The Fall of Assad

December 17, 2024

History is moving fast in the Middle East, raising the possibility, for well or ill, of massive changes throughout the region. The collapse of Syria’s Assad-family dictatorship took everyone by surprise, starting with Bashar al-Assad himself, and certainly including Russia and Iran. Arab and Western intelligence services missed the regime’s vulnerability, particularly the weakness and disloyalty of its military and security services.

The brutal dictatorship is gone, but what comes next? Most importantly, Assad’s removal is yet another massive defeat for Iran’s ruling mullahs. Following Israel’s thrashing of Hezbollah and its near-total dismemberment of Hamas, this is the third major catastrophe for Tehran’s anti-Israel “ring-of-fire” strategy. While Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu agreed to a cease fire with Hezbollah, he has made clear it lasts for only sixty days, ending just after the Joe Biden leaves office. Hezbollah will be in further dire trouble if its overland supply route through Iraq and Syria is permanently blocked. There is no cease fire with Hamas, meaning both terrorist proxies could face further Israeli decimation.

As for Iran itself, the situation could hardly be worse. With three major pillars of its regional power already fallen or on the way, the ayatollahs are now at great risk both internationally and domestically. Recriminations and finger-pointing among top leaders of the Revolutionary Guards and regular Iranian military(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/09/iran-armed-forces-at-war-with-themselves-fall-assad-syria/) has already spread widely in the general population(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/world/middleeast/iran-syria-assad.html).

Disarray and fragmentation in the senior ranks of authoritarian governments are often the first signs of regime collapse. Popular discontent in Iran was already extensive due to long-standing economic decline, the opposition of young people and women generally, ethnic discontent, and more. If the Revolutionary Guard and regular military leaderships begin to come apart, the potential for internal armed conflict grows. Assad’s collapse showed that a façade of strength can mask underlying weakness, with surprisingly swift collapse following.

Externally, Iran’s regime has not been this vulnerable since the 1979 revolution. Jerusalem has already eliminated Tehran’s Russian-supplied S-300 air-defense systems, seriously damaged its ballistic-missile capabilities, and destroyed elements of the nuclear-weapons program(https://www.axios.com/2024/11/15/iran-israel-destroyed-active-nuclear-weapons-research-facility). Netanyahu has never had a better opportunity to obliterate all or vast swathes of the entire nuclear effort. So doing would make Israel, neighboring states, and the entire world safe from the threat of Iran’s decades-long nuclear-proliferation threat, which has long contravened the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Israel, with US assistance if requested, should go for the win on the nuclear issue. Not only would that eliminate Tehran’s threat of a nuclear Holocaust, it would simultaneously strike yet another domestic political blow against the mullahs. In addition to the tens of billions of dollars wasted in supporting Iran’s now-decimated terrorist proxies, but the billions spent on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles would also be seen as squandered. Iran’s citizens would be perfectly entitled to conclude that the ayatollahs had never had their best interests at heart, and that their removal was now fully justified.

Russia is the next biggest loser. Distracted and overburdened by its unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, now about to enter its third year, the Kremlin lacked the resources to save its puppet in Damascus. Vladimir Putin’s humiliation is reverberating globally, and it will also have corrosive impact inside Russia, perhaps finally stimulating more-effective opposition to the ongoing burdens the Ukraine war imposes on Russia’s citizens and economy.

Even more significant losses may be coming. The Kremlin’s main interests in Syria are its Tartus naval station and its Latakia air base. These are Moscow’s only military facilities outside the territory of the former Soviet Union. They are vital to Russia’s position in the eastern Mediterranean. If forced to evacuate these bases, Moscow’s ability to project power beyond the Black Sea would be dramatically reduced, as would be the threat to NATO across the Mediterranean. Although there were early indications Russia might to retain the bases, recent commercial overhead photography indicates it may be preparing to withdraw some or all of its forces. The situation remains fluid(https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/13/world/syria-news).

Without doubt, Turkey, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists, and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army are the big winners so far. However, Syria’s internal situation is far from settled. American troops remain in northeastern Syria assisting the largely Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces in the anti-ISIS campaign, and at al-Tanf. The Kurds should not be abandoned, especially to President Recep Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanist aspirations to expand Ankara’s control and influence in Arab lands It would be a mistake, at this point, to remove HTS from Washington’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, although, unwisely, the Biden administration is reportedly considering doing so(https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/09/us-debates-lifting-terror-designation-for-main-syrian-rebel-group-00193367).

While eliminating Assad is a critical contribution to reducing the Iranian threat, neither Israel nor neighboring Arab governments nor the United States have any interest in seeing another terrorist state arise, and this one on the Mediterranean. Delicate diplomacy lies ahead. In the meantime, Biden was right to bomb ISIS weapons storage depots in eastern Syria to deny those assets to HTS, and Israel is justified in eliminating the Assad government’s military assets for the same reason.

Importantly for the region and beyond, urgent efforts are required to locate and secure all aspects of Assad’s chemical and biological weapons programs(https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/12/12/syria-chemical-weapons-search-mustard-sarin/). Assaad used chemical weapons against his own people as recently as 2017 and 2018, so there is no question whether these capabilities exist.

Thus, while there is considerable good news surrounding Assad’s ouster and exile to Moscow, circumstances in Syria still pose serious threats to peace and security in the Middle East and globally. This is no time to relax or turn away, especially for the incoming Trump administration.

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on December 17, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Kash Patel Doesn’t Belong at the FBI

December 10, 2024

At the NSC, he was less interested in his assigned duties than in proving his loyalty to Donald Trump.
The president’s constitutional obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” requires evenhanded action in the national rather than his personal interest, a distinction Donald Trump doesn’t grasp. His oft-stated intention to seek retribution against opponents, if implemented, facially contravenes the Take Care Clause.

Too many of Mr. Trump’s personnel selections evidence his assiduous search for personal fealty, not loyalty to the Constitution. Kash Patel’s nomination as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation squarely fits this pattern.

Rep. Devin Nunes pushed Mr. Patel for the National Security Council staff after Republicans lost the House in 2018. Notwithstanding Mr. Patel’s lack of policy credentials, the president ordered him hired. NSC staff has long been divided into directorates responsible for different policy areas. Charles Kupperman, my deputy, and I placed Mr. Patel in the International Organizations Directorate, which had a vacancy.

Some five months later, we moved him to fill an opening in the Counter-Terrorism Directorate. In neither case was he in charge of a directorate during my tenure as national security adviser or thereafter, as he contends in his memoir and elsewhere. He reported to senior directors in both cases and had defined responsibilities. His puffery was characteristic of the résumé inflation we had detected when Mr. Trump pressed him on us. We found he had exaggerated his role in cases he worked on as a Justice Department lawyer before joining Mr. Nunes’s committee staff. Given the sensitivity of the NSC’s responsibilities, problems of credibility or reliability would ordinarily disqualify any job applicant.

He proved to be less interested in his assigned duties than in worming his way into Mr. Trump’s presence. Fiona Hill, NSC senior director for Europe, testified to Congress during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment hearings that Mr. Patel, at that time assigned to the International Organizations Directorate, participated in a May 2019 Oval Office meeting on Ukraine, and that he had engaged in various other Ukraine-related activities. Whatever he did on Ukraine while an NSC staffer, at least during my tenure, was unrestrained freelancing. (He has denied any communication with Mr. Trump on Ukraine.)

In August 2019, when I was overseas, Mr. Trump called Mr. Kupperman and White House counsel Pat Cipollone to the Oval Office. They arrived to find Mr. Patel already there. The subject of the discussion was making him an administration enforcer of presidential loyalty. Messrs. Cipollone and Kupperman strongly objected to any such role, whether in the NSC or the counsel’s office, and the issue disappeared. I resigned in September 2019.

According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s memoir, during an October 2020 hostage-rescue mission, Mr. Patel, then in the Counter-Terrorism directorate, misinformed other officials that a key airspace-transit clearance had been granted. In fact, Mr. Esper writes, the clearance hadn’t been obtained, threatening the operation’s success, and his team “suspected Patel made the approval story up” but wasn’t certain. Typically, Mr. Patel’s version of this episode in his memoir denies any error—though, ironically, it also boasts of his acting beyond the authority of NSC staffers. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also knew the day’s details, including about the clearance issue. He hasn’t spoken publicly about the incident. He should.

Last week Olivia Troye, who served as counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, elaborated on these concerns, tagging Mr. Patel with “making things up on operations” and lying about intelligence. His lawyers responded by threatening to sue her for defamation, writing that “at no point did Mr. Patel ever lie about national intelligence, place Navy Seals at risk, or misinform the Vice President.” What Mr. Esper and Ms. Troye accuse Mr. Patel of lying about is the airspace-transit clearance, the lack of which would have made transit by U.S. forces though the airspace of the country in question an act of war.

These are but a few of many cases that touch directly on Mr. Patel’s character and his consistent approach of placing obedience to Mr. Trump above other, higher considerations—most important, loyalty to the Constitution. His conduct in Mr. Trump’s first term and thereafter indicates that as FBI director he would operate according to Lavrenty Beria’s reported comment to Joseph Stalin: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

Mr. Patel has frequently called for investigations of journalists, comments he has since tried to walk back. He has been accused of seeking to declassify sensitive information for political rather than legitimate national-security reasons. During Mr. Trump’s first term, both Attorney General William Barr and Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspell threatened to resign if Mr. Patel was forced on them as deputy FBI or CIA director, respectively.

Mr. Trump claims to have been unfairly, even illegally, targeted by partisan Biden prosecutors. That may or may not be true. But if illegitimate partisan prosecutions were launched, those responsible should be held accountable in a reasoned, professional manner, not in a counter-witch-hunt. The worst response is for Mr. Trump to engage in the prosecutorial conduct he condemns. Simply threatening to do so politicizes and degrades the legal process and the American people’s faith in evenhanded law enforcement. A president possessed of civic virtue wouldn’t launch retribution against opponents, and he certainly wouldn’t appoint an FBI director who saw himself solely as the president’s liege man.

If Mr. Trump is determined, wrongly, to remove Christopher Wray as FBI director, there are previous examples of appointees who restored faith in a battered Justice Department and FBI. In 1975 President Gerald Ford selected Edward Levi, dean of the University of Chicago Law School, as attorney general, and in 1978 President Jimmy Carter named Judge William Webster, a Republican, to be FBI director.

Mr. Patel is no Ed Levi or Bill Webster. To resolve questions over his integrity and fitness, a full-field FBI investigation, as prior nominees have undergone, is warranted. With more facts available and less rhetoric, the result will be clear. I regret I didn’t fully discern Mr. Patel’s threat immediately. But we are now all fairly warned. Senators won’t escape history’s judgment if they vote to confirm him.

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on December 10, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Reflections on the Outlandish: Navigating the Strategic Earthquake in the Fertile Crescent

December 10, 2024

By David Wurmser[1]

[1] David Wurmser, Ph.D. is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington and at the Misgav Institute for Zionist Strategy and at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign and Security Affairs in Israel. He was former senior advisor to Vice President Cheney and to NSC Advisor Ambassador John Bolton.

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has also altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the pieces on the board are beginning to move.

First things first. The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains still the greatest strategic imperative in the region for both United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. In its last days, it is lurching toward a nuclear breakout to save itself, which would not only leave one of the most destructive weapons in one of the most dangerous regimes in the world – as President Bush had warned against in 2002 – but in the hands of one of the most desperate ones. This is a prescription for catastrophe. Because of that, and because one should never turn one’s back on a cobra, even a wounded one, it is a sine qua non that Iran and its castrati allies in Lebanon be defeated.

However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other new threats. Indeed, not only are those threats surfacing and becoming visible, but the United States and its allies already need, urgently in fact, to start assessing and navigating the new reality taking shape.

The rise of these new threats, which are slowly reaching not only a visible, but acute phase increases the urgency of dispensing with the Iranian threat expeditiously. Neither the United States nor our allies in the region any longer have the luxury of a slow containment and delaying strategy in Iran. Instead, it is necessary to move toward decisive victory in the twilight struggle with the Ayatollahs.

Specifically, the upheaval surrounding the retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of ISIS, are the first skirmishes in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir ash-Sham (HTS) – a descendent of the Nusra force led by Abu Muhammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of the al-Qaida system and cobbled together of ISIS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey, who used the US withdrawal from northern Iraq a few years ago to release Islamists captured by the US and the Kurds. Some of these former prisoners were sent to Libya to fight the pro-Egyptian Libyan National Army under General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar based in Tobruk, and the rest were reorganized in Islamist militias oriented toward Ankara. The rise of a Muslim-Brotherhood dominated by Turkey, rehabilitating and tapping ISIS residue to ride Iran’s decline/demise to great strategic advantage will plague us going forward.

Added to this is Hamas’ destruction – also a critical goal for Israel and the United States but one that also involves consequences that must be navigated and hopefully countered. The world of Hamas is a schizophrenic world. It has two heads, aligned with different internal fractions – one more anchored to the world of Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood politics led by Turkey and the other to the Iranian axis. In 2012 Israel killed Ahmad al-Jabri, a scion of the powerful al-Jabari clan lording over Hebron but who had transplanted westward to become the leader of the Murabitun forces (part of the Izz ad-Din al-Qasem Brigades) within Hamas in Gaza. He had transported those forces to train under the IRGC in Mashhad Iran in the years before and became the driving force of Hamas by the time Israel felt it had to deal with him. Despite his demise, the structures he led anchored to Iran continued to grow and assume ever more dominance over Hamas, in part because of the release of several key figures in the Gilad Shalit hostage-release deal (2011), including Yahya Sinwar. But Iran did not cleanly control all of Hamas. Turkey maintained a powerful presence in the organization and had some senior leaders likely more loyal to itself than to Iran. In many ways, Hamas reflected the schizophrenia of its patron – Qatar – who served a critical ally to both Iran and Turkey in the last two decades.

In the last two decades, however, Iran proved more ascendent strategically in the region than Turkey. In fits and starts, Ankara had tried to quietly compete with Iran in the last two decades, but more often than not left to only nibble at the scraps left by Iran along the edges, whether in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon (after the August 2021 port explosion, for example) or among the two structures of geopolitical discourse, the “Lingua Franca” embodiments of regional competition — the Palestinians and the Islamists. Hamas, therefore, as well as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (an organization whose fealty was far more homogenously held toward Iran), became increasingly defined – indeed, far, far more — by Tehran than Ankara. Iran had become the region’s new Nasser, and its minions accordingly flourished as did its factions in Palestinian and Islamist politics.

However, suddenly the ground shifted. Israel has since summer, starting with Operation Grim Beeper and the demolition of Hizballah, triggered an earthquake in what is normally a glacial pace of regional strategic change. If Israel presses onward with priority as it should to devastate and destabilize the Iranian regime, and the Iranian axis meets it demise, then Hamas – indeed all Palestinian and Islamist politics – drifts to a Turkish direction and slowly emerge as Ankara’s strategic assets. This reorientation does not represent an increase in the Palestinian threat to Israel, but it would be the triumph of hope over experience to think it would reduce it. Indeed, it is likely no more than an exchange of a rabid donkey for a crazed mule. For the moment, Qatar – being much as the Palestinian and Islamist clusters they fund — rides both animals.

The emergence of the Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood bloc, which includes Turkey’s slow drift of to a dangerous position, as a strategic problem began with President Obama. Although Tayyip Erdogan always was an Islamist politician, his attempts to recreate some sort of neo-Ottoman Caliphate and reignite its imperialist ambitions were disconcerting but largely resulted in rhetoric and symbolism rather than reality. It was, however, latently concerning because the reference point on which he focused of resurrecting the terminated Ottoman Caliphate in 1921 also serves as common ground with the most dangerous Sunni Islamist movements, such as al-Qaida, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad group (which was renamed Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn), and Fatah al Islam, ISIS and the assortment of al-Qaida and ISIS affiliate groups across the Maghreb in Africa. There was always the danger of convergence of the Turkish and the most radical Islamist worlds into one strategic threat.

In 2011, President Obama made two critical mistakes that set a process that eventually now is beginning to realize our greatest fears of the Turkish-Jihadist convergence:

Instead of supporting indigenous Syrian opposition, President Obama subcontracted to Turkey and Qatar the task to define and support the opposition to President Assad of Syria as his regime descended into civil war. The threat of ISIS has thus remained ever since, and with Iran’s going down, Turkey feels its oats and surfs the crest of the ISIS-remnant wave, — rather than the Free Syrian Army, which sought closer ties to the West — to expansion.

⁠The U.S. remained wedded to trying to sustain Syria as a unified fiction of a state, fearing its partition would set a precedent to trigger a collapse of the Sykes-Picot foundation. The same mistake was replicated in Libya, which had strategic consequences for Egypt. As a result, Egypt is slowly strategically also now drifting in a dangerous direction.

The insistence on retaining a unified state meant that to survive in conditions of communal, sectarian, tribal, ethnic civil war, each faction within that state had to fight to the death for control over the other rather than disengage into partitioned pieces. Control meant survival while being controlled meant being slaughtered. This then also created the massive Syrian refugee crisis.

Given the calamity that befell Syria and the chaos that lies underneath, as well as these hovering strategic forces positioning already to scavenge the Syrian nation’s cadaver, it is important for both Israel and the United States, along with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, to contemplate as very possible many scenarios that hitherto were outlandish in the western end of the fertile crescent. It is too early to fully identify and digest, let alone definitively plan for the reality that will emerge, but now is the time for unrefined initial reflections that underlie a longer term strategic planning process.

First, to be clear; Iran remains the central threat. And nothing can be done until it is defeated. The urgency of ensuring and achieving its defeat is increasing rapidly.

With Iran’s defeat, Syria will begin the terminal process of unraveling. Russians will try to protect essential interests there – the Alawite regime and the Christian communities, especially the Greek Orthodox. It is not only the last legacy of Soviet global bloc (outside of Cuba), but also a more civilizational sense of commitment to the remains of the world of Byzantium. Russia considers itself to some extent the “Third Rome” – Rome and Constantinople being the first two – as several current Russian political commentators, intellectuals and religious leaders have posited, and the remnant Christian communities – especially the Greek Orthodox since the Maronites are Catholic and orient more to France – are envisioned as its charge.

We are thus witnessing the rise of an acute Russo-Turkish confrontation that will also ultimately threaten Israel. In this confrontation, it is not inconceivable that Russia may consider turning to Israel as a key offset to Turkish power rather than confront Israel once Iran is removed from the picture.

Moreover, China is likely to realign with Turkey and drop Iran when it realizes the Ayatollah regime is falling. China has hedged for the last few years, having signed a strategic agreement with Iran in 2021, but it has just as aggressively sought to tighten its relations with Turkey. Part of what drives Beijing and Ankara together is the strategic competition between China and India. China has ties to Pakistan through the Hindu Kush range and sees India as one of its premier enemies. Turkey as well has close strategic relations with Pakistan, and uses that relationship to compete with India in Afghanistan, and has attempted in the last half decade to destabilize India both through using Pakistani help to rile up unrest in the Jammu and Kashmir, but also among India’s 200 million Muslims. Again, as Iran has begun to run into trouble and as the regime is faltering, we already see the first sign of China’s move to stop hedging and shift more uncarefully toward Turkey.

And we see Egypt also recalibrating. This was due in part because of Libya, but also the unrelenting pressure of the Biden administration on human rights and Washington’s tolerance of Qatar and the Muslim brotherhood regionally against the Saudis and Egypt. At first, Egypt retrenched into close alliance with the Saudis and positioned itself as Erdogan’s nemesis – even to the extent of supporting the Syrian regime in its efforts to withstand pressure from Turkey and its Islamist allies. But the pressure by Washington (paused during the first Trump presidency) mounted and Egypt increasingly moved from confrontation to cooption of the internal Islamist threat. Again, this process began during the Obama era — which led to a strategic shift away from peace, away from Israel, and away from viewing Hamas as a profound strategic and domestic threat, and instead toward slow accommodation of Hamas and Turkey starting in 2016-17.

But the closure of the Red Sea and by extension Suez – and the unwillingness, which Cairo had thought was an inconceivable abdication of American power, of the United States to reverse that — as a result of the October 7 attacks so shook Cairo that it blew the lid off caution and hedging. The quiet slow drift has by now turned into a stampede. Egypt had its finger in the wind, but the wind told it that it is time to make its peace with the Muslim brotherhood and Erdogan and align with China. For the moment, Egypt is not forced to choose whether to side with the emerging Turkish-Sunni MB- Chinese bloc or the Russo-Iran bloc since the links are blurred and still uncrystallized. So, for the moment, while clearly abandoning the West, it has yet to leap wholeheartedly into the Turkish camp. The power of Russia and the residues of history still have their grip to some extent on Cairo.

In other words, we see already a mass realigning underway to digest the fall of Iran and the rise of an imperial Turkey. If Syria begins to fall apart, then several essential things come into play, especially since the 13-year effort to sustain Syria as a unified state will yield to its irreversible and catastrophic final failure and collapse.

This then raises the question of the pieces that emerge. Once again, there is a necessity of establishing a proper Lebanese state anchored to its Maronite foundation.

But then there is the more outlandish possibility that may become the desired and likely: it is important for the U.S. and Israel to start planning for an Alawite state further up the coast. Syria will unlikely remain one state. Russia may find that it will be able only to hold a rump Alawite state and Christian communities (Greek Orthodox — not Maronite) and retreat to protect an enclave state. It will also rapidly even now come to see Iran as useless in this regard and split from Iran on Syria — or what’s left of it.

How the United States and Israel relates to the desperate Russian-oriented enclave entity becomes equally challenging.

To note, Russia had cobbled together a new foreign policy approach launched a year ago in Valdai Conference in Sochi, as unveiled in Putin’s speech there of October 5, 2023. He envisioned cobbling together the BRICS (Brasil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations into one geopolitical strategic bloc to challenge the West. But that vision and the underlying unity upon which the Valdai vision is anchored now is being torn to shreds as Chinese and Turkish interests unravel Russian and Iranian interests (let alone leave Iran’s regime destroyed with a new more pro-Israeli and pro-Western regime in Tehran) in Syria and the Middle East splits along a Russo-Turkish competition Russia likely will reach out to India and a post-Ayatollah Iran, but less as a hostile challenge to Israel and the West as much as a desperate move to prepare itself and preserve its dwindling assets in the emerging Russo-Turkish confrontation.

It is strategically wise to consider now — given all the immense complexities and conflicting interests swirling about and the multiple ambivalences — how one handles the disintegration of Syria. It is likely that Russia will be forced to retreat into an effort to protect the Alawite and Christian (especially Greek Orthodox) communities, which it will likely only be able to do by creating a rump Syria state in traditional Alawite and Christian areas. Given that it relies on access to the area via its port along the Mediterranean cost in Syria, it will most likely anchor that rump entity along the eastern Mediterranean with strategic partners in Lebanon, and then a rump Alawite state to the north of that in Tartus and the surrounding mountains.

In this state of anguish, it is difficult to predict what Russia may do. Putin has proven thus far to change his strategic visions only slowly. Some basic principles seem to have been rigidly ingrained. Russia has shown itself to be more determined than nimble in strategic behavior. As such, it is possible that Russia will remain so focused on imperial European ambitions that it falters and falls – along with its Iranian ally – in its survival in the region. But it should not be ruled out as impossible that Russia may reach out to cooperate with the US and Israel to save its position. If so, one must ask: how much the US and Israel should cooperate with Russia, and how much should it attempt to create a third alternative and anchor a structure to US power and the greatly demonstrated Israeli power? The answer to that may also force on us another question – who represents the great threat – Moscow or Beijing? Or should we even choose?

It’s time to start noodling these questions – even the outlandish ones.

Dark days lie ahead with Trump on the world stage once more

November 30, 2024

Soon to be cast adrift by President-elect Trump, Ukraine’s likely future is bleak. Let’s not make it worse by a feckless peace deal
Donald Trump’s looming inauguration bodes poorly for vital Western security interests, and Ukraine in particular. Trump’s hostility to NATO is palpable, and his feelings about Ukraine follow close behind. After January 20, US military and economic assistance will likely drop significantly, and negotiations with Russia begin quickly. In turn, European financial support for Ukraine will diminish, as EU members rush to revive now-defunct commercial ties with Moscow. Despite contrary press reports, Trump has not yet spoken to Vladimir Putin. When they do, Trump’s desire to put this “Biden war” behind him could, at worst, mean capitulation to maximalist Russian demands. After all, if assisting Ukraine’s defence against unprovoked aggression is unimportant to Washington, why worry about Kyiv’s terms of surrender?

In fact, core America national interests remain. Since 1945, European peace and stability have been vital to advancing US economic and political security. The ripple effects of perceived American and NATO failure in Europe’s centre will embolden Beijing to act aggressively toward Taiwan and the East China Sea; the South China Sea; and along its land borders. These aren’t abstract, diaphanous worries at the periphery of our interests, but hard threats to US physical security, trade, travel and communications globally.

Biden put these interests at risk by bungling implementation of nearly three years of aid to Kyiv. He never developed a winning strategy. His administration helped create the current battlefield gridlock, deterred by constant but idle Kremlin threats of a “wider war.” Parcelling out weapons only after long public debates prevented their most effective use. Biden failed to explain clearly Russia’s threat to key Western interests, thereby fanning the belief there are no such interests, and abetting the Trump-inspired isolationism spreading nationally.

What to do? Aiding Ukraine is in NATO’s vital interest. That interest does not diminish because of persistent Biden administration poor performance. Do we ignore the continuing reality that Russia’s aggression threatens Alliance security? Does Ukraine simply give way to Trumpian capitulationism?

Certainly not. In the coming negotiations, certain points are essential to any potential agreement. The following suggestions, which are hardly my preferred outcome, are the absolute minimum we must obtain. They are only indicative, not exhaustive, and certainly not NATO’s opening position.

Any agreement must be explicitly provisional to keep Ukraine’s future open. Moscow will treat any deal that way regardless. For the Kremlin, nothing is permanent until its empire is fully restored, by their lights. Putin needs time to restore Russia’s military capabilities, and believing any “commitment” to forswear future aggression against Ukraine is dreaming.

A ceasefire along existing military frontlines during negotiations may be inevitable. Nonetheless, we should insist that any ultimate agreement explicitly state that the lines eventually drawn have no political import whatever, but merely reflect existing military dispositions. Russia may later disregard such disclaimers, but such claims must be rendered clearly invalid in advance.

Similarly, the agreement should not create demilitarised zones between Ukrainian and Russian forces inside Ukraine, or along the two countries’ formal border elsewhere. The surest way for a ceasefire line to become a permanent border is to make it half-a-mile wide, extending endlessly through contested territory. A DMZ inures solely to Moscow’s benefit.

Deployments of UN peacekeepers have an unhappy history of freezing the status quo, not helping to resolve the underlying conflict. Consider the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) which has partitioned the island since 1964. The UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has patrolled the Golan Heights since 1974, and may last forever, but did not prevent Israel from annexing the Golan. The list goes on. In Ukraine, a disengagement force could mean permanent cession of twenty percent of Ukraine to Russia.

The problem is not mitigated if the peacekeepers are under NATO rather than UN auspices. It is not the quality of the military that makes a difference, but the intentions of the parties to the conflict. Does anyone doubt what Russia’s long-term aims are? Or Ukraine’s for that matter? My guess is that the Kremlin won’t agree to NATO peacekeepers anyway, at least not unless augmented by thousands of North Korean troops.

Finally, Ukraine should not be constrained in its future options to join or cooperate with NATO. What’s left of Ukraine will still be a sovereign country, striving for representative government, and free to pick its allies on its own. We should not acquiesce in enforced neutralisation, what in the Cold War was called “Finlandisation”. Even Finland turned out not to like it, finally joining NATO in 2023. And if some hardy nations want to provide security guarantees to Free Ukraine, they should be able to do so, not subject to Russian vetoes.

Soon to be cast adrift by President-elect Trump, Ukraine’s likely future is bleak. Let’s not make it worse by a feckless peace deal.

This article was first published in The Telegraph on November 30, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Trump and Iran

November 11, 2024

Donald Trump’s election as President guarantees that America’s Middle East policy will change. The real question, though, and a major early test for Trump, is whether it will change enough. Does he understand that the region’s geopolitics differ dramatically from when he left office, and could change even more before Inauguration Day? The early signs are not promising that Trump grasps either the new strategic opportunities or threats Washington and its allies face.

The region’s central crisis on January 20 will be Iran’s ongoing “ring of fire” strategy against Israel. Right now, Israel is systematically dismantling Hamas’s political leadership, military capabilities, and underground Gaza fortress. Israel is similarly dismembering Hezbollah in Lebanon: its leadership annihilated, its enormous missile arsenal steadily decimated, and its hiding places shattered. Israel will continue degrading Hamas, Hezbollah, and West Bank terrorists, ultimately eliminating these pillars of Iranian power. Even President Biden’s team has already urged Qatar to expel Hamas’s leaders(https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/08/politics/qatar-hamas-doha-us-request/index.html).

Unfortunately, Yemen’s Houthis, still blocking the Suez Canal-Red Sea passage, have suffered only limited damage, as have Iran’s Shia militia proxies in Syria and Iraq. Iran itself finally faced measurable retaliation on October 26, as Israel eliminated the Russian-supplied S-300 air defenses and inflicted substantial damage on missile-production facilities. Nonetheless, Iran’s direct losses remain minimal. Due to intense White House pressure and the impending US elections, Jerusalem targeted neither Tehran’s nuclear-weapons program nor its oil infrastructure.

Whether Israel takes further significant action before January 20 is the biggest unknown variable. Israel’s October 26 air strikes have prompted unceasing boasting from Tehran that it will retaliate in turn. These boasts remain unfulfilled. The ayatollahs appear so fearful of Israel’s military capabilities that they hope the world’s attentions drift away as Iran backs down in the face of Israel’s threat. If, however, Iran does summon the will to retaliate, it is nearly certain this time that Israel’s counterstrike will be devastating, especially if during the US presidential transition. Israeli Defense Forces could lay waste to Iran’s nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs so extensively they rock the foundations of the ayatollahs’ regime.

Washington’s conventional wisdom is that Trump will return to “maximum pressure” economically against Iran through more and better-enforced sanctions, and stronger, more consistent support for Israel, as during his first term. If so, Tehran’s mullahs can relax. Trump’s earlier “maximum pressure” policy was nothing of the sort. Even worse, a Trump surrogate has already announced that the incoming administration will have “no interest in regime change in Iran(https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-envoy-says-trump-aims-to-weaken-iran-deal-of-the-century-likely-back-on-table/),” implying that the fantasy still lives that Trump could reach a comprehensive deal with Tehran in his second term.

Moreover, despite the staged good will in Bibi Netanyahu’s call to Trump last week, their personal relationship is tense. Trump said in 2021, “the first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake(https://www.axios.com/2021/12/10/trump-netanyahu-disloyalty-fuck-him).” In practice, this means that Israel should not expect the level of Trump support it received previously. And, because Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, he need not fear negative domestic political reactions if he opposes Israel on important issues.

Much depends on the currently unclear circumstances Trump will face on January 20. In addition to shunning regime change, Trump seems mainly interested in simply ending the conflict promptly, apparently without regard to how(https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-erratic-foreign-policy-meet-a-world-fire-2024-11-06/), which has proven very effective in US politics. This approach is consistent with his position on Ukraine. Asserting that neither conflict would have even occurred had he remained President, which is neither provable nor disprovable, Trump sees these wars as unwanted legacies from Biden.

If Israel does not demolish Iran’s nuclear aspirations before Trump’s inauguration, those aspirations will be the first and most pressing issue he faces. If he simply defaults back to “maximum pressure” through sanctions, he is again merely postponing an ultimate reckoning with Iran. Even restoring the sanctions to the levels prevailing when Trump left the Oval Office will be difficult, because Biden’s flawed and ineffective sanctions-enforcement efforts have weakened compliance globally. Trump will not likely have the attention span or the resolve to toughen sanctions back to meaningful levels. The growing cooperation among Russia, China and Iran means Iran’s partners will do all they can to break the West’s sanctions, as they are breaking the West’s Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia.

As they say in Texas, Trump is typically “all hat and no cattle”: he talks tough but doesn’t follow through on his rhetoric. Since he has never shown any inclination to move decisively against Iran’s nuclear program, that leaves the decision to Israel, which has its own complex domestic political problems to resolve. An alternative is to assist Iran’s people to overthrow Tehran’s hated regime. Here, too, however, Trump has shown little interest, thereby missing rare opportunities that Iran’s citizens could seize with a minimum of outside assistance. If Tehran’s ayatollahs are smart, they will dangle endless opportunities for Trump to negotiate, hoping to distract him from more serious, permanent remedies to the threats the ayatollahs themselves are posing.

Of all the critical early tests Trump will face, the Middle East tops the list. China, Russia, and other American adversaries will be watching just as closely as countries in the Middle East, since the ramifications of Trump’s decisions will be far-reaching.

This article was first published in The Independent Arabie on November 10, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

North Korea comes to Europe: How will the next president respond?

October 30, 2024

The threat of North Korea fighting alongside Russia in Ukraine is no longer a nightmare, but a real possibility. Two weeks ago, Kyiv said Pyongyang’s soldiers were already in Ukraine and had sustained casualties. Now the Biden administration has confirmed that 10,000 North Korean troops are training in Russia, adding that they will be “fair game” if deployed to Ukraine.

As Election Day approaches, voters should worry whether either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump are awake to and able to handle this immediate danger and its longer-term implications.

Having Pyongyang’s forces fighting in Ukraine would both bolster Moscow tactically and provide those troops with battlefield experience, greatly benefitting them in future conflicts on the Korean Peninsula. Moreover, the risk that, in return, the Kremlin supplies Kim Jong Un with nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile technology — if it hasn’t already — directly imperils South Korea, Japan and deployed U.S. forces in the region.

By contrast, in 2018, Trump canceled regular U.S.-South Korean “war games” to please Kim, thus compromising allied combat readiness. In a tense environment, where the U.S.-South Korean troops’ preparedness mantra is “Fight Tonight,” this is crucial.

There is no sign that Trump understands his mistake. And Harris’s thoughts on Pyongyang’s menace appear to be a blank slate.

South Korea is hardly standing idly by. Having previously sold tanks, artillery and ammunition to Poland, President Yoon Suk Yeol is currently considering selling weapons to Ukraine. Additionally, Pyongyang’s growing closeness to Moscow, and fears of Washington’s fecklessness, will only increase Seoul’s ongoing debate about whether to acquire an independent nuclear-weapons capability. We are well into uncharted territory.

The broader threat is not just North Korea but the emerging China-Russia axis, now widely understood as a reality, not a prediction. While similar in appearance to the Cold War’s Sino-Soviet alliance, today’s version differs dramatically: China this time is inarguably the dominant partner. The axis is far from fully formed. Disagreements and tensions clearly exist, notably over Pyongyang’s increasing affinity for Russia, as Kim emulates his grandfather Kim Il Sung’s uncanny ability to play Moscow off against Beijing.

Contemporaneously with Kim and Vladimir Putin locking step, the Kremlin is also reportedly supplying Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis with targeting data, thereby augmenting its campaign to effectively close the Suez Canal-Red Sea maritime passage (other than to “friendly” vessels like Russian tankers). Thus, notwithstanding its problems and quirks, the axis and its outriders are rolling along.

Worryingly, however, one variety of America’s contemporary isolationist virus, epitomized by vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), holds that the Middle East and Europe should be downgraded as U.S. priorities in order to focus on China’s threat in Asia, particularly against Taiwan. This menace is indeed real, but far wider than just endangering Taiwan or East Asia generally. While not yet comprehensive or entirely consistent internally, the Beijing-Moscow hazard is worldwide.

Worst of all, the latest manifestation of Beijing’s sustained, aggressive military buildup is the new projection that China’s nuclear-weapons arsenal will reach 1,000 warheads by 2030, much earlier than previous predictions. Increasing Chinese nuclear capabilities portend a tripolar nuclear world, one radically different and inherently riskier and more uncertain that the Cold War’s bipolar U.S.-USSR faceoff.

This is not simply a new U.S.-China problem. All our assessments about appropriately sizing America’s nuclear deterrent, allocating it within the nuclear triad (land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, plus long-range bombers), along with all our theories of deterrence and arms control, were founded on the basic reality of bipolarity. Impending tripolarity means that all those issues need to be reconceptualized for America’s security, not to mention the extended deterrence we provide our allies.

Do we face one combined China-Russia nuclear threat, or two separate threats? Or both? The questions only get harder. This is not an Asia-based risk, but a global one, inevitably implying substantial budget increases for new or rehabilitated nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

Responding to North Korea with yet another four years of “strategic patience” — the Obama and Biden do-nothing policy — is both wrongheaded and increasingly dangerous. As for China, focusing on securing bilateral climate-change agreements, Biden’s highest priority, is wholly inadequate. Even where his administration acted strategically — enhancing the Asian Security Quad, endorsing the AUKUS nuclear-submarine project, agreeing to trilateral military activity with Japan and South Korea — Biden demonstrated little sense of urgency or focus.

Surely the image of Pyongyang fighting Kyiv should jar both the simplistic premises of “East Asia only” theorists and the quietude of Biden-Harris supporters. We must immediately overcome any remaining French and German objections to increasing NATO coordination with Japan, South Korea and others, including ultimately joining NATO, as former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar suggested years ago. Existing Asia-based initiatives like the Quad, AUKUS and closer military cooperation among America’s allies need to be rocket-boosted.

We need a president who understands the importance of American leadership and has the resolve to pursue it. Let’s pray we get one.

This article was first published in The Hill on October 30, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

A Biden-Starmer Giveaway Helps China

October 16, 2024

As a one-term president, Joe Biden appears eager to take actions he might not have taken if he had to worry about getting re-elected. The latest example: He apparently pushed the U.K. to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to the island country of Mauritius. The Chagos archipelago is unremarkable but for one key fact: Diego Garcia, its largest island, houses a critical U.S.-U.K. military base near the Indian Ocean’s geographic center point.

British media report that U.S. officials, fearing that existing International Court of Justice rulings and a potential push in the United Nations General Assembly would pose political problems, pressured British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to cede them on Oct. 3. Whatever Mr. Starmer’s motivation—whether to appease Mr. Biden or lessen guilty feelings about imperial history—the decision was utterly misguided.

The Chagos “problem” hasn’t figured prominently in British politics before now, except in certain Labour Party circles. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader before Mr. Starmer, obsessed over the issue, long a priority for Labour’s Trotskyite wing. Worried about disapprobation by biased global courts, the White House and State Department during Mr. Biden’s term fell in sync with Britain’s Corbynites.

Under the deal, Diego Garcia will remain under British jurisdiction for at least 99 years. The site is home to a critical U.S. military facility, fittingly nicknamed the “footprint of freedom.” The island will only become more important to U.S. resistance against China’s efforts to achieve hegemony in the Indo-Pacific.

Mauritius, meantime, is increasingly China-friendly. China is its top trading partner, and Beijing has used debt-trap diplomacy—lending with strings attached—to ensnare the island nation. If the British Parliament approves transferring the Chagos to Mauritius, China will be able to maneuver ships and planes near Diego Garcia for intelligence-gathering and military operations. Given Beijing’s history of militarizing comparable tiny landmasses in the South China Sea, the threat is clear.

China has long conducted extensive undersea surveys of the Indian Ocean, ostensibly for commercial reasons but obviously in pursuit of maritime dominance. A Beijing presence in the Chagos will facilitate these efforts, posing a direct threat to India, which it appears wasn’t consulted by either Whitehall or Foggy Bottom.

There’s no compelling logic for ceding the islands to Mauritius. That the Chagos are associated with Mauritius is actually a fluke of colonial administration: France was Mauritius’s first colonial European power, governing the islands from the larger chain after taking control in the early 1700s. Britain acquired Mauritius after victory in the Napoleonic Wars and continued France’s governing mode. Many alternative solutions for the islands are available, but neither Washington nor London have shown an appetite for considering them.

The U.S. faced analogous challenges in ending its administration of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, or TTPI, during the 1980s and ’90s. Once German colonies, the islands became a Japanese mandate under the League of Nations, and, after 1945, a U.N. trusteeship under U.S. control. One part of the TTPI, the Northern Marianas, became an American commonwealth. Three others—Palau, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia—chose independence but entered into Compacts of Free Association with the U.S., giving Washington authority over their foreign and security policies.

For all the overblown rhetoric about a British “diplomatic success,” it seems no one bothered to ask Chagossians their views. Given Mauritius’s prior poor treatment of Chagossians, Chagossians might have preferred to have become a U.S. commonwealth.

China has already tried to take advantage of Washington’s inattention in the former TTPI by aggressively pressing its interests and intentions and using debt-diplomacy tactics. Although Washington is now pressing back against Beijing, we can’t afford to make similar mistakes in the Chagos or the broader Indian Ocean.

Messrs. Biden and Starmer have checked the Chagos Islands off Mr. Corbyn’s to-do list. Let’s hope there aren’t any other foreign-policy surprises in Mr. Biden’s remaining lame-duck period.

Mr. Bolton served as White House national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06. He is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on October 16, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

What Next in the Middle East?

October 07, 2024

One year after Hamas launched Iran’s “Ring of Fire” strategy with a barbaric attack against Israeli civilians, the Middle East has changed significantly. Now, the world awaits Jerusalem’s response to Tehran’s ballistic-missile attack last week, the largest such attack in history. It was the current war’s second military assault directly from Iranian territory against Israel, the first being April’s combined drone and ballistic/cruise missile barrage. We do not know how Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu will respond, but it is nearly certain Israel’s answer will be far stronger than in April.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Ring of Fire is clearly failing. Israel is systematically destroying Hamas and Hezbollah, two critical foundations of Iran’s terrorist power. Whatever now happens between Jerusalem and Tehran, Iran’s efforts to debilitate Israel — and potentially the Gulf Arab states — with terrorist and conventional military assets may well suffer irreversible defeat.

According to Israel, 23 of 24 Hamas combat battalions have been destroyed, and what’s left remains under attack. Numerous Hamas leaders have been killed, not the least being Ismael Haniyeh in a supposedly secure compound in the heart of Tehran. Yahyah Sinwar remains at large; Hamas still holds Israeli civilian hostages; and Gaza’s enormous underground fortress is still partially in Hamas hands, but the ending is increasingly clear.

Hezbollah is still in the process of being destroyed. Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrullah is already a turning point in Middle East history, so great was the shock in Lebanon and beyond. As effectively as against Hamas, or perhaps more, Jerusalem is relentlessly decapitating Hezbollah’s leadership, eliminating officials even as they are being promoted to the fill vacancies left by dead colleagues. Israel also claims to have destroyed half of Hezbollah’s enormous arsenal of missiles and launchers. That estimate seems high, and in any case leaves significant work remaining against Hezbollah’s estimated inventory of up to 150,000 missiles. Nonetheless, with Nasrullah’s demise and with its leadership decimated, Hezbollah is reeling.

The Gulf Arab states and others should now be considering what the future holds for the people of Lebanon and Gaza without Hezbollah and Hamas. What has been unthinkable for decades may now be within sight. As long as Hezbollah, the world’s largest terrorist group, controlled Lebanon and its government, there was no possibility to achieve political freedom and stability. Given the prospect of Hezbollah’s eradication as both a political and military force, urgent attention is required to the possibility of a society without intimidation and control from Iran. Lebanon with Hezbollah could and should be a very different place.

Gaza, although smaller, is more complicated. Palestinians are the only major refugee population since World War II that has not benefitted from the basic humanitarian principle of either returning to their country of origin or being resettled. Palestinians are, unfortunately for them, the exception, not the norm. The international community needs to confront the reality that Gaza is not and never will be a viable economic entity, even if some distant day combined as a state with “islands” on the West Bank. Far better, once Hamas is on history’s ash heap, to treat Gazans more humanely than simply being shields for their terrorist masters. It makes no sense to rebuild Gaza as a high-rise refugee camp. The most humane future for innocent Gazans is resettlement in functioning economies where their children have the prospect of a normal future.

Although Gaza and Lebanon have something to look forward to, the same cannot yet be said, sadly, for Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Yemen’s Houthi terrorists and Iranian-backed Shia militias in Syria and Iraq remain largely untouched after October 7. That should change.

Although the Houthis have launched missiles and drones against Israel, and Israel has retaliated, the Houthis main contribution to Iran’s Ring of Fire has been effectively closing the Suez Canal-Red Sea maritime passage. This blockade has been extremely harmful to Egypt through lost Suez Canal transit fees, and has hurt the wider world by significantly increasing shipping costs. A clear violation of the principle of freedom of the seas, the major maritime powers would be fully warranted to correct it through force, with or without UN Security Council approval.

For the United States, freedom of the seas has been a major element of national security even before the thirteen colonies became independent. In the last two centuries, America and the United Kingdom led global efforts to defend the freedom of the seas, and should do so now, eliminating the ongoing Houthi anti-shipping aggression. Cutting off Iran’s supply of missiles and drones is a first step, coupled with destroying existing Houthi stockpiles. Washington’s opposition to prior efforts by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to defeat the terrorists was misguided and should be reversed. Destroying Houthi military capabilities would afford Yemen the same opportunities now opening for Lebanon and Gaza, and should be urgently pursued.

In Iraq and Syria, as Iran’s power fades (and may well fade dramatically after Israel’s coming retaliation), action against the Iran-backed Shia militias should be the highest priority. In such circumstances, Baghdad at least may well think twice before demanding that the few remaining US forces still in Iraq and Syria be removed.

For Iran itself, loss of its terrorist proxies, after having invested billions of dollars over decades to build the terrorist infrastructure, will be a dramatic reversal of fortune. If Iran’s nuclear program is similarly devastated, the threat Iran has posed by seeking to achieve hegemony in the Middle East and within the Islamic world will likely be impossible for the foreseeable future. In these circumstances, the people of Iran may finally be able to achieve the downfall of the ayatollahs and the creation of representative government. It is far too early to be confident of such an outcome, but it is not too early to hope for it.

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on October 7, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Lasting Middle East peace requires regime change in Iran

October 07, 2024

October 7, 2023, is truly “a day which will live in infamy,” to borrow Franklin Roosevelt’s
memorable description of Japan’s December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.
But what Hamas did to innocent Israeli civilians on October 7 and thereafter is the more
infamous for its outright barbarity, savagery committed with malice aforethought, the
very definition of terrorism.
Stunningly, however, and sadly, many Westerners, one year later, still fail to grasp the
full implications of the Iran-Hamas attempted holocaust.
October 7 initiated Iran’s “Ring of Fire” strategy against Israel, “the little Satan”. The
immediate response from Iran’s Western media and think-tank apologists was to deny
Iran’s central role.
They pointed to US intelligence that elements of Iran’s leadership were unaware Hamas
was about to blitz Israel. They argued there was no “smoking gun” evidence of Tehran’s
command-and-control over the Hamas terrorists. But even if these assertions are true,
they do not refute the logic and reality of Tehran’s responsibility.
Why should anyone expect that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which takes
orders directly from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, would tell anyone who didn’t have
an urgent “need to know” what was to happen? The Quds Force and its ilk are not
exactly communicative; they are not like US or other Western bureaucracies. Among
those quite likely kept in the dark would be Iran’s foreign ministry and even higher
authorities.
Iran’s October 1, 2024, barrage of 180-plus ballistic missiles against Israel corroborates
the point that civilian Iranian officials are not in the decision-making loop. The New York
Times’s Thomas Friedman reported that day, citing Israeli sources: “The Iranian
president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was not informed of the attack until shortly before it
began, the sources said, indicating that the Iranian regime is divided over the operation,
which will probably add to the fractures in the government.” If the President himself was
blindsided by the enormously significant second missile attack on Israel, it is no stretch
to conclude many were iced out before October 7.
Nor is the failure of Israeli and other intelligence agencies to uncover an Iran-to-Hamas
“execute order” surprising. No Western intelligence agency detected the impending
Hamas attack, a massive failure all around. Missing the “execute order” is simply one
piece of a more profound intelligence debacle.
This history is critical. It helps explain, although certainly does not justify, the larger
Biden administration failure, shared by all European governments, to react strategically
against the real threat: Iran.
The past year has not been a Palestinian war against Israel, nor an Arab war against
Israel. It has been an Iranian war against Israel, fought directly by Tehran’s own military
and through its numerous terrorist proxies, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad,
Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, and Iraqi and Syrian Shia militia groups. And behind the
terrorist storm troopers lies Iran’s nuclear-weapons programme, seeking to produce the
world’s most dangerous weapons. This is the ring of fire now directed against Israel, but
readily convertible to a ring of fire around the Arabian Peninsula’s oil-producing
monarchies.
The Arab governments at risk are acutely aware of the dangers they face from Tehran.
They understand that their strategic assessment is essentially identical to Israel’s,
explaining the basis for the Abraham Accords to establish full diplomatic relations with
Israel.
Further progress on more Abraham Accords is now on hold for the duration of the
conflict, but many believe the possibility of broader recognition of Israel in the Islamic
world was what motivated Iran to implement the “Ring of Fire” in the first place.
One year into the conflict, Israel is doing well. Hamas is nearing complete elimination of
its top leadership and organised military capabilities. Hezbollah is well on the way to the
same fate. The Houthis, for inexplicable reasons, are still largely untouched, despite
their broader threat to the basic principles of freedom of the seas that Britain and
America have sought to defend for centuries.
The blame for failing to destroy the Houthi military capabilities can be laid on US and
UK incompetence rather than on Israel. The same applies to Washington’s failure to
decimate Shia militias in Iraq and Syria that have repeatedly attacked American civilian
and military personnel since October 7.
Israel’s schwerpunkt, however, has been and undoubtedly remains Iran itself. After this
April’s missile-and-drone attack, the Biden administration forced Israel to “take the win”
and respond with only one pin-prick strike. That piece of brilliance has obviously failed.
Now, Israel is deciding whether to retaliate against Iran’s nuclear-weapons programme,
oil infrastructure, top leadership, military facilities, or a creative mix-and-match
combination. We will know shortly what Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Cabinet
decide.
Israel’s next move is on behalf of everyone in the world who rejects terrorism from Iran,
or any other source. We can only wish Jerusalem the best, hoping it encourages the
people of Iran to take their fate into their hands, beginning the overthrow of Tehran’s
mullahs.
Whatever Israel does now, the only durable outcome for Iran is ousting the Islamic
Revolution of 1979.

The first and perhaps last Iran-Israel war

October 03, 2024

Iran declared war in 1979 as one of the first acts after the Islamic Revolution. Along with declaring the aim of bringing about the demise of the United States, it embarked on a war of extermination against Israel. It has been relentless in building the capacity over the intervening five decades to realize its objectives. We are now seeing the start of the final, acute phase of that war in which Iran promises to exterminate Israel, and Israel – fifty years later — has moved to try to destabilize the Iranian regime.

In recent years, Iran persisted in developing its nuclear and ballistic programs to establish itself as a regional power to threaten not only Israel, but other continents. It also built a robust network of proxies to attack Israel, which it dubbed the “ring of fire.” Recently, it has also cultivated distant allies, such as Venezuela, Columbia, Chile, and Brazil to begin to leverage gangs and drug pipelines to build a more limited version of the “ring of fire” to bear down on the United States.

On October 7, 2023, Iran activated the Middle Eastern network of proxies in the bone-chillingly bloody and depraved invasion. This represented a new phase in Iran’s war against Israel, since it signaled the beginning of what it believed would have been an acute, ongoing war of attrition on eight fronts rather than periodic along alternate acting fronts. This was Iran’s first miscalculation of Israel. Israel realized this war of attrition was in fact the final stage of an existential attack Iran was launching. As a result, it went beyond engaging in this war of attrition on Iran’s terms and embraced instead a war whose strategy was not conflict management, but total victory and defeat of these proxies.

After a series of devastating blows to the key proxy, Hizballah, and the killing of senior Iranian liaison officers to that proxy in Damascus, Iran miscalculated a second time on April 14,2024. It launched the first direct missile assault on Israel from Iranian territory. This transformed the war from one of Israel against Iran’s proxies – a war against the proxy tentacles of the Iranian octopus – in a direct war between Israel and Iran.

This also transformed the war from a long-term war with the proxies into a twilight, direct struggle between the Iranian nation run by a tyranny that seeks to extinguish another – democratic Israel. After April 14, the containment of Iran and its management by deterrence was no longer viable; it has become a showdown in which either Iran or Israel, but not both, would emerge not only as victor but as survivor.

This then led to Iran’s third mistake, or more accurately strategic delusion. It is the same misperception plaguing all of Iran’s proxies – which led Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah to famously dub Israel as a mere, fragile spiderweb easily imploded — and its minions in the West protesting on campuses against the “white” Israel against the “indigenous people of color” of Palestine. The mistake is not that they underestimated Israel’s capabilities and prowess, nor that they misread its messy disunity and internal divisiveness on display almost daily as systemic collapse, but that they internalized their own ideology that Israel is a fake, fragile colonial entity rather than a deeply rooted civilization – one of the oldest and most solid, in fact. Israel has shown that despite its mistakes and setbacks, its internal strength and its “mystic chords of memory” (to borrow from Abraham Lincoln) eclipsingly transcended that of any of their neighbors, especially their more recently invented Palestinian nemesis.

The cumulative effects of Iran’s miscalculations in this Iran-Israel war came home to roost and took a dramatic turn as a result of the last two weeks. The proxy “ring of fire” — the network of proxies surrounding Israel which Iran built — not only had an aggressive aim to choke Israel to death by initiating a violent war of attrition and isolation, including closing ports and ending international airlines flying to Israel. It also acted as a defensive deterrent against Israel. The ring of fire — particularly Hizballah — shielded Iran from any potential Israeli proactive action against Iran directly. Indeed, so powerful was the Hizballah tentacle that Israel feared it more than the head of the octopus on Tehran. But the devastation wrought on Hizballah over recent weeks, starting with “Operation Grim Beeper” which incapacitated or killed 5000 of the key commanders at the heart of the organization, after a second, similar blow with the exploding walkie-talkie radios and other electronic means of communication the next day, followed the third day with the airstrike that took out the entire surviving command of its elite ground forces, and then a week later losing its iconic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, overturned Iran’s entire strategy. Hizballah was the strategic linchpin of the proxy network at the center of the ring of fire It was the greatest threat Israel faced. With its destruction, its deterrent contribution against Israel was erased. Iran was now left fully exposed to the total weight of Israeli power.

Which led Iran to commit its fourth big mistake the last day of September: again directly attacking Israel, which opened the door for a material Israeli direct counterattack, which Israel had chosen – under great US pressure — not to do in April. The result is that Iran will surely now feel the vulnerability to which it has exposed itself as Israel proceeds without fear any more of either Hizballah’s or Iran’s response. Jerusalem will take the war from the defensive to the offensive against Iran’s regime.

Nor is Iran in a good position to engage Israel. Iran’s strategy depends entirely on manipulation into paralysis of foes who possess far greater raw power. Until now by deterrence and use of a failed will of Israel’s primary ally, the United States, Iran felt it could manipulate Israel and even more so the United States to play by rules that delivered it great strategic advantage and ultimate victory. But a strategy of manipulation depends on facing a predictable adversary. As long as the Untied States and Israel restrained themselves within the rule that Iran had imposed on them, Iran’s far superior strategic acumen and the regime’s talent for strategic manipulation delivered for Iran a ramp leading to triumph. This then led to Iran’s fifth miscalculation: Israel changed the rules after October 7 and became unpredictable for Iran. For Iran, Israel was no longer controllable and restrainable, but a crazed wild man lashing out akin to the way a spraying firehose is flailing and uncontrollable. There is no strategy of manipulation that can harness this flailing firehose, one can only run for cover or shut off the water leading to the nozzle. Iran now fears Israel and no longer knows how to handle it or its superior raw power.

⁠Iran has limited options but can be counted on to embark on three strategic responses.

First, it will try to “shut off the water” to the fire hose’s nozzle. This means that it will try to entangle the United States and threaten to raise the specter of a dangerous regional war to such vast and imaginary dimensions — far beyond any which it actually possesses the power to execute — that it unnerves and manipulates the United Stares into imposing a ceasefire, thus saving Iran from Israel’s counteroffensive against it. There already are signs of this strategy being implemented as some of the Iranian regime’s proxy voices in the U.S. echo this, such as Vali Nasr on Monday (Sep 30).

Second, Iran fears its own people and needs to frighten them into somehow rallying around the regime. The incompetence and impotence exposed by its proxies and itself in recent weeks threaten a regime whose tyrannical survival depends on projecting internally against its own people a insurmountable image of terror and omnipotence. It needs somehow to rally a people that both despises and begins to lose fear of it. As such, the regime will seek to transform the Iran-Israel war into a part of a great Sunni-Shiite conflagration. It will likely even attack Sunni Gulf Arab states to provoke them to respond and thus to stimulate the existential fears Iranians all harbor in their every fiber of the Sunni Arab threat.

Third, for the same reason of trying in despair to rally their own population which loathes it, Iran’s regime will instigate ethnic divisions in its own country — potentially even with high-profile self-inflicted false flag terror attacks — in order to establish among its populace that the survival of the regime is the sole barrier to the nation’s descending into a bloody internal ethnic civil war.

It is in the American interest – indeed in the interest of Western civilization – that Israel be allowed to press its hard-fought advantages and be allowed now to gallop toward victory against the Iranian regime. Unfortunately, the current administration appears incapable of restraining itself from continually sabotaging Israel instead. Even so, Israel proceeds toward that victory, but more laboriously and turbulently than would otherwise be necessary if it had genuine US backing.

And yet, one caveat. Israel should do so in ways that avoid tapping either the Sunni card or the ethnic demon. Ironically, Israel’s attacking Iran as the representative of the Jewish people with which Persia and Iran has had a 2500 year history of alliance and amity – Cyrus returned the Jewish people from Babylonian exile to the Land of Israel and funded the reconstruction of the second Temple – purchases for Israel great popular Iranian support as the agent of their liberation from tyranny as long as it is not seen as doing so in service of Sunni Arabs or ethnic divide-and-conquer schemers.

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