The ICC and the ICJ Manage to Make Things Worse

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Intervening last week against Israel’s self-defense actions toward Iran and Hamas, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice made resolving the war harder.

The courts’ actions are fundamentally illegitimate, and their meddling portends further involvement, which could be even more unhelpful. Despite the troubles the ICC and ICJ are causing, Israel and its allies should not be dissuaded from destroying Hamas’s politico-military capabilities.

The United States is not a party to the ICC’s foundational treaty, having unsigned it in 2002. And over time, Washington has renounced the ICJ’s major jurisdictions, leaving only treaties where the court has never been invoked. Similarly, Israel never joined the ICC and has rejected ICJ jurisdiction on Gaza and West Bank matters. One immediate lesson for both countries is to withdraw completely from any remaining ICJ jurisdictions.

Although Israel is bearing the ICC and ICJ’s wrath for now, Jerusalem has long served as a canary in the coal mine for Washington, giving advance warning of pending threats America may experience later. Faced with Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy, implemented through attacks by Tehran’s terrorist proxies, Israel is acting in self-defense to eliminate Hamas as a fighting force.

Hamas’s barbaric policy of using Gaza’s civilian population as human shields, hoping to spare itself, has incalculably increased the inherent difficulties of urban combat. The terrorists believe that by sacrificing enough civilians, they can mobilize international pressure to stop Israel from achieving its objectives. Provoking investigations by the ICC’s rogue prosecutor and inducing international allies like South Africa to initiate ICJ cases, Hamas aims to increase the political pressure under ostensibly legal guises. Iran and its terrorist allies thereby seek to make Israelis feel increasingly isolated internationally and thereby pressure Jerusalem to back down.

Israelis should not fear being isolated for defending themselves. Who else will defend them if they do not? Jerusalem need not comply with political decrees by courts so illusory they cannot enforce their decisions. Indeed, scrutinizing the ICJ’s May 24 decision and its obtuse, international-legalese wording, Israel concluded it need not change its Gaza military operations. Although widely reported as ordering Israel to cease the Gaza offensive, the ICJ’s operative language actually demands only that Israel “halt its military offensive … which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Since Israel’s operations target Hamas, not all Palestinians, Israel sees its current approach as legitimate even by ICJ standards. That interpretation may sound Jesuitical, but it also demonstrates yet again why judicial intervention in wars is fanciful at best.

Unfortunately, however, the propaganda consequences look far different. Immediately after the ICC prosecutor announced he sought an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reporters asked German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s press spokesman if Germany would execute the warrant. The aide replied, “Of course. Yes, we abide by the law.” While Scholz himself later tried to soften the blow, the point had been made.

Propaganda by Iran, its terrorist surrogates, and its leftist supporters worldwide has outmatched Israel’s during this conflict, except for the weeks immediately after Hamas’s Oct. 7 barbarities. Undoubtedly, ICC and ICJ actions will now take center stage in that propaganda, fueled by each new utterance from The Hague.

But the problems are far deeper than mere public relations failures. In America, for example, university protests and surprising polling results show astounding support for Hamas, especially among younger voters. Faculty prejudices have obviously grown worse over time, even as baby boomer professors reach retirement age. Reform of faculty selection and tenure decisions, among other things, is essential in public and private universities alike. This means little near-term, but could be dispositive for the U.S.-Israel special relationship in the long term. In Europe, if anything, anti-Israeli sentiment and outright antisemitism are even worse.

In a perfect world, Israel’s information statecraft and that of its allies would have been more effective from the outset. Surprise attacks, however, do not give targets time to prepare in advance. Media coverage of the ICC and the ICJ has proven the urgent need to explain why their actions are illegitimate. The broader imperative is to explain more effectively, and with greater resources, why Israel is exercising its legitimate right of self-defense against Hamas and Iran.

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on May 29, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Repercussions of Raisi’s death

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President Ebrahim Raisi’s May 19 death in a helicopter crash has the potential to shatter Iran’s regime and the 1979 Islamic Revolution itself.  Raisi’s obviously unexpected demise was so unnerving and the stakes so high that we cannot yet fully discern the frantic maneuverings and vicious political infighting underway behind the scenes in Tehran.

The critical next step is the regime’s official, definitive statement on the cause of the helicopter crash.  So far, authorities have said only there was no evidence Raisi’s aircraft was attacked (https://apnews.com/article/iran-statement-helicopter-crash-raisi-a19ed365f5f4813c31b3d696acc0a6cb), and the investigation continues. This obviously incomplete explanation is likely intended to buy time and reduce destabilizing speculation, but it cannot be the final word.

Huge political consequences flow from whatever cause is ultimately chosen.  The reality was probably some combination of bad weather, mountainous terrain, pilot error or mechanical malfunction.  Former Foreign Minister Javaid Zarif quickly blamed US sanctions for the lack of spare parts, which is laughable.  Iran has earned hundreds of billions of dollars in international oil sales since Ronald Reagan imposed America’s first sanctions, enough to finance ballistic-missile and nuclear programs and arm countless terrorist groups.  Iran didn’t have enough money to buy new helicopters from its Russian and Chinese friends?

Beyond the obvious non-political causes, Iran could choose to blame the usual foreign suspects (Mossad, CIA) or domestic political, ethnic, or religious opponents.  Assignment of blame could thereby prefigure the leadership struggles already underway, which could explain the delay in saying anything conclusive.  When truth is manipulated, elaborate preparations are often required to destroy conflicting evidence and counterfeit new “evidence.”  Outsiders can only await the final word to assess its impact, if any, on the succession battle.  Meanwhile, in the hours and days after the first reports of the presidential helicopter’s “hard landing,” military and security forces have shored up their defenses against potential unrest or interference from domestic or foreign source (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/world/middleeast/iran-raisi-helicopter-crash.html).

The critical point is the need to select a new Supreme Leader, or at least devise a concrete process for that decision, sooner than anticipated.  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is approximately 85-years-old and in poor health.  With only two Supreme Leaders since the 1979 revolution, Iran has no established procedure regarding succession.  Many believe the rigged electoral process that brought Raisi to the presidency was intended to establish a more-stable line of succession, with Raisi seamlessly replacing Khamenei at the appropriate time.

Not everyone accepted this ploy, least of all Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, who aspires to fill his father’s shoes.  Ironically, the father’s own concerns about establishing a hereditary line of succession, a criticism forcefully made by Mojtaba’s opponents, likely helped propel the notion that the presidency could serve as a stepping stone.  With new presidential elections now set for June 28, it is questionable whether the victor will automatically have the clout to be a top-tier contender to be Supreme Leader.  That means, inevitably, that there could be a plethora of candidates and intense infighting in government circles well ahead of the Supreme Leader’s death, which is likely the only way he will relinquish his office. 

Avoiding uncertainty over the succession is precisely what the regime’s top religious, civil, and military leadership wanted, but it now seems unavoidable.  Widespread politicking, conniving, and worse will widen already-existing splits within Iran’s top leadership and open new ones.  Competing centers of power among the ayatollahs;  leaders in the government’s legislative and judicial branches;  and Revolutionary Guards and regular military commanders already exist or are developing quickly.  The longer the struggle proceeds, the more bitter, more intense, and more protracted it will become.

In terms of raw power, the Revolutionary Guards already constitute a force that can easily resist the weak structures of civil government and even the regular military.  Many characterized the now-deceased Quds Force leader, Qassem Soleimani, as almost a son to Ayatollah Khamenei, with influence far beyond what his official title conveyed.  Given the regime’s unprecedented unpopularity across Iran, because of economic troubles, the discontent of the young people, the outrage caused by Mahsa Amini’s murder eighteen months ago, and longstanding ethnic and religious tensions, the Revolutionary Guards truly are the only reliably loyal shield for the ayatollahs and other regime leaders.

But what if the IRGC fragments?  If Iran’s opposition can drive wedges between Revolutionary Guard leaders, or even within the conventional military, the regime’s near-monopoly of lethal force could be broken.  Disaffected ethnic groups like Kurds and Baluchis could join in as well, raising the prospect of internal clashes, perhaps rising to levels approximating civil war.

Historically, outwardly imposing authoritarian regimes, such as czarist Russia, have often been hollowed out internally long before they fell.  Confronted with determined opponents, they collapsed swiftly.  It is too soon to tell whether the ayatollahs will meet the same fate, but, without doubt, their revolution is now in grave jeopardy.

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on May 28, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Hamas is just a part of Iran’s multi-front war against Israel and the West

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Since Oct. 7, Hamas has been the tip of the spear in Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has not yet finished Hamas off militarily, largely because of intense White House pressure, now approaching a crescendo, not to do so.

But Iran has other options it can dial up, most worryingly Hezbollah, its most potent terrorist surrogate. The death of President Ebrahim Raisi, whatever its effects domestically in Iran, which may be significant, will not in the near term change the ayatollah’s regional aspirations or strategies.

Several recent developments have highlighted Tehran’s non-Hezbollah options, which, together or alone, pose significant risks for Israel, the United States and their allies. Whether Washington and Jerusalem are paying adequate attention is unclear. Biden seems intent on begging Tehran to resile from the “ring of fire,” as evidenced yet again last week. Iran has no reason to take these entreaties seriously.

Instead, Iran is actively recruiting local Palestinians in Jordan to aid Hezbollah and Hamas in destabilizing King Abdullah. Jordan was the second Arab country, after Egypt, to make peace with Israel, and its security and stability are vital interests for Jerusalem and Washington. Jordan’s fragile economy and endangered monarchy have over the years survived serious pressures, as during the Gulf Wars against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

The U.S. has important military facilities in Jordan and the at Tanf garrison in Syria, astride the Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian borders. Amman was critical in the war against ISIS, and has long defended itself from Iranian threats. King Abdullah first underscored the threat of an Iranian-led “Shia Crescent,” reaching from Iran through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean. In April, Jordan played a critical role against Iran’s missile and drone assault on Israel, downing dozens of drones and allowing Israeli and other friendly air forces to conduct operations in its airspace.

The worst-case scenario would be Jordain’s monarchy falling to Hamas or other pro-Iranian terrorists. A hostile regime in Amman, mobilizing Palestinians on both sides of the Jordan River, would be far more threatening to Israel than the current Gaza strife. Iran and its surrogates fully appreciate this vulnerability, which is why undermining King Abdullah is so attractive. Perhaps Israel, the U.S. and Gulf Arab states have significant measures underway to help steady Jordan’s monarchy and economy — but, if not, they should begin immediately.

Another little-noticed increased threat is the mounting pressure on Israeli targets by Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. Israeli officials decline to comment on these attacks, and so far most of the drones and missiles launched against Israel have apparently been intercepted. The militias have also struck sites in Jordan, most notably the U.S. base near at Tanf known as “Tower 22” in February, where three Americans were killed and dozens wounded. Washington’s retaliation against the militias and their Iranian patrons resulted in attacks on U.S. positions declining, and likely redirected their attention to Israel.

To date, the Shia militias’ direct threat to Israel has not been large, but the prospect exists for more sophisticated and more effective weapons aimed at both Israel and Jordan. At a minimum, these developments enhance Tehran’s tactical flexibility, increasing the overall strain on Israeli air-defense capabilities, and heightening risks to U.S. personnel and facilities. Strategically, utilizing the Shia militias outside their Iraq and Syria base areas increases the overall integration of “ring of fire” proxies to Iran’s advantage. Coordinating with Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and Syria’s conventional military strengthens the Shia Crescent threatening both Israel and Jordan.

Also receiving relatively sparse media attention are attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, which the State Department warns are “resulting in enormous impacts on international shipping.” The Iran-Houthi strategy to disrupt freedom of the seas is particularly noteworthy for how targeted it is, with attacks largely exempting Chinese and Russian carriers, concentrating instead on barring Israeli, American and European shippers.

Rising transportation costs and higher insurance rates for oil and other cargoes diverted around Africa have significantly increased prices in Europe, and have advantaged Russia and China, notwithstanding sanctions against Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The differential targeting of Houthi interdiction efforts not only signals Iranian control over Houthi operations, but the Beijing-Moscow alliance’s increasing importance in Middle Eastern affairs.

Moreover, Houthi attacks on U.S. and U.K. naval vessels and drones pose a direct challenge to Western military efforts to defeat the “ring of fire” strategy. Of course, American-led airstrikes have destroyed Iranian-supplied missile and radar capabilities used by Houthis in the Red Sea campaign, but the Biden administration’s retaliation has been quite limited.

The White House has made no effort to eliminate the Iranian-Houthi disruptive operations, nor has it considered the consequences of their discriminatory maritime targeting, which simply encourages the attacks to continue. Their tactics not only cause real economic damage, but are daily violating fundamental U.S. and Western interests in freedom of the seas. Impunity only encourages other global predators like China to think they too can disrupt freedom of the seas with only a minimal American response.

The Biden administration is seriously mistaken to believe the Middle East’s only real conflict is in Gaza. Hamas is but one part of a larger Iranian-led provocation. Our persistent failure to see the greater picture only invites more trouble.

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019 and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006. He held senior State Department posts in 1981-83, 1989-93 and 2001-2005.

This article was first published in The Hill on May 21, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

The West will soon pay for Biden’s betrayal

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Our global adversaries – China, Russia, Iran and its proxies – must be marvelling at their good fortune as President Joe Biden effectively endorses a terrorist veto over Israel’s right to self-defence.
The US President’s unprecedented open threat to withhold arms deliveries to Israel “if they go into Rafah”, and a State Department public report on Israeli conduct of the war, are self-inflicted wounds to a vital alliance. Israel has not yet publicly responded, but it faces critical choices over whether to proceed militarily in Rafah, or back down. Neither option is attractive given the potential consequences.
Biden’s stubbornness is wrong on many levels. First, close allies should always engage privately during wartime. Leaks undoubtedly occur, often intentionally, but preserving even minimal confidentiality is essential to later repairing damage done both at governmental and personal levels.
Piling on publicly in the middle of a war is imprudent, even juvenile, damaging the respect and trust allies must sustain during times of crisis and tension. The propaganda opportunities handed to hostile powers are immeasurable. And if Biden is prepared to cut loose one of America’s most valued partners, what does that foretell for those more-distant, less-favoured than Israel? How does Ukraine feel? Or Taiwan?  
Second, Biden’s motives are not so high-minded as he may have us believe. This is no profile in courage. Domestically, the US President is faring poorly in polls against Donald Trump, and defections to minor-party candidates could sink his re-election chances. In swing-state primaries like Michigan, large numbers of Democrats voted “uncommitted”, posing significant risks if they stay home in November. White House staffers have flagellated themselves to regain key Democratic blocks but they have so far failed. Elizabeth Warren, asserting Israel may be liable for “genocide” in Gaza, exemplifies the problem.
Ironically, while politics dominates Biden’s calculations, his gambit may backfire. Republicans uniformly rejected his approach, as did significant numbers of Democrats. Biden’s threat reflects weakness, coming just weeks after his frantic efforts to pressure Israel not to retaliate strongly after Iran’s missile-and-drone attack.  
The President’s supporters invoke Ronald Reagan’s withholding weapons when Israel struck Palestinians in Lebanon, but the two scenarios are entirely distinct. The US-Israel relation at that time was moral and historical, not strategic, as it is today. Indeed, Reagan later forged the Washington-Jerusalem strategic ties. Biden repeatedly pledged “ironclad support” for Israel after October 7, but subsequently swerved dramatically from that position.
Finally, and most importantly, the substance of Biden’s threat and the thoroughly unsatisfactory State Department report expose the administration as misguided and confused in ways that could haunt future US Presidents.
Close-quarters combat in complex urban environments, let alone in Hamas’s extraordinary network of underground tunnels, is something Western militaries prefer to avoid. Not surprisingly, the State’s report is incoherent and contradictory, doubtless reflecting anti-Israel sentiment in many Department bureaus, and schizophrenia within Biden Administration political ranks. The report lacks specificity, yet incomplete information is hard to assess without adequate context – which is why a fair and accurate reckoning would be most fruitful after the war, not while combat still rages.
The fact that civilians are present in combat areas requires that Israel, or any combatant, determine they are striking only military targets and that civilian casualties are no more than proportional to the importance of such targets. In Rafah, the IDF is seeking to eliminate Hamas’s highest command-and-control hierarchies and its remaining organised military units, all clearly legitimate objectives.
It is unacceptable that Israel may be prevented from achieving its legitimate self-defence goals because the terrorists are so barbaric as to sacrifice their own civilian population to save themselves. If that is what Biden means by saying he objects to Israel entering Rafah, then he is simply endorsing the terrorist veto. Yet it is Hamas that is morally culpable for Gazan civilian deaths, not Israel.  
We do not know what will unfold next, but the decisive choice now lies with Israel’s war cabinet. Biden’s ill-considered threat to cut the Jewish state loose will be at the centre of considerable debate. There is no debate, however, that Biden’s ploy will come back to haunt him, America, and all the West.
John Bolton is a former US National Security Advisor

This article was first published in the Daily Telegraph on May 12, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

What’s next between Iran and Israel?

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John Bolton writes for “Independent Arabia” about the outcome of the confrontation between Tehran and Tel Aviv and issues a very important warning of the next six months

The first batch of overt Iranian attacks on Israeli territory has now concluded, along with the Israeli response, which constituted the first public attack inside Iran. Yet no one should imagine that Tehran’s mullahs have abandoned their grand strategy of hegemony throughout the Middle East and among Muslims, nor that their long-term covert war against Israel will subside and recede. For now, however, the focus should be on Israel’s imminent efforts to eliminate Hamas militarily and politically, and counter the future of Iran’s “Ring of Fire” battle plan.

It remains unclear whether Iran intends Hamas to launch a full “ring of fire” strategy during its barbaric attack on October 7, 2023, and this may remain unknown for some time as well. Whatever Iran’s aims, Israel’s harsh response has crippled Hamas’s conventional combat capabilities. Moreover, Gazans have begun to turn against Hamas, which is crucial for Israel and the Arab world alike. Tehran undoubtedly misjudged Israel’s internal political stability and global aversion to the events of October 7, 2023, but it is likely that Supreme Leader Khamenei believed that Hamas could be left to its fate in any case. Still, he should be concerned about the devastation inflicted on Hamas, even though Iran itself and its other terrorist proxies (the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Iraqi and Syrian Shiitemilitias) have suffered little.

For now, Iran seems unwilling to risk losing more of these investments. The mullahs are likely to already recognize the Biden administration’s internal political weakness, as most Americans inevitably do. With the uncertainty that dominates Biden’s re-election, it may be justified and logical for Iranian ayatollahs to worry that any further attacks against Israel, directly or through allied terrorist groups, could trigger a strong U.S. response, at a time when Biden is trying to show support for Israel. The unexpected outcome of the U.S. election campaign, and what a second term for Trump might bring, may indicate a short-term pause on the Iranian side. Waiting for the fall of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government could also be a gift to Iran. No other Israeli leader understands the Iranian threat so clearly, or has Netanyahu’s determination that Israel does not fall prey to what his predecessor Ariel Sharon called a “nuclear holocaust.”

But whatever Iran prefers, it cannot ignore that a decisive Israeli victory against Hamas would irreparably weaken Tehran’s regional position. Israel is certainly not a receiver or merely responding, even if the Biden White House follows this approach. Indeed, Israel may then target Hezbollah’s vast missile stockpile and the quasi-existential threat it poses. If Israel believes that Iran fears enough of direct U.S. intervention, Jerusalem can take decisive action against Hezbollah’s arsenal without fear of major Iranian counterstrikes.

More importantly, the uncertainty surrounding the U.S. elections scheduled for Nov. 5 does not suggest a clear direction for Tehran. Despite Trump’s orders to assassinate Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Emmanuel Macron almost convinced Trump at the Group of Seven summit in Biarritz to meet with then-Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Thus, even with the Biden administration’s apparent weakness and indecision, Iran’s mullahs can decide to wait for Trump to come again and his limited understanding of America’s core national security interests. Refusing to undertake major new military initiatives before Nov. 5 would avoid exposing the Houthis, Hezbollah, Shiite militias, and even Iran itself to punitive attacks by Jerusalem or Washington.

In this context, too, Iran is taking into account its growing alignment and rapprochement with the fast-growing Sino-Russian axis, a contemporary version of the Sino-Soviet alliance during the Cold War, with Beijing as its largest partner and Moscow as its vassal. Iran sells Russia drones to use against Ukraine. China has increased its oil and gas purchases from Russia. Iran is facilitating Russia’s evasion of international financial sanctions and is considering whether to take a decisive step against Taiwan, possibly before the U.S. election, at a time when Beijing (and Moscow) are still unclear whether to wait until the U.S. election is decided, or to take major steps before that time, with both positive and negative points. The mere fact that this is the subject of heated debate during a fierce US presidential campaign at the partisan level is extremely dangerous and uncertain, a major complicating factor for Russia, China, and Iran.

Meanwhile, public coordination between Iran and other partners in the Beijing-Moscow axis, such as North Korea, has become more apparent. Iran and North Korea have long cooperated closely on nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, but in secret, for reasons that are not hidden. Abandoning any claims about their relations is a sign of increased confidence in these two proliferator rogue states. Unfortunately, America’s adversaries all know that Trump’s desire to make “big deals” with his country’s enemies can easily override any rational calculation of America’s national interests.

The most likely scenario for the next six months would be this: Israeli attacks would leave Hamas a crumbling terrorist network, Jerusalem would increase its campaign against suspected terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza, and tensions along the Lebanese border between Israel and Hezbollah would increase. As the Nov. 5 deadline approaches, and the outcome and the overall picture may become clear, Iran and its proxies will have to make their own decision on whether to take major military action, or wait until a new president is installed. No one thinks the next six months will be quiet.

This article was first published in the Independent Arabia on April 30, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Biden gave Iran yet another win by pressing Israel to go easy on the terrorist state

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With Israel facing overwhelming pressure from President Biden, its Friday retaliation against Iran was an exercise in minimalism. Jerusalem did cross one important Iranian red line, at whose mere mention the Biden administration has quailed. Bibi Netanyahu’s war cabinet authorized an overt attack against a target on the soil of Iran, which Israel had previously attacked only covertly. Point therefore made, albeit one that should have made many years ago.

Beyond that, there is little to celebrate. Jerusalem’s riposte to Tehran’s massive April 13-14 missile-and-drone attack on Israel has solved nothing else substantive. Iran continues closing its “ring of fire” around Israel, which will likely now refocus on finishing Hamas. It is frivolous to say, as some do, that Israel has established “escalation dominance” over Iran, having struck the first and last blows.

In fact, the parties exchanged a few glancing blows, with no material change in their capabilities. Nonetheless, there were winners and losers from the exchange. Consider these:

Biggest winner. Beyond dispute, Biden wears the largest smile, his administration having all but broken Netanyahu’s arm to force Israel’s limp reaction. The White House did not operate on a strategic plane here, except for demonstrating yet again its limitless deference to Iran. Instead, the administration was playing domestic American politics and achieved two potentially critical objectives. By saving Iran from a meaningful Israeli response, Biden has at least postponed the prospect of further increases in international oil prices and their inevitable consequence of increasing gasoline’s price at the pump in the United States. And Biden forestalled intensified criticism from progressive Democrats who oppose his Middle East policies (such as they are) and could sink his prospects in November merely by staying home in key states like Michigan and Nevada.

Second biggest winner. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his regime literally dodged the bullets that Israel never fired. The mullahs carefully watched Biden make Israel knuckle under, and they will not hesitate to exploit that lesson militarily and diplomatically as their ring-of-fire strategy continues unfolding. Their near-theological hold on Biden’s administration, as on Obama’s, continues to thrive, and Khamenei and his advisers sense the palpable political fear emanating from the White House. More than six months into the current war against “the little Satan,” Iran has still suffered no measurable damage on its home turf. In the psychological warfare contest with America, it is unfortunately Iran that has “escalation dominance.”

Biggest losers. The security of the American and Israeli peoples suffered the most. Biden muscled Israel’s war cabinet but bent his knee to our mutual adversaries in Iran, revealing by this unforced error crippling weakness in the White House. On one hand, he was dismayed by Israel’s successful April 1 attack in Damascus against leaders of Iran’s Quds Force. On the other, he asserted embarrassingly that just staying alive after Iran’s missile-and-drone barrage was an Israeli “win” requiring Jerusalem to rest on its laurels and not retaliate. Israel, however, is struggling to escape living under the gun of Iran and its terrorist proxies, not celebrate it. Our global adversaries, especially Moscow and Beijing, must have marveled at Biden’s sophistry, which sadly rises to the level of Lenin’s scorn for “useful idiots.”

And the basis of Biden’s overconfidence may well be wrong. Israeli and US missile defenses were not as fully tested as first thought. Largely unnoticed, The Wall Street Journal and CBS reported that half of Iran’s 120 ballistic missiles failed, either at liftoff or before being shot down. If true, out of 320 Iranian projectiles, Israel’s missile defenses faced only around 60 ballistic missiles, plus 30 cruise missiles and 170 much-slower drones.

Iran’s failures do not detract from Israel’s missile-defense successes, including Jordanian and Saudi participation. They do, however, underscore that if Iran launches more properly functioning missiles next time, we may not be so successful. And the irony is heavy. Biden strongly opposed George W. Bush’s 2002 withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which opened the floodgates of knowledge on all types of missile defenses, bearing fruit today.

Washington is reportedly readying sanctions against an Israeli army battalion for alleged human-rights violations. If true, this news reveals Joe Biden’s real direction. So much for restraint.

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Donald Trump, 2018-19, and US ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06.

This article was first published in the New York Post on April 21, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

On Majnouns, Gorillas and Devouring Chess Kings

By Dave Wurmser Ph.D.

Israel’s position in Gaza had been under immense pressure from the United States on several fronts.  The US was pressing for expansion of humanitarian aid, even though there was a four-fold increase in food truck delivery into Gaza over comparable periods before the war (about 4kg of food per person per day this week). The US was also pushing Israel to abandon large-scale operations, deploy defensively and employ targeted operations only. It asked that Israel show immense flexibility on the ceasefire-hostage talks and to avoid any real military actions during Ramadan. The US also asked Israel to take off the table any plan to take Rafiah, the last remaining stronghold of Hamas – a request that essentially would leave Hamas to survive as the ruler of a rump-Gaza entity. The impossibility of these demands created pressure – described by some Israelis as perhaps the greatest rupture in US-Israeli relations since Israel’s founding.  

Israel redeploys in Gaza

And then suddenly, on April 9, Israel shifted its position, essentially folding on all counts except for the insistence that Rafiah will still be taken, but not quite yet.  Essentially, Israel on the surface yielded on the ceasefire-hostage talks, on the humanitarian supply, and on defense redeployment. It appeared as if Israel handed the United States the keys to the car.

It certainly seemed that way to Hizballah and Iran. Hizballah crowed that the end of the war was nigh and that Israel had been defeated.  Iran, emboldened by what it saw as the American ability to leash its ally tightly, felt it could strike Israel – or even to threaten to strike Israel – and the United States would panic, Israelis would lose their nerve, and Iran would with impunity score a big psychological victory and perhaps a military victory without a major Israeli response.  

Certainly, the popular mood in Israel was indeed anxious over the Gaza redployment.  It remains a consensus that the US positions, if accepted, amounted to an Israeli defeat. That was clear, but had Israel’s government too lost its will, as it might seem, to continue the draining argument with its most important ally on the eve of what seemed to be the most dangerous phase of the war as it threatened to spread to the north of Israel, regionally and perhaps even with Iran itself.

There is no denying that there has been a dramatic change in Gaza. But why? 

Reset and Resequencing

What we may be seeing is a strategic reset, or rather a strategic resequencing.  Israel has fought the war over the last six months as an extension of the October 7 attacks itself.  In other words, Israel fought to defeat the invader and to try to free the hostages, ultimately to create a new reality in Gaza that guarantees no more October 7th’s will happen.  But this “Gaza first” was reactive.  The nature of the war was dictated by Hamas, and now that Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) organizations themselves admit that one of the generals Israel assassinated in Damascus last week was the operational mastermind planning the attack, it is clear that it was the war Iran had chosen for Israel that it must fight. 

But Hamas has been whittled down, not entirely but enough that the final push can be deferred a few weeks.  To be clear, both fundamental strategic considerations as well as public opinion in the population create certainty that it will still happen, but the sequencing changed. The goals Israel set– to destroy Hamas’ operations capacity and ensure it rules over nobody and no territory — were both correct and uncompromisable. But for the moment, as Iran weighs its response to Israel’s strike on its IRGC conclave in Damascus that killed so many top officials, and as Hizballah and Israel slowly escalate along the Israeli-Lebanese border, Gaza has become a temporary sideshow.  

It is all now about Iran itself and the potential for an attack on Israel from Iran, though NOT from Iranian territory itself.  The head of the octopus is about to act, not just its tentacles.

The Biden team the nuisance

On this, Israel is alone.  While mystifying, the United States could continue in its delusion that somehow Iran does not control its proxies.  It is some sort of extension of a longer-term delusion that explains away Iran’s most dangerous behaviors as the actions of mythological “wildcat hardliners” throughout the life of the Iranian revolutionary regime.  It was a convenient delusion since it ultimately not only fails to hold Iran to account, but actually establishes a framework for inaction (“it would validate hardliners”). 

But the American “support” promised is really a poisoned chalice.  Indeed, as the threats mounted, the administration behind the scenes was trying to signal Iran that its strike should not be so “inappropriate” as to trigger a direct Israeli response onto Iran as CENTCOM officials said.  The United States embassy in Jerusalem also signaled its citizens on April 12 to stay away from the periphery land of Israel – clearly another message to Tehran that an attack on Tel Aviv – as opposed to peripheral communities in Israel – would be seen as inappropriate and could trigger such a withering Israeli response.  Also, Axios reporter Barak Ravid – who serves as the mouthpiece for the Biden administration to Israeli audiences – reported on April 13 that Untied States had “asked Israel to notify the U.S. ahead of any retaliation against Iran and for the US to have a say before decisions are made.”  

The Biden administration clearly is more worried about an Israeli retaliation to an Iranian strike than they are about the strike itself.  It seeks to run interference to avoid a decisive Israeli action against Iran – in fear of the collapse of its twin-pillared paradigm (advancing a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue and seeking a strategic regional condominium with the Islamic Revolutionary Regime of Iran) – which in effect serves to save Hamas and Iran from defeat. But the U.S. loss of nerve and its attempts to leash its ally, Israel, run against the underlying realities of the situation and will fail.  

The character of the Iranian regime’s strategy is to manipulate rather than fight, given its inherent weaknesses and great vulnerabilities. To do so, it employs disinformation, especially disinformation that stimulates Western concepts that serve their interests.  So, it taps into the fear of apocalyptic escalation which has always been employed by Tehran to deter the United States from taking actions against them, and lately to deter the United States from responding meaningfully to its regional rampages. The apocalyptic messaging from Tehran thus is likely to frighten the United States into restraining Israel in its responses to some form of Iranian attack (including by its proxies) and to further incite tensions between Jerusalem and Washington. Thus, the more Tehran observes the rupture in US-Israeli relations, the more emboldened it feels to act against Israel even more aggressively and dangerously via its proxies.

Shahrazade, gorillas and Majnouns

But this reality is reaching its turning point.  Ever since October 7th, Iran has been the grand puppeteer of its proxies, managing and directing the show across the region. Israel has reacted; which is a position in which one can win only with immense difficulty.  As noted, Iran – the civilization that gave the world chess – is the master chess player.  And in chess, the side that has a plan and orchestrates the board to force the opponent into constant reaction wins.  An Iranian dissident, Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, once told me that when strategically parrying with the regime in Iran, one must remember that one is playing chess with a gorilla.  When he starts to lose, he will simply lean over, and either grab your king and eat it, or just overturn the board.  Either way, all rules are off and you sit for a moment paralyzed collecting yourself and measuring the circumstances as you digest what happened.  In that moment of unpredictability, the gorilla has reset the rules and is back in control.  To win against the Ayatollahs – who carefully move their pieces, manipulate and at times overturn the board – Tehran’s adversary must himself become the gorilla.  Or perhaps to shift metaphors to a regional cultural context, Iran’s adversary must act as if it allowed the Jinn (Genies) to possess one’s soul, which serves as the crazed extension of the Jinn’s insanity (Janana). The possessed becomes a “Majnoun” – a crazed and dangerous loose cannon. Whether gorilla or Majnoun, Iran’s opponent must leave Iran paralyzed in fear derived from its appreciation that its strategy of manipulation has failed because it depends on the opponent’s predictability, which is suddenly gone.  

Power itself does not frighten Iran since it sees real power in strategy and manipulation, not hardware.  This is the land that brought us Shehrazade and A 1001 Nights.  The cycle is not about adventures and eroticism – though there is much—but those are merely vehicles to seize the imagination and captivate the audience. Neither is it about the cycle’s attention-deficit-disorder arrangement of tales, where one is started but not finished and then another and another, nor even the onion-like wrapping of everything where the tales are eventually finished one by one after they all were started.  The main theme of the cycle is that the most abject creature manifesting weakness itself in this tale – a woman condemned to death by a misogynist king for the next dawn – slowly uses her tales not only to buy time, but to slowly seize the soul of King Shahriyar, and in so doing, reawakens his humanity, empathy and capability for love. She controls her environment through the seduction of the story telling, but the aim is that the symbol of weakness controls and triumphs over the soul of the symbol of absolute power.  

Again, power does not frighten Iran.  In contrast, loosing control of the situation does terrorize and paralyze Iran since it denies it the ability to be Shahrazad, to manipulate its weakness into domination of the soul of the absolute power. 

Israel has an opportunity to respond to Iran with the understanding that this may be its one chance to retake the regional strategic initiative and turn the region’s strategic momentum against Iran and place it in Israel’s hands. Israel has both the opportunity and the imperative to be the gorilla, to allow the Jinn to take over its body and “go crazy” (Majnoun).

Iran’s Hobson’s choice; trapped and no way out

In this context, one must remember how vulnerable Iran actually is. In terms of power, they are weaker, but they are the master no less than Shahrazad of the phycological strategy of manipulation.

Just the mere threat of an Israeli reaction has tanked Iran’s currency and caused a bank-run. But Israel has laid a trap – clearly accidentally since the strike on the Iranian generals’ conclave appears to have been more an extension of the war being waged to destroy Hamas and degrade Hizballah and not a move imagined in the context of a regional war.  Whether intentional or not, though, it has placed Iran in the impossible position of having to react to Israel rather than be the one pulling the strings that forces Israel to react.  Moreover, it would be even more out of character than allowing itself to be forced to react to respond from its territory directly into Israel.  And yet, the internal pressures on the regime are mounting to something substantial:

  • Some IRGC types have long argued that timidity is the greatest threat, and that divine intervention leading to the great victory and return of the Imam will come only in the framework of resolute will. In this respect, there was two years ago a poster in Iran of Musa (Moses) berating his generals for timidity in the face of the threat of Pharoah’s army, and that salvation comes only by Musa’s resolute rejection of the timid, cautious path.
  • The regime banks on an image of toughness and terror. Not responding tarnishes that and threatens the regime.
  • Iranians have in recent months laughed and ridiculed their leadership for its big talk and small action in the war. These episodes of ridicule are now exploding like a volcano in the absence of a response.
  • The belief that escalation might so freak out Washington that it could lead Washington in fear to support a universal (Hamas and Hizballah) UN Security Council ceasefire resolution that may be Chapter 7, which would leave Hamas in place and Hizballah unaddressed. This is not an unrealistic expectation, by the way.

And yet, the bottom line remains unchanged:

  • ⁠Iran’s being reactive in response violates Iranian strategic character. They play chess and pride themselves that the essence of their strategy is anchored to manipulation over their adversary. Manipulative control not only is effective, but nourishes a sense of intellectual and spiritual superiority. In chess, if you are forced into a reactive game, you lost. You have to set the agenda and force the opponent into reaction. As such, Iran fears this is a chess-like trap set by Israel that they must avoid falling into, and instead of impulsively reacting, must do something unexpected that restores to them manipulative control of events.
  • Iran could launch a large number of long-range missiles, but few if any will get through due to the Arrow missile defense. That itself could be a humiliation.
  • Israel’s response could be withering directly back onto Iran, and could involve critical economic targets (ports, refineries), regime targets that can encourage opposition revolt (IRGC headquarters, Basiji HQ etc. , take out the drone and missile factories upon which not only Iran, but its proxies and Russia rely, and of course the nuclear program.
  • Israel would likely destroy Hizballah, leaving Iran without its terror-hub proxy.
  • Iranians would die, which would incur wrath against the regime for bringing this down on them.

Overall, this limits the chances of any response directly from Iran’s territory which could expose the limits and vulnerabilities of Iran’s power.

But inaction also humiliates.  The public ridicule the regime faces for its lack of reaction can be fatal.  So Tehran now finds itself in an impossible Hobson’s choice, and will be forced with a substantial degree of seriousness to react – bad as reacting rather than acting is – in hopes that it can then proceed to slowly regain its control as the grand puppeteer.

Israel’s golden opportunity

But how Israel responds to Iran at this point is perhaps the most important event of this war – and perhaps the most important event in the region in decades. 

Iran has severe weaknesses. The same way as Shahrazad maneuvered, Iran has no alternative but to leverage its position through manipulation and bravado in order to maneuver the enemy from strength into weakness. To be manipulative, it needs to control the regional environment. It needs predictable opponents. If Israel uses any Iranian action as a pretext to turn this war directly into Tehran, to become the gorilla in the room, then this becomes something the Iranians cannot handle.

As such, Israel has for the next few weeks the opportunity to move from the local (Gaza, even Lebanon) to the strategic (Iran itself) by Jerusalem’s becoming the gorilla or Majnoun, or even worse, the Majnoun-gorilla. Israel thus faces that moment in which it has the opportunity to hit the strategic reset button and take control over strategic initiative in the region. 

In this context, continuing a public spat with the United States over what is for the next few weeks the strategic sideshow, simply had to be shut down and deferred until the proverbial bigger fish is fried. Moreover, the one aspect of Gaza that Israel cannot defer however is the attempt to save as many hostages as possible.  So Jerusalem essentially used the strategic reduction of importance for the moment of the Gaza front and threw to the United States control over the hostage-for-ceasefire talks to both leave no stone unturned in bringing the poor souls home, as well as to buy in much bigger support – or maybe even to preoccupy Washington as a diversion — when it really matters right now given what may happen with Iran.

In the long run, Israel simply cannot win the war thrust upon it in Gaza on October 7 without going all the way on Rafiah and maintaining stabilizing operations through occupation for quite some time (including keeping the north of Gaza largely empty and buffer zones all around), but the sequence of Gaza first, then Hizballah and eventually Iran has been upturned.

For the moment, Israel must become the Majnoun-gorilla.

How Israel, with US backing, should respond to Iran’s attack

President Joe Biden and his advisers bear significant responsibility for Iran’s massive Saturday attack on Israel, consisting of more than 300 drones and ballistic or cruise missiles. Before, during, and after Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7 assault on the Jewish state, his administration refused to acknowledge Tehran’s “ring of fire” strategy, conducted through terrorists such as Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. The White House signaled both obliviousness and weakness by not recognizing that today’s Middle East conflict is not Palestinians or Arabs against Israel, but an Iranian war against “the little Satan.”

Instead, Biden saw only separate threats, constantly whining about risking a “wider war,” and blind to the reality that the wider war started on Oct. 7. Prior to Saturday’s attack, he remained blind, pursuing a Gaza ceasefire that had become unreachable, and that would have achieved nothing strategically significant.

Biden, administration officials, and key congressional Democrats also unleashed a flood of abuse against Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for example, in an unprecedented public lecture to a U.S. ally, called for new Israeli elections, hoping to oust Netanyahu’s government. Having earlier called Israel’s bombing in Gaza “indiscriminate,” which would make Israel’s offensive a war crime if true, Biden quickly seconded Schumer’s hostility, describing Netanyahu’s approach to the Gaza battle as a “mistake.” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) rightly pegged the real motivations for Biden’s and Schumer’s whining about Netanyahu: fear of the Democratic Party’s anti-Israel left wing.

By contrast, Israel immediately understood that Iran was the hidden hand behind Oct. 7. Jerusalem’s April 1 strike against top Quds Force officers in Damascus was important in its continuing defensive military response.

And, ironically, Iran was also clear-eyed about the stakes between itself and Israel, a rare point of agreement. Having now launched drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles against Israel from Iranian territory, the ayatollahs surely expect Jerusalem to respond.

What is difficult to explain, however, is Iran’s delay in retaliating for Israel’s Damascus strike. If the ayatollahs considered doing very little, hoping to avoid potentially devasting retaliation on Iranian targets, that option was obviously rejected. Was there divisive internal debate about Iran’s response? Or was the delay merely because of preparations and other operational factors? Answers to many of these questions remain unknowable, but could have strategic significance in coming days.

The sad truth is that Israeli and U.S. deterrence against Iran failed. Proportionality, diplomacy, “messaging,” and academic game theory all came to naught. Israel must now respond, hopefully with complete American backing, and that response must not be “proportionate.” It should be decidedly disproportionate, thereby being unmistakably clear to Tehran that, if it ever attacks again, it will face far higher costs than any imaginable pain it might impose on Israel.

Jerusalem’s response could begin immediately, even while the defense of Israel and relief and rescue operations remain underway.

To start, Israel should destroy Iran’s air defenses, to facilitate its retaliation now and well into the future, with targets including anti-aircraft artillery and missiles, radars, and their associated command-and-control facilities. A broader target set could include the central and regional headquarters for Iran’s conventional military forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, particularly the Quds Force, which controls relations with Iran’s terrorist proxies. Degrading Iran’s conventional military capabilities, especially the launch sites for Saturday’s attack, would substantially reduce its ability to intimidate its neighbors, especially the oil-producing Gulf Arab states, and its capacity to arm and supply its regional terrorist proxies.

Further up the prospective target list is Iran’s oil-and-gas-producing infrastructure: the oil-and-gas fields, refining and processing facilities, domestic distribution pipelines and terminals, and the hydrocarbon export ports and related facilities. Obviously, paralyzing Iran’s principal source of wealth, both in terms of foreign income and domestic industry and daily life, would severely impede Iran’s belligerence.

At the highest end of potential targets are Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. The uranium-conversion and uranium-enrichment programs and the weaponization work at Iranian military bases pose varying degrees of difficulty to destroy, particularly for Israel, but Netanyahu has long focused on the dangers to Israel from Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Netanyahu knows better than anyone that, while none of the missiles launched so far have been nuclear-armed, the real risk is what happens next time. Having now attacked Israeli territory from Iran once, not relying on its terrorist surrogates, Iran has shown itself fully capable of doing so again whenever it chooses.

Israel is at risk that the next salvo of ballistic missiles will carry nuclear warheads. Netanyahu could roll the dice and hope they don’t, but he knows that the threat of what his predecessor Ariel Sharon once called a “nuclear holocaust” is closer to reality than ever before. Israel would be entirely justified in removing that threat, and the United States should fully support such a decision.

John Bolton served as national security adviser to then-President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019. Between 2005 and 2006, he served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

This article was first published in The Washington Examiner on April 14, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Progressive Neo-Colonialism and Israel’s Second War of Independence

By Dave Wurmser, Ph.D

Israel is poised to enter Rafiah in Gaza and the adjacent “Philadelphia” corridor bordering Egypt to destroy the remainder of Hamas’ organized forces in Gaza and begin to establish security control over the whole salient.  In a desperate attempt to convince Israel yet again to desist from doing this, the Biden administration now proposes to establish a joint-Israeli military command.  While this alone ushers in battalions of problems, the most disturbing aspect of this is the trend it represents of trying to Americanize the Gaza conflict – increasingly as a neutral between the IDF and Hamas – with increasing US involvement.  This follows the establishing of an American port, and reports that the US has started budgeting a plan for a “peacekeeping force” to be deployed to Gaza. The logic of this leads to one place, even though it is not yet fully conceived as US policy or not yet ready to be unveiled: in order to prioritize avoiding further damage to the Gazan population, the US injects itself, perhaps even its own forces, as a buffer between them and Israel ostensibly to ordinate with the latter but really to protect the former from the latter.

The determination in Washington to wring from Israel’s hands its agency originates not only in a measure of policy despair arising from Israel’s determination to proceed to victory rather than begin to wind down.  It emerges from an increasing embrace of a domineering progressivism willing to pursue a neo-colonial annulling of Israeli sovereignty to advance a paradigm fundamentally at odds with the world of concepts that Israel now labors in the post-October 7 world. 

It will fail not only because Israel is so determined, but because the October 6 paradigms the administration holds are detached from reality, and because the increasingly progressive aims of the administration are unaligned with American values and culture.

A clash of paradigms

Since October 6, Israel has two critical strategic objectives in Gaza: to return the hostages and to ensure that another October 7-like attack will never happen again. Both aims emanate from the most rudimentary function of government: to secure its citizens. 

The United States rhetorically agrees, but it hopes to attain these two goals by advancing the very same paradigms that governed Israel until October 6 and catastrophically failed: grant Palestinians every carrot possible to ease their hatred and build up their investment in maintaining calm.  In doing so, Washington thus hopes (and still does) to diminish the grievance fueling the rage animating Palestinian life and establish a deterrent to discourage departure from that paradigm. But Washington also frames this paradigm in the context of another: addressing the Palestinian problem insulates it from regional political forces and thus denies the region’s radicals the premier issue that galvanizes their following.  Moreover, a regional condominium to secure regional calm can be reached with the region’s premier challenger, Iran. Thus, Washington believed in two paradigms: 

  • a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem – which was a question of Palestinian need for self-governance and borders, not Israel’s existence — was essential, viable and would finally grant Israel its peace; and 
  • Iran could be reasoned with enough to reach a regional condominium to secure regional stability, if even at the cost of a modicum of accommodation of Iranian strategic objectives.

Beyond this more traditional but sadly flawed views of the problem, a rising progressive impulse grips the administration. Progressives hold that the violence of the American system and culture inherent to its slave-trade dominated founding perpetuates itself dressed deceptively in the clothes of freedom to perpetuate the aims of subjugation. Thus, the roots of Western political structure must be destroyed and replaced, not only its form adjusted. In foreign policy, this is paralleled by the idea that the inherent violence of colonialism perpetuates itself in the clothes of international order and sovereignty to preserve it subjugation. Thus, the roots of the international system must be fundamentally changed and “colonial” states dismantled and replaced. Israel as a colonialist state is thus the cause, the symbol and the poster-child of evil, and thus its very existence governs feverish levels of progressive fury born of the certainty of righteousness.

The Biden administration deepened its attachment after October 7 to the first two pre-October 6 paradigms, but it now also allows the third paradigm, the progressive rejection of the liberal West, to consume traditional American affinity with Israel. 

And yet, the vast majority of Israelis reject not only the progressive paradigm and the national suicide it requires, but also the first two paradigms.  Those in the governing coalition as well as even some parties out of it (Like Lieberman’s Israel Beiteynu), are post-paradigm collapse – all pre-October 6 paradigms, not just one.  Not only did the governing coalition in Jerusalem, but Israelis as a whole realize that Iran’s regime is entering a new phase of going in for final encirclement, strangulation and destruction of Israel, and thus no paradigm of arrangement or understanding can in any way be reached with Tehran’s tyranny, it also learned that the two-state paradigm was a fatal mirage.  Along the way, a flurry of underlaying assumptions collapsed:

  • Entrusting its security in any way to another force – either by subcontracting control over the area to that force or by trying to deter that force into behavior – failed catastrophically; 
  • Technology and qualitative military superiority can supplement manpower, territory, will, vigilance and fidelity to belief in the righteousness of Israel’s cause, but it can never replace them; 
  • Any Palestinian political entity will mobilize all aspects of Palestinian life and society with one purpose in mind: to advance the immutable goal of destroying Israel. Not only Hamas, but the PLO as well continue to understand Palestinian nationalism as the annulment of Jewish national identity and rights, and thus any power or sovereign benefit they secure is weaponized as part of a strategy to carry the aspiration of destruction of the annulled Jewish identity forward; 
  • Disdain and contempt, not grievance and despair, animate Palestinian rage.  The more the grievance was answered and the more despair was allayed, the deeper Palestinian contempt of Israel grew and the more deadly, relentless, and enflamed the violence against not only Israel, but the Jewish people and the very concept of Judaism itself, became;
  • Displaying a conciliatory nature did not purchase global credit to be redeemed as an insurance policy to address the consequences of the failed conciliation;
  • The Palestinian issue continued being the vehicle for both preserving and expressing regional and global pathologies; 
  • Feeding Palestinian aspirations nourishes and preserves rather than diminishes their use – as it had been intended by the Soviets — as part of a global assault (progressive or Islamist) on the West; 
  • Similarly, feeding Palestinian aspirations invigorated the Islamist imperative to finish Muhammad’s massacre of the Jews of Khaybar and eliminate all remaining Jews;
  • Obtaining Arab acquiescence in Israel’s existence failed to make Israel a normal nation and the Jews a normal people like any other and thus failed to retire once and for all history’s oldest ideology: Jew-hatred. Despite the profound hope to the contrary, the line recited every Passover that “in every generation there will arise those who will finish us off” cannot be omitted, and the imperative of remembering and vanquishing Amalek (the paradigm of those who seek our destruction) can never safely be forgotten; 
  • All Jews, not only Israelis, were under attack in an all-hands on deck moment on and since October 7; and finally,
  • The idea of “never again” demands payment through the steep cost of sacrifice and bravery of each new generation of Jews.

All the ideas and assumptions – both paradigms — that had commanded broad-based Israeli confidence and seized the obsession of Western foreign policy elites until October 6 were as mangled and destroyed among Israelis as the Israeli victims were themselves physically on October 7. 

And yet, both these paradigms and their series of underlying assumptions are being salvaged and re-sold to the Israelis to convince them to revert to an October 6 mindset. And all are rejected profoundly by Israelis who see each of them as folly that will lead to their destruction.

The result is that Jerusalem and Washington now live in different conceptual galaxies separated by unbridgeable space. No diplomacy or persuasion can bridge that gap. Israel is not acting out of ideology, policy preference or academic conflict-resolution theory. It forged its new paradigm primordially by the screams, blood and tears suffered by Jews as they had not suffered on any day since the gas chambers in Auschwitz, Dachau and other factories of death were destroyed on the last days of the Holocaust.  A cornered person facing a stark choice of death or resistance is not able to negotiate the terms in which he surrenders his life.  Neither is Israel. 

Across the seas, the Biden administration understands it cannot convince Israel – not only the government, but the vast majority of Israelis – of preserving the two previously-shared paradigms. And yet, it is unwilling to reconsider and travel with the Israelis in parallel and revisit its two paradigms either. Moreover, in addition to these two original paradigms, the Biden administration – and certainly many of its most influential staffers – appears increasingly motivated by ideology and creeping progressive neo-imperialism born of race-based “decolonization” ideology. In this progressive world view, Israel was invaded unprovoked, but its very existence is a provocative colonialist offense. Israeli women were raped, but rape is a Cri de Coeur of a desperate resistance. Babies were beheaded, but babies are settlers too and future oppressive soldiers. 

And thus, unable to shed its first two informing paradigms, and dangerously drifting toward a progressive outlook, the administration and its progressive camp in Washington seeks to use every lever of power to wring from Israel’s hands any agency and divert it toward an end it is determined to reject.  And while it is not unfolding along the pattern of the colonial invasions of old, the direction is relentless – to reduce Israel to a pliable vassal. For progressives, like their Bolshevik ancestors, power is an instrument to be used, not a device to be feared, to force a revolutionary idea into dominance. And the more progressive the Biden administration becomes, the more it displays these traits of tyranny and predation.

Who will prevail?

To consider which collection of paradigms – Israel’s or the increasingly progressive Biden administration’s — will prevail, one has to examine the stakes each possesses in vindicating its understanding.

In terms of the first two paradigms – the two-state solution and the condominium with Iran – failure is inevitable since both are paradigms anchored to a perception of reality that collapsed on October 7.  Moreover, Israel’s determination to survive is stronger than any foreign nation’s policy preferences.  

The  rising progressive dominance in the administration, however, is more complex. For progressives, the battle against not only Israel, but Judaism itself is one of ideological dominance and survival. The hatred of Jews – being an inextricable part of the Judeo-Christian philosophical culture that gave birth to America – let alone its anti-Zionist component, has become the vessel of all Western ideological pathologies to attack the idea of America. Thus, it cannot be surrendered any more than can the entire political edifice of progressivism.  It is truly the saloon in the old West; no town is big enough for both progressives and Jews, let alone Zionism.  This is undoubtedly a formidable, indeed twilight struggle of sorts.

And yet, the nature of Israeli sentiment is not only equally determined, but more so because it is not irreducible – it is fighting its second War of Independence – but personal.  Four millennia of stubborn Jewish survival will not end here. But it will prevail also because it emanates from the same sources of the American revolution: the impulse toward freedom by a people with a strong sense of independence.  When Menachem Begin declared the revolt against the British in the darkness of World War II, he quoted Patrick Henry’s famous speech, ending it with the cry for liberty at all costs – and thus he called his movement by the Hebrew word for “liberty,” Herut.  

The roots of a combined quest and destiny of freedom between the Jewish people and the American enterprise reach much further back, even further back than the frequent Biblical references of Abraham Lincoln. They reach back to the foundation of a unique American culture and are enshrined in the exchange of letters between Rabbi Moses Seixas of Newport (Touro Synagogue) and general Washington in 1790.  Rabbi Seixas, hoping to secure equal rights of participation in the American experiment of freedom, wrote to General George Washington: 

Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People — a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance — but generously affording to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine:

Rabbi Seixas here sets out a doctrine of freedom that defines America as a whole, not just its policy toward the Jews. The status of the Jews in the new country is seen to be the vehicle for establishing this doctrine of freedom, and a bellwether of its implementation.  In true Abrahamic tradition, Seixas suggests, the nation that treats its Jews well is guaranteed to thrive, and the ones that do not, are seen as doomed.

But what was the weld that fuses the American and Jewish story of freedom? Note that Rabbi Seixas attaches the word “generously affording to all” when asking that Jews be allowed the rights others will have. 

General Washington repeated those words in strikingly similar phrases back to Rabbi Seixas in his response:

All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.  It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Washington’s repetition of phrases not only validated Seixas’ words as is his own – but he made a marked change in words from Seixas’ phrase — “generously afforded” — to his own “all possess alike.” This change captured his intent to frame the Jewish question not as a governmental policy or preference – man-made granted reights — but as part of the overall inalienable, inherent right that all men are endowed by their creator at Mount Moriah, which echoed the declaration of independence’s “We are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.”  In other words, Washington deliberately intertwined the Jewish story in America with the American story of freedom. 

And it was thus through his answer to the Jews, and through his vision for the rights of the Jewish community then that he enunciated a much broader, foundational doctrine of tolerance and non-sectarian, and yet faith-based (rights endowed by our creator—inherently possesses, not generously granted) foundation and vision of America. The nation’s treatment of Jews was fused with the foundational idea of the very independence of the nation. And the treatment of Jews profoundly reflectes the health, power and survival of America and its central founding idea.

In short, from day one, and frankly all the way back to the earliest colonists, the American vision of itself was never distant from the Jewish question and the emergence of the vision of the US as the new Jerusalem.  It is what led the Steinbeck family to come to Palestine and try to set up an agricultural commune – only to be destroyed by the Ottomans.  It was what led Abraham Lincoln to contemplate raising an army of Jews to liberate Palestine and reestablish Israel.  And it was what led Mark Twain to say that the Holy land should be returned to the ownership of the Jews since only they seemed to have a spiritual attachment to it and ever did anything productive with it.

And so too now.  Standing with Israel during its Second War of Independence at this moment is not only a foreign policy preference, but it is intertwined with the test of our lifetime of our own land. And as long as America remains true to the founding ideals of America and reaffirms its grasp of the nation’s mettle and essence, thus will the progressive challenge fail in America and so too will its advocacy to turn hostile to Israel fail as well.

Confront Iran now, before it is too late

History will record Biden’s obsessive efforts to negotiate with the ayatollahs as one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds

The Middle East is tense, with Iran considering its response to Israel’s April 1 elimination of high-ranking Quds Force officers, and a possibly decisive Israeli attack in Rafah against Hamas terrorists pending. Commentary reverberates with worries about “escalation” and “wider war”, as if Hamas’s October 7 barbarity was not escalation enough, or Iran’s mandate to Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraq’s Shia militias thereafter is not already a wider war. 

Tehran’s ayatollahs have two overarching objectives: hegemony in the region and hegemony within Islam. Under its publicly declared “ring of fire” strategy, the brainchild of now-deceased Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, Iran is now assaulting Israel. The “ring of fire” embodies Iran’s indirect efforts through belligerent terrorist proxies, combined with its own military forces, against Israel (and, not often mentioned, against Gulf Arab states). 

Israel’s pounding of Hamas means things are not going well for Iran, but the decisive strategic decisions, in both Jerusalem and Tehran, still lie ahead. 

Most likely to occur first, and strategically more important, is Iran’s answer to Israel’s strike against its Damascus embassy. Whether embassy territory is “sovereign” varies, but international conventions provide that diplomatic premises are “inviolable,” at least to the receiving state. Common sense, however, tells us that, like churches or hospitals, diplomatic premises lose any protected status if used for military purposes, and it is clear that Iran’s Damascus embassy is essentially a Quds force headquarters. 

Nonetheless, Israel has unmistakably challenged Iran, much like America’s early exit for Soleimani in 2020. The stakes for both Israel and Iran are enormous. If Tehran’s riposte to Jerusalem is perceived as weak or ineffective, it risks losing sway over its terrorist surrogates and others, dismayed by the ayatollahs’ unwillingness to risk additional harm to Iran while still leaving them in mortal peril. 

Alternatively, significant, direct Iranian retaliation could impel Israel to strike Iran itself. Or, if Iran acts indirectly through a proxy such as Hezbollah, Israel would feel justified in seeking to cripple Hezbollah, as its Gaza operation seeks to cripple Hamas. There is no doubt Hezbollah is the A-team of Iran’s terrorist proxies and the greater military threat to Israel. 

Whether Israel is prepared to fight a two-front war its government must decide, and there is no doubt that decision is now squarely presented. 

Appropriately or not, however, commentators and politicians have focused since April 1 not on Damascus, but on Israel’s mistaken attack in Gaza on a humanitarian organisation’s convoy. This emotional response has objectively benefited Hamas by again delaying Israel’s offensive against the terrorist group in Rafah; resurrecting calls for an immediate, unconditional cease-fire (ie, unlinked to releasing Israel’s Hamas-held hostages); and compounding Israel’s domestic and international political difficulties. 

The Biden administration has significantly contributed to Israel’s isolation, as its distaste for Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu becomes ever-more evident. The White House has now twisted itself into a pretzel, largely because it fears the Democratic Party’s Left-wing threat to withhold support this November in a close, hard-fought election. Sensing Biden’s political vulnerability, these progressives are amping up efforts to restrict or prohibit additional arms sales to Israel, potentially crippling Jerusalem’s ability to exercise its right of self-defence. 

For those worried about Republican isolationism threatening Ukraine aid, Democratic unwillingness to support Israel should provide no comfort about America’s role in the wider world. 

Biden’s unwillingness these past six months to recognise Iran as the central actor in the Middle East’s ongoing terrorist aggression has already materially damaged America’s support for Israel. History will record his administration’s obsessive efforts to negotiate with the ayatollahs as one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds in politico-military affairs. 

Biden is equally unable or unwilling to recognise that the real criminal in Gaza is Hamas, cynically abusing its own supporters and Gazans generally, not merely as human shields, but as cannon fodder to protect themselves, a war crime if there ever was one. 

The consequences of Biden’s weakness, and indecisiveness in Israel, are serious and lasting. Israel has for too long delayed the Rafah offensive. Further delay will only increase domestic and international complaining and second-guessing, without reaping the benefits of destroying the remainder of Hamas’s organised combat capabilities and seizing full control of Hamas’s massive tunnel system under Gaza. 

Mopping up residual Hamas guerrilla/terrorist activities will be time-consuming, but dismantling it means Israel is freer and less at risk if it must confront Hezbollah full on. Or confronting Iran and its nuclear-weapons programme now, before Iran has a reliable deliverable capacity. 

Israel should finish the job of destroying Hamas’s military and political organisations soonest. Also soonest, the United States and Europe should declare openly that Iran is the real threat to peace and security in the Middle East, and act accordingly. The fastest way to end the ongoing conflict is to defeat the aggressor.

This article was first published in The Telegraph on April 11, 2024. Click here to read the original article.