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

January 16, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He is serious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today, Taiwan is more threatened by China than ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Moldova, Kremlin imperialism is on the ballot

January 04, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The West may now have no option but to attack Iran

December 28, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 20, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Long War of Strategy in the Middle East

December 19, 2023

By Dr. David Wurmser

The United States and Israel disagree about who will rule Gaza in the “day after” scenario. The United States seeks to install a refurbished Palestinian Authority and proceed happily toward a two-state solution. Israel’s “day after” plan is unclear and may not yet even have crystallized. It is difficult, thus, to comment on Israel’s approach, but one thing is certain: the plan to rehabilitate the Palestinian Authority as a government will fail. And neither for the commonly understood reasons of its unpopularity and incompetence born of corruption nor for its inability to rise above its terror pedigree. It is because the very idea of the Palestinian Authority as a solution to the Hamas challenge is based on concepts divorced from a Middle Eastern context.

To understand the problem with our approach, we must begin with our bafflement over why deterrence failed and Hamas even started this war. Moreover, why does Hamas still think it is winning? Why did it invite its own destruction and why does it not see it as its own destruction?

One of the greatest barriers Westerners have in understanding the region is our deep appreciation for structures and words as institutions. In the West, institutions have a life of their own, and the possessors of office – a tangible concept in the West – are merely trustees. A leader or office-holder is only a steward of a trust whose job is to protect the interests of the trust. It is not about him; he will be judged entirely on whether he strengthened or damaged the stature and well-being of the institution during his stewardship. As Westerners we place great faith in the solidity of structures and words as institutions.

But such solidity does not exist in the Middle East. Institutions are extensions of personal relationships. They lack a life of their own. Even on issues of succession in government, arrangements perish with the ruler. When the founding prophet of Islam, Muhammad, died, the tribes met in Mecca to name a replacement, whom they did – Abu Bakr in 632 AD. And yet, despite the “office” of leader’s having passed to Abu Bakr, he was promptly confronted with challenges, even war, by many of those who ostensibly supported him. The pledged unity of the various factions and tribes to Muhammad and the community of Islam melted away.

In the Western mind, this could be understood as treachery. Promises and pledges are institutions and have a life of their own. Violating them betrayed the institution and the sanctity of words. But in the Middle East, such institutions and pledges are intensely personal and are meaningless in a structural or verbal sense. While Abu Bakr may have acquired something akin to our concept of “office holder,” as well as might have expected to enjoy adherence to the world of pledges given by the followers of Islam, in fact, his ascent only marked the beginning of negotiations – even violently executed ones – to redefine, rebalance and validate in a specific personal relationship to Abu Bakr the institution (alliance, unified community) as well as the promises and pledges that had been already agreed upon before with Muhammad. The cycle restarted.

Because of this, in the Middle East institutions have heft only in as much as they are extensions of a powerful person, clan or tribe, or reflect that power’s relationship with other powerful forces. Structures and pledges as institutions, thus, pass through endless rounds of redefinition, reconstitution and even collapse.

So, what does this have to do with the American “day after” proposal, let alone how does it explain to us why Hamas does not believe it is losing? In the Middle East, since nothing is institutionalized with solidity, strategy is not about establishing structures, mile markers, way-stations or anchors. It is instead about affecting realities from cycle to cycle. Those Western instruments transcend the current and acquire a permanence as a building block in an accruing structure. But in the region, states and institutions are temporary arrangements. They reflect the momentary power of operating forces, personal or factional power. They are neither ends in themselves nor endowed with any concept of solidity as understood in the West.

So, Hamas does not, nor ever will, care about building Gaza. To the West, Gaza is an entity or even an institution of a proto-state and thus Hamas loses any authenticity, following or right to rule because of its deep betrayal – self-destruction — of its charge. But that is not how Hamas sees it. Hamas views Gaza as a mere stepping stone on a path to take over the world, as even its leadership has bluntly said in recent weeks. Neither does Hamas care about the Palestinian Authority for the same reasons.

The only importance of these statelets or institutions is if they are reshaped through each round to reflect Hamas’ refined relationship to the Islamic world. Hamas does not have a “contract” with the people who are subject to its power; it has a commitment to the Islamic community on the terms with which it personally negotiates them. Since no Caliph or sitting “leader” of the Islamic world exists, that personal relationship is defined in terms of its popular currency (essentially tribally defined leadership by manifesting the sense of power needed for a tribe to survive) as well as in advancing the ideals of Islam (doctrinally-defined leadership within the Muslim community). In this sense, both Gaza and the Palestinian Authority are meaningless. And since the structure is meaningless, so too is their destruction equally meaningless. And because the structures and their destruction are meaningless, victory and defeat of Hamas cannot be defined in terms of those concepts.

Thus, strategy for Hamas is not a plan progressing along a roadmap to seize meaningless structures. It is instead a relentless journey to navigate its personal relationships with the Muslim world as part of a deeper negotiation through endless cycles of building, leveraging and destroying temporal structures – often defined around cycles of interaction with the enemy – just like Abu Bakr had to do. And while Hamas never loses focus on the rest of the Islamic community as the only relationship that matters, its stature is established in part, as have many other Muslim rulers through the ages, through the language of its interactions with the enemy.

So, the destruction of Hamas, as we would define it, might end this immediate cycle of combat in the specific area of Gaza. And yet, the construction of new structures and pledges of fidelity to that structure will not lead to the sort of material advance that we expect. It will not bring us progress along an arc toward a permanent resolution. Namely even if fantasies were realized in a functional Palestinian Authority, it will deliver a permanent victory over neither Hamas nor the underlying idea of it, let alone the sort of politics animating it. No “Palestinian Authority,” not even the concept of it — derived as it is from Western concepts of institutions — will ever serve as an obstacle to Hamas’ strategy derived as it is from Middle Eastern imagery.

Both Israel and the West are in a long civilizational war with Hamas or its successor – perhaps even a perpetual war – and there will be a successor. And since Islamic civilizations will not disappear, and since the West and Israel also have regional relationships – many of which are both amicable and vital – within that civilization, we must begin to think of strategic aims in those terms. Namely strategy is about muddling and navigating perpetual rounds of interaction in which the West and Israel negotiate and renegotiate their stature based on personal connection (amical or inimical alike) and power in relationship to the other forces in the neighborhood.

As hard as it is for us – a difficulty of which I am painfully aware given that I was trained in classic Western concepts of strategy — we cannot think of strategic goals in traditional terms. Strategy in the region is not the consequence of a crisply defined plan within the framework of a bounded episode that culminates in agreements (or even a final victory) that codify and govern a new, permanent reality around which institutions or pledges acquire solidity. It is a never-ending journey.

And since Israel’s very history is itself a tale of muddling through a never-ending journey of threat and challenge — and a long history of constant change where empires rose and fell, and institutions all came and went — and because in Judaism great issues are examined and debated, but never fully resolved, in Talmudic fashion, Israel may be culturally more adaptable to navigating properly through the region than the West more broadly.

Still, under regional civilizational concepts, our employing terms like “Palestinian state,” “Palestinian Authority,” “two-states,” and “solving the Palestinian problem” only drive home how alien we are to that part of the world, and how naïve and clueless we appear to its inhabitants – and thus our failure is baked into the very DNA of our concept. And perhaps the gap between the United States and Israel regarding the “day after” emerges from the subtle realization at which Israel may be arriving, if even without being aware of it, as it moves from the very Western “Oslo” seek-a-structural-solution paradigm to a paradigm that emanates from Israel’s contemplating and reverting into its own Jewish history.

In the end, to defeat Hamas not only as a faction, but as an idea, both Israel and the West need to learn how to speak in the political and strategic language of the region’s culture.

An Offer Israel Cannot but Refuse: the Brewing Lebanon Deal

December 15, 2023

By Dr. David Wurmser

A US plan, spearheaded by the diplomatic efforts of the US, and led by Amos Hochstein (who negotiated the Lebanon Maritime Agreement) and the French government, is emerging to diffuse tension along Israel’s northern border. The US and France appear to propose a plan with three elements. Hizballah withdraws its forces northward. Israel concedes all the disputed areas along the border. And finally, the area between Israel and Hizballah will be filled by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).

Hizballah has been in violation of UNSCR 1701 — the resolution that terminated the 2006 Second Lebanon War — since its signing. Resolution 1701 called for the “full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.” Moreover, the resolution said all foreign forces are prohibited, such as IRGC, Hamas or other Palestinian factions, or Iraqi militias. Israel left in 2006, so it has been in compliance ever since. Also, the area south of the Litani River will be policed by the LAF and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). In many ways, the US proposal only asks of Hizballah to implement one part of UNSCRs 1701 and completely ignores 1559 and 1680. This itself constitutes a major victory for Hizballah since it validates the annulment of the critical obligations of all three resolutions that render Hizballah an illegal militia altogether — all in order to ask of Hizballah to abide by one part of 1701 which it violated as Israel withdrew from the area under 1701.

Second, the three UNSCRs — to ensure that Israel had indeed withdrawn from all Lebanese territory and thus deny Hizballah’s anticipated claim of being a Lebanese nationalist resistance to continued Israeli occupation — established a mechanism to demarcate the border and validate the “blue line” which had been set in 2000. Such a demarcation was completed shortly thereafter and the border runs along that line. Moreover, careful examination of UN demarcation maps since World War I established that the village of Ghajar had been part of Syrian Golan, and thus, part now of the Israeli Golan Heights, not Lebanon. In short, there actually is no real disputed territory because of either un-demarcated or unclear borders. They are disputed only because Hizballah raised spurious claims.

And yet, under the plan proposed by the US and France, Hizballah is rewarded — and its resistance validated and continued existence as an armed militia legitimized — by a full Israeli withdrawal in all of the areas (Kfar Shouba, Sheba Farms and Ghajar) in addition to other disputed parcels. Essentially by conceding these lands as Lebanese retroactively sanctioned Hizballah’s existence because ostensibly the US and France (and Israel, if it agrees) will now have admitted that Israel continued to occupy Lebanese territory. In other words, Israel becomes the party responsible for Hizballah’s failure to disarm as required by UNSCRs 1559, 1680 and 1701, because Hizballah was a Lebanese faction conducting resistance against occupation of Lebanese land.

The US and France have also proposed under this agreement that the LAF secures the border and the buffer zone south of the Litani River. Indeed, UNSCR 1701 had called for that, but it has long been proven to be an entirely dysfunctional fiction as a sovereign force. It cannot in any way cross Hizballah, and to believe it can going forward is simply delusional. The historical record only shows it has functioned until now as cover and human shield for Hizballah presence despite the vast sums of money, equipment and training that have been given to LAF by the US (an aid activity which is coming under increased scrutiny in the US Congress). The LAF has simply for decades been controlled fully by or cowered into subservience to Hizballah.

So why is the US doing this?

The US is in fact determined not only to avoid escalation on the Lebanese border, but also to avoid any Israel escalation against Iranian proxies anywhere. For example, the US has warned Israel to stop attacking Yemen since “it could provoke Iran,” wherein a very odd situation now exists whereby American warships and international sea lines of communication (SLOCs) are attacked, and only Israel appears to be responding to the attacks on the US warship and SLOCs.

This is part of a broader attempt by the US to burrow more deeply into the paradigm it nurtured prior to October 7 regarding Iran. At its core, it is an attempt to appease Iran by handing it major strategic victories. The paradigm itself allows the US to still seek through some combination of pressure and incentives to harness Iran, validate its “moderates,” and reach a regional understanding that can stabilize the Middle East. Essentially, it highlights that the US continues to operate toward Tehran under the Robert Malley doctrine, under which the United States still believes that there are moderates in structures of power in Iran who, with proper modulation of US policy — specifically that showing understanding and restraint rather than backing Iran against the wall, which is what “hardliners” would want — will have their fortunes so vastly improved that their common interest with the United States can be cultivated and a common understanding reached to stabilize not only Iran’s nuclear program, but its policies to such an extent that Iran becomes a partner for regional stability.

Israeli indulgence of these diplomatic discussions might be an attempt to set the stage for a war rather than reflect a genuine belief that this would lead to anything — especially were Israel to stand firm in rejecting the strategically devastating concessions demanded of it to secure Hizballah partial compliance with UNSCRs to which it already is obliged to comply.

Moreover, Hizballah likely will not accept it either. While it would be an Israeli humiliation for it to be accepted, that Hizballah withdraws voluntarily under Israeli threat would be yet another point of humiliation for Hizballah too. Neither Iran nor Hizballah care about these little pieces of land nor do they build too much on the idea that Israel’s humiliation by yielding them outweighs their humiliation of the last seven weeks of restrained intervention, two meager speeches of Nasrallah, and withdrawal operationally from territories south of the Litani without a fight. They are already ridiculed regionally.

Iran right now needs the area south of the Litani more than ever to shift the remains of Hamas over there to continue the war. In short, they can in no way accept a buffer zone that will take a year or two to infiltrate and establish a Hamas presence and Hizballah reasserted presence. And they need to end this war right up against Israeli lines to get in the last shots to signal that they continue fighting the resistance.

The US and France are pushing for an agreement to avoid escalation on Israel’s northern border which must be understood in effect as part of a larger effort to appease Iran on substance and strategy while giving Israel hollow tactical scraps. It is a deal Israel must refuse.

Biden’s weakness is bringing war to South America

December 13, 2023

The Essequibo crisis is further evidence, if the world needed it, of why dethroning Nicolas Maduro is desirable

Is war about to erupt in South America? Last week, Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro took provocative steps toward forcibly annexing Essequibo, a region comprising almost three-quarters of neighbouring Guyana. “Experts” promptly downplayed the possibility of hostilities, but they may have spoken too soon.

Maduro’s pretext is a 19th-century dispute, once thought resolved, but periodically reopened by Venezuela. The real spark, however, is his regime’s ongoing collapse, financially crippled by decades of mismanaging Venezuela’s vast oil reserves; massive regime corruption; and repression of domestic political opposition. If Guyana’s huge offshore oil deposits, discovered in 2015, continue to be developed, Venezuela’s chance to rejuvenate its own oil industry drops to near-zero. Why deal with a failed state when Guyana, eager for foreign investment, offers a seemingly uncomplicated alternative?

Joe Biden’s 2024 electoral vulnerability is also key here. Just months ago, Maduro suckered Biden into lifting economic sanctions imposed after Maduro stole Venezuela’s 2018 presidential election. Desperate to lower US petrol prices, Biden effectively betrayed Venezuela’s democratic opposition. Maduro’s promise to hold free and fair elections lasted just weeks, disappearing once sanctions were removed, proving that only mad dogs and the Biden administration negotiate with him.

Biden’s fear that international crises will raise oil prices, and the perception that the Ukraine and Middle East wars are overwhelming Washington’s bandwidth, reinforce Maduro’s conclusion that now may be an ideal moment to strike. Inadequate US responses so far underscore the absence of a deterrent sufficient to dissuade even Venezuela’s dilapidated military from using force against much-smaller Guyana.

Ironically, Washington had a key role in the 1899 arbitration award Caracas now rejects. Faced with a boundary dispute between British Guyana and Venezuela, the US advocated arbitrating the competing claims.

Secretary of State Richard Olney cited the Monroe Doctrine, brushing back UK imperial ambitions: “Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.” Although British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain bridled at the Monroe Doctrine’s invocation, he agreed to arbitrate, declaring Britain and America were “more closely aligned in sentiment and in interest than any other nations on the face of the earth.”

During the ensuing proceedings, two US Supreme Court justices served as arbitrators, in effect representing Venezuela’s claims. The 1899 award should have ended the controversy, but Caracas has repeatedly rejected it, not seeing the Monroe Doctrine so benignly later. The Organization of American States, however, supports the award to this day.

The current Essequibo crisis did not arise overnight. As the extent of Guyana’s offshore oil resources became apparent, Venezuela’s worries grew, and provocations began. In 2018, Venezuelan navy vessels sought to land a military helicopter on one of three Exxon-chartered oil-exploration ships, contending they were in Venezuelan waters. The vessels, in fact in Guyanese waters, moved away from the sea border, effectively ending the incident, but Venezuela’s hostile intent was clear.

To bolster his current threats, Maduro staged a December 3 “referendum”, which endorsed annexing Essequibo. This vote was as rigged, and the outcome as predetermined, as every Venezuelan election in the past 20-plus years.

Maduro ordered the arrest of opposition figures immediately thereafter, and took further steps to advance his territorial claims, such as mobilising the army. He does not need to conquer all of Essequibo to achieve his objectives. Simply seizing key coastal territories could buttress Caracas’s claims to the offshore oil deposits, while occupying inland areas could give it control of extensive deposits of gold, copper, other minerals and possibly hydrocarbons. In either case, military action would intensify the crisis, and enhance Maduro’s bargaining position.

But the Essequibo crisis also poses risks to Maduro, and further evidence, if the world needed it, of why dethroning him is desirable. His opponents should use Maduro’s belligerent behaviour to generate additional pressure on his government, domestically and internationally, thereby opening new possibilities for Venezuela’s citizens then to do the rest.

This article was first published in The Telegraph on December 13, 2023. Click Here to read the original article.

Clarifying US relations with Israel

December 04, 2023

By Dr. David Wurmser

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

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

The problem is they are not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or does it?

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

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

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

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

Israel Faces Pressure to Yield to the ‘Terrorist Veto’

December 01, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 17, 2023

By Dr. David Wurmser

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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