigm.

President Biden and others deny trying to block further military action, but that is precisely the effect of their policies. On Wednesday CNN said Mr. Biden’s policy rests on three pillars: releasing the hostages, stepping up aid into Gaza, and figuring out what happens after the war. No mention of eliminating Hamas. Meantime, some Democratic senators are pressing for conditions on aid to Israel to restrict its military operations, to which Mr. Biden has alluded positively.

However the arguments for prolonging the initial or subsequent pauses are made, Israel will face three potentially debilitating consequences if it ceases or limits its military campaign. First, despite strong statements by many Israelis, in government and out, the country’s resolve is weakening. Right after Oct. 7, Jerusalem perhaps was prepared to hear U.S. military advisers caution that subduing resistance in Mosul and Fallujah took between nine months and a year. Then, Israelis might have been committed to a long struggle, but it seems unlikely they still are after this initial pause. Declining Israeli resolve guarantees that Hamas won’t be eliminated.

Cease-fire advocates argue that because Israel persuaded a million Gazans to move south before its initial campaign, Gazan “civilian” casualties in further operations in the south will dwarf previous casualties. Although Hamas and Iran initially placed Gazans in harm’s way, international recrimination will unfairly fall on Israelis, further sapping their resolve.

Second, because Hamas, Iran and their allies likely gain more militarily from the pause than Israel, the human costs to Israeli’s military will rise, as will domestic opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s objectives. It may be impossible to count incremental Israel Defense Forces casualties due to the pause, but the tally could exceed the number of hostages released.

Third, the greater the pauses or limitations, the more time Hamas’s surrogates worldwide have to increase anti-Israel pressure on their governments. In turn, many governments will lean on Israel to accept less, probably far less, than Mr. Netanyahu’s stated objectives.

The White House is urging, post-hostilities, turning over responsibility for Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. That utterly ignores its dismal performance in the West Bank, where the authority has been ineffective, corrupt and covertly supportive of terrorism. By some accounts Hamas is now more popular in the West Bank than Gaza. Extending Palestinian Authority control would put Israel back under the threat that surged on Oct. 7. The only long-term solution is to deny Hamas access to concentrated, hereditary refugee populations by resettling Gazans in places where they can enjoy normal lives.

Winston Churchill’s observation that “without victory, there is no survival” directly applies to Israel’s crisis. Victory for Israel means achieving its self-defense goal of eliminating Hamas. Anything less means continuing life under threat, with Tehran and its terrorist surrogates confident that when Westerners say “never again” they don’t really mean it.

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on December 1, 2023. Click Here to read the original article.

US should support India’s emerging global role

December 01, 2023

Two recent, seemingly unconnected events involving India highlight its growing global role. Both were largely unreported in the United States media. One involves a combined U.S.-Indian effort to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, and the other is a murky Qatari prosecution of former Indian naval officers allegedly spying for Israel. Together, they demonstrate New Delhi’s steadily growing importance to Washington and underline why we should pay more attention to the world’s most populous country. Prospects for closer bilateral cooperation are plentiful and important, notwithstanding continuing different perspectives on key topics such as trade and relations with Russia.

Beyond doubt, India will be a pivotal player in containing China’s hegemonic aspirations along its vast Indo-Pacific perimeter. Moreover, India’s already considerable Middle Eastern role will inevitably grow. The ramifications for India from Israel’s current war to eliminate Hamas’s terrorism and constrain its Iranian puppet masters are significant, opening opportunities for both countries. But the situation also presents risks in a complex and difficult region.

FEDERAL COURT TO WEIGH AMTRAK BID TO TAKE DC’S UNION STATION IN EMINENT DOMAIN CASE

Major economic news with obvious geopolitical implications came in early November when the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation announced it would loan $553 million for a deep-water container terminal project in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital and largest port. The Adani Group, one of India’s biggest industrial conglomerates, with deep expertise in port construction and management, is the project’s majority owner in this the first significant cooperative effort between India’s private sector and America’s government, one directly competitive with China.

Colombo’s port was an early target of China’s BRI, a program aimed at ensnaring developing countries in complex financial arrangements for major infrastructure projects. China ultimately took full control of its port facility, which many fear will ultimately serve military purposes.

Contesting China’s economic and influence operations across the global south, especially the BRI, must be a U.S. strategic priority. Teaming with a pathbreaking private Indian firm in the Colombo venture is a dramatic example of leveraging U.S.-Indian resources to mutual advantage. The Development Finance Corporation advances American interests by financing a major project potentially benefiting U.S. firms, and thereby vividly contrasts with China’s corrupt and ultimately subversive BRI approach. Sri Lanka also gains significantly. Since the Adani project is almost entirely private sector-owned (as opposed to BRI’s government-to-government matrix), Sri Lanka’s sovereign debt will not grow. There is no guarantee that additional projects or joint ventures with the Adani Group or other Indian firms will be easy, but the template is at least now in place.

In a separate development, Qatar arrested and charged eight former Indian naval officers (doing consulting work with Qatar’s military) as Israeli spies in August 2022. The specifics are unclear, and little was heard about the men until after Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Declaring a dramatic shift in position, India announced support for Israel’s right to self-defense, whereupon Doha revealed on Oct. 26 that the prisoners had received death sentences. India greeted this news, tied in the public mind to its support for Israel, with outrage and dismay. Ironically, New Delhi had been trying to increase defense cooperation with Doha, and approximately 600,000 of its citizens work in Qatar (out of Qatar’s total population of about 2.5 million). India has insisted that Qatar release the men or at least commute their sentences; Qatari legal proceedings to that end are now underway.

Qatar has a lot riding on finding the right answer on the Indian prisoners, especially given the current war against Israel. Moreover, Qatar will not want to disrupt the promising initiative, announced at this year’s G20 meeting to link South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe more closely together through an “Economic Corridor.” In some ways, more is at stake here for Doha than for New Delhi. With China’s population declining, its internal socioeconomic problems growing, and its place in the world declining steadily relative to India’s, this is no time for Qatar to stay on board a sinking ship. India’s already voluminous demand for oil will only grow, while China’s will shrink as its economy slowly declines.

The Qatar-India imbroglio could figure significantly in U.S. efforts to counter the China-Russia axis (including its outliers such as North Korea, Iran, and Syria) in the Middle East and South Asia. Washington cannot by itself end tensions among the Gulf’s oil-producing Arab states, nor can it resolve all disagreements between the Gulf monarchies and the wider world. But America is hardly indifferent to regional dynamics, especially those weakening the common front against Iran’s support for international terrorism and its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

Just as the Adani Group’s Colombo port project, bolstered by U.S. financial connections, is geostrategically important to counter China’s hegemonic aspirations, so is increasing greater unity among America’s Arab partners. A wider Indian role and cooperation with the U.S. globally will serve both countries’ national interests.

This article was first published in The Washington Examiner on December 1, 2023. Click here to read the original article.

Short-circuiting Iran’s Strategy in the Black Sabbath War

November 17, 2023

By Dr. David Wurmser

The current war between Israel and Hamas is not an Israeli-Palestinian issue, nor should its goals be only the removal of Hamas from power. The Palestinian issue is certainly an aspect of the conflict. But this is a regional strategic event. It is a major episode in the twilight struggle between Iran and Israel – indeed between the US-oriented regional bloc and the Russian-Chinese oriented bloc — and not a localized conflict between Israel and an errant terror group.

From what is emerging, Hamas did anticipate the withering, catastrophic Israeli response to what it did on October 7. But it still proceeded. While that appears to us as suicidal, it is not. Hamas appreciated that it had reached its strategic zenith in Gaza and needed to carry its center of power and the war to the West Bank and thus deems Gaza expendable – as its leadership has said since the attack. Moreover, it is equally important to understand that Hamas appreciates that its local power to achieve that transfer is derivative of the overall consequence of the strategic rise and initiative of Iran. As a suicide bomber seeks to advance its cause, or a Kamikaze squadron understands its role is to advance the nation, and not just itself, so too did Hamas understand that it had to sacrifice itself in Gaza to advance the larger strategic interests of its camp to secure ultimately victory.

And since a suicide bomber or Kamikaze squadron cannot be deterred since any calculation of self-interest is annulled, so too Hamas could not be deterred based on local calculations of interest upon which Israel’s intelligence based its estimates. The error of Israeli intelligence, thus, was that it supposed such decisions about war and calm came only from Gaza. They didn’t. They came from Tehran. Perhaps the timing was Hamas’, and there are signs it was launched prematurely, but the strategy is Tehran’s. Any discussions of Iran’s operational role in ordering this attack at this time are irrelevant. Iran built and prepared Hamas to advance the larger strategic message across the region — especially to those who were forming a regional alliance and beginning to build strategic momentum against Iran — that Israel’s stature as a viable state, let alone as a rising, regional power, is an illusion. Israel has recovered from its initial shock and on its way to victory in Gaza. But to reclaim the region’s strategic momentum and regain the initiative for the Western-allied bloc of which it was stripped on October 7, such a victory is insufficient, and was even anticipated by Iran and Hamas, both of whom understood this strategic conflict will not be won there by either side. While Israel must not only retain its current resolve in Gaza, it must also transfer that determination to areas that represent Iran’s core strategic stature in the region. And that is Hizballah and Syria. Thus, to win not only a tactical victory against Hamas in Gaza, Israel must win a strategic victory against Iran by hitting its core proxies to the north as well.

Iran fears that if Israel indeed accomplishes such a strategic reversal, it can reverberate and threaten the regime in Tehran. Totalitarian regimes project stability, but in truth they have little ability to absorb ideological shocks and setbacks without it rattling their ideological core and confidence. To avert disaster, Tehran thus needs to escalate its attempt to maintain the strategic initiative, at the core of which is securing the narrative that Israel is weak.

In this context, and perhaps at first seemingly contradictory, Iran’s objective is ironically to draw the US into the conflict more directly.

Tehran remains confident that any US response will be punitive, measured and symbolic and not strategic. It has been given no reason to believe that the US has, or will, undergo the sort of paradigm shift as Israel now appears to be undergoing, and thus Washington will not abandon its attempt either to reach a regional understanding with Iran. Indeed, Iran reads every statement of warning from Washington to reassert US deterrence as an indication the United States is still playing by the rules Iran manipulates. Iran cannot deal with chaos and unpredictability, since a strategy of manipulation implies one anticipates and thus navigates to control one’s opponent’s soul and behavior. Because it believes America will not break established rules and act unpredictably – especially that America will not fundamentally shift the paradigm and will not conclude it must work to collapse, rather than come to terms with, the Iranian regime — Iran is confident it can leverage and manipulate any US reaction to its advantage. As such, Tehran feels it can safely risk limited US intervention.

Since the point of the attack on October 7 was to wound and humiliate Israel so painfully that it punctures the hope of Abraham Accord countries and Saudi Arabia that Israel can be a regional strong horse to which to attach their fortunes, then it became imperative for Iran to set the narrative that Israel is no more than a collapsing “spider web.” Iran knew images of dead and fleeing Israelis – the same images that so horrified Israelis and Westerners animated those in the region — projected Israeli weakness. It is precisely in this context, that US promises of intervening to help Israel were gleefully amplified in the Iranian press because they confirm that Israel was damaged so profoundly that it could no longer defend itself alone.

But now Israel is reunifying and threatening to go on a strategic rampage against Iran’s core proxy, Hizballah, and perhaps Syria which threatens to reverse and even obliterate the narrative of strategic momentum of a retreating/collapsing Israel and advancing Iran. And to do so alone. So Iran now must now craft a new narrative: that Israel was indeed — and remains — so weak that America must intervene actively and directly to save it. And that Americans now will have to be sacrificed to save the Jewish state in its non-viable weakness. Namely, it needs to establish that Israel has become such a limping albatross that it is a drains the US rather than being a regional strong horse anchoring Western power.

So important is it to Iran to establish this narrative, that they are inventing evidence to validate it. For example, Iranian government officials plant the story that a week after the visit by President Biden to Israel in mid-October, Israel transferred control over its nuclear program to the United States since Israel is collapsing and in the ensuing chaos it will either lose the nuclear asset to Iran and the Palestinians or use it. And as we have seen over the last few weeks, Iran has a substantial echo chamber in the West.

It is in this context that one must understand Nasrallah’s, Iran’s, and Hamas’ statements that they underestimated the US assistance to Israel. This is not an admission of miscalculation, but a manipulative statement. It is not genuine reflection, but an attempt to establish the fiction that the US is directly intervening because Israel remains too weak to do this alone. Through inconclusive American intervention, Iran seeks to paint a strategic narrative establishing Iran as strategically ascendent and Israel and the Abraham countries in a despairing, flailing retreat.

But for that narrative to work, they need to get America to intervene just enough to make it look like an American war, but not enough to provoke America to shift strategically. Iran’s aim is eventually to push Washington to revert to Iran to seek a regional arrangement to calm down the area — i.e., an expanded JCPOA 2.0.

Iran is counting on the US also to split with Israel and seek to impose an Oslo 2.0 — namely to go back to Abu Mazen to rehabilitate the two-state idea and give him Gaza. Iran is right. The current administration in Washington still sees this a localized Hamas-Israel conflict and retreats into the pre-October 7 paradigm: redouble efforts to make a success the policies pursued before October 7 – a two state solution crafted around a rehabilitated Palestinian Authority. The ancient Greeks understood in their tales that those whom the gods seek to destroy, they first drive crazy by prodding the tragic figure into ill-conceived determination to redouble his same efforts while losing sight of his goals.

Iran expects that will isolate Israel, keeps Jerusalem from fully reversing the weakness of being initially wounded, perhaps even have the United States restrain Israel enough to prevent them from addressing the threat from Hizballah to the north, and through all this to thus maintain for Tehran the regional momentum of being in strategic ascendency. It correctly estimates that the United States fails at this stage still to appreciate that strong Israeli action against Iran’s regional strategic foundations in Lebanon and Syria signal that Israel fully understands it is now in a twilight struggle to seize the regional strategic momentum, and that Jerusalem will prosecute that struggle confidently and bring the war bearing down away from Israel and into Tehran itself.

But this, in fact, may be a blessing in disguise. If at the core of Iranian strategy is to portray Israel as fatally wounded and liming to its demise, saved only by US power, then having Israel – not US power – deliver a catastrophic strategic blow alone sends a critical message all in the region reasserting not only its viability, but its rising rather than eroding power. That Israel must do this without a US green light actually strengthens the impact of this message regionally.

But eventually, the United States will awake and realize Iran’s strategic campaign is only part of the larger sleepless malice (to pilfer from Tolkien’s The Hobbit) that stretches from Pyongyang to Caracas, passing through Beijing, Moscow, Sanaa and Algiers, which now stirs. Eventually, Washington will abandon the twin shibbolets of Oslo 2.0 and JCPOA 2.0 and shift the paradigm to focusing on helping the Iranian people bring the nightmare of their regime to its demise. Until then, it is imperative for Israel now to seize the strategic initiative regionally to deliver not only for itself, but for Washington a great victory against its better judgment.

It is a great but unavoidable burden for Israel to do this initially without an American green light. But at the same time, there is yet another irony in this situation. Israel will actually secure greater support in the long term by acting with such strength and strategic purpose regionally. Israel will eventually win great American support since it establishes Israel as the key pillar of the Western alliance in the region – which ultimately reduces the need for constant American power being projected there as it needs to refocus on Asia and Europe. Also, when Arab nations see Israel as the strong horse, they will make peace, which further secures regional acceptance and eases Arabist pressures on America.

But most importantly, Americans have always seen in Israel an image of themselves, and at the core of that brand was that Israel stood on its own legs always to defend itself by itself – just as Americans always have. For Americans, anyone that fights for what he believes in, even if he must fight alone, is someone worth fighting for and aligning oneself with. As such, a confident and self-reliantly victorious Israel will also tap again into America’s recently eroding imagination of Israel’s being a tough, independent-minded and principled nation onto which America can once again – as after 1967 and Entebbe — project its own image of itself.

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