One year after Hamas launched Iran’s “Ring of Fire” strategy with a barbaric attack against Israeli civilians, the Middle East has changed significantly. Now, the world awaits Jerusalem’s response to Tehran’s ballistic-missile attack last week, the largest such attack in history. It was the current war’s second military assault directly from Iranian territory against Israel, the first being April’s combined drone and ballistic/cruise missile barrage. We do not know how Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu will respond, but it is nearly certain Israel’s answer will be far stronger than in April.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Ring of Fire is clearly failing. Israel is systematically destroying Hamas and Hezbollah, two critical foundations of Iran’s terrorist power. Whatever now happens between Jerusalem and Tehran, Iran’s efforts to debilitate Israel — and potentially the Gulf Arab states — with terrorist and conventional military assets may well suffer irreversible defeat.
According to Israel, 23 of 24 Hamas combat battalions have been destroyed, and what’s left remains under attack. Numerous Hamas leaders have been killed, not the least being Ismael Haniyeh in a supposedly secure compound in the heart of Tehran. Yahyah Sinwar remains at large; Hamas still holds Israeli civilian hostages; and Gaza’s enormous underground fortress is still partially in Hamas hands, but the ending is increasingly clear.
Hezbollah is still in the process of being destroyed. Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrullah is already a turning point in Middle East history, so great was the shock in Lebanon and beyond. As effectively as against Hamas, or perhaps more, Jerusalem is relentlessly decapitating Hezbollah’s leadership, eliminating officials even as they are being promoted to the fill vacancies left by dead colleagues. Israel also claims to have destroyed half of Hezbollah’s enormous arsenal of missiles and launchers. That estimate seems high, and in any case leaves significant work remaining against Hezbollah’s estimated inventory of up to 150,000 missiles. Nonetheless, with Nasrullah’s demise and with its leadership decimated, Hezbollah is reeling.
The Gulf Arab states and others should now be considering what the future holds for the people of Lebanon and Gaza without Hezbollah and Hamas. What has been unthinkable for decades may now be within sight. As long as Hezbollah, the world’s largest terrorist group, controlled Lebanon and its government, there was no possibility to achieve political freedom and stability. Given the prospect of Hezbollah’s eradication as both a political and military force, urgent attention is required to the possibility of a society without intimidation and control from Iran. Lebanon with Hezbollah could and should be a very different place.
Gaza, although smaller, is more complicated. Palestinians are the only major refugee population since World War II that has not benefitted from the basic humanitarian principle of either returning to their country of origin or being resettled. Palestinians are, unfortunately for them, the exception, not the norm. The international community needs to confront the reality that Gaza is not and never will be a viable economic entity, even if some distant day combined as a state with “islands” on the West Bank. Far better, once Hamas is on history’s ash heap, to treat Gazans more humanely than simply being shields for their terrorist masters. It makes no sense to rebuild Gaza as a high-rise refugee camp. The most humane future for innocent Gazans is resettlement in functioning economies where their children have the prospect of a normal future.
Although Gaza and Lebanon have something to look forward to, the same cannot yet be said, sadly, for Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Yemen’s Houthi terrorists and Iranian-backed Shia militias in Syria and Iraq remain largely untouched after October 7. That should change.
Although the Houthis have launched missiles and drones against Israel, and Israel has retaliated, the Houthis main contribution to Iran’s Ring of Fire has been effectively closing the Suez Canal-Red Sea maritime passage. This blockade has been extremely harmful to Egypt through lost Suez Canal transit fees, and has hurt the wider world by significantly increasing shipping costs. A clear violation of the principle of freedom of the seas, the major maritime powers would be fully warranted to correct it through force, with or without UN Security Council approval.
For the United States, freedom of the seas has been a major element of national security even before the thirteen colonies became independent. In the last two centuries, America and the United Kingdom led global efforts to defend the freedom of the seas, and should do so now, eliminating the ongoing Houthi anti-shipping aggression. Cutting off Iran’s supply of missiles and drones is a first step, coupled with destroying existing Houthi stockpiles. Washington’s opposition to prior efforts by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to defeat the terrorists was misguided and should be reversed. Destroying Houthi military capabilities would afford Yemen the same opportunities now opening for Lebanon and Gaza, and should be urgently pursued.
In Iraq and Syria, as Iran’s power fades (and may well fade dramatically after Israel’s coming retaliation), action against the Iran-backed Shia militias should be the highest priority. In such circumstances, Baghdad at least may well think twice before demanding that the few remaining US forces still in Iraq and Syria be removed.
For Iran itself, loss of its terrorist proxies, after having invested billions of dollars over decades to build the terrorist infrastructure, will be a dramatic reversal of fortune. If Iran’s nuclear program is similarly devastated, the threat Iran has posed by seeking to achieve hegemony in the Middle East and within the Islamic world will likely be impossible for the foreseeable future. In these circumstances, the people of Iran may finally be able to achieve the downfall of the ayatollahs and the creation of representative government. It is far too early to be confident of such an outcome, but it is not too early to hope for it.
This article was first published in Independent Arabia on October 7, 2024. Click here to read the original article.
Israel’s stunning attacks on Hezbollah via exploding pagers and walkie-talkies demonstrate both the creativity and cunning of its intelligence and defense forces, and their capacity to strike deep into the heart of its adversaries’ domains. The casualties among Hezbollah’s top leadership (and allies, like Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon) plus the significant near-term degradation of Hezbollah’s internal command-and-control, make it conspicuously vulnerable.
For Americans, the death of senior Hezbollah leader Ibrahim Aqeel is especially significant. He was responsible for the 1983 bombings of the US embassy in West Beirut, and of barracks for US Marines and French soldiers participating in a multilateral peacekeeping force, at the government of Lebanon’s invitation. At least partial justice has been done.
Together with the recent elimination of Hamas leader Ismael Haniyah in a supposedly secure compound in Tehran, Israel has almost certainly unnerved Iran, its principal enemy, as well as the terrorist proxies directly targeted. While the future is uncertain, now is a perfect opportunity for Israel to take far more significant reprisals against Iran and all its terrorist proxies for the “Ring of Fire” strategy. Iran’s nuclear-weapons program may now finally be at risk.
Where does the Middle East battlefield now stand?
After “Operation Grim Beeper,” as many now call it, Jerusalem launched major strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Whether these strikes have concluded, or whether they are the opening phases of a much larger anti-terrorist efforts, is not clear. These and other recent kinetic strikes have caused further damage to Hezbollah’s leadership and its offensive capacity.
Nonetheless, Hezbollah’s extraordinary arsenal of missiles, largely supplied or financed by Iran, plus their ground forces and tunnels networks in the Bekka Valley and elsewhere in Lebanon, make it a continuing threat, more dangerous near-term to Israel than even Iran. The CIA publicly estimates the terrorists could have “as many as 150,000 missiles and rockets of various types.” Many believe it is a matter of simple self-preservation that Israel must neutralize Hezbollah before any significant military steps are taken against Iran itself.
Since October 8, the day after Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel, Hezbollah’s constant missile and artillery barrages into northern Israel have forced approximately 60,000 citizens to evacuate their residences, farms and businesses. Because of the extensive economic dislocation, and the continuing danger of further destruction of the abandoned properties, on September 16, Israel declared that returning those forced to flee from the north to be a national war goal. That could well signal further strikes. Israel has maintained near-perfect operational security for nearly a year; no one on the outside can predict with certainty what is coming.
As for Hamas, a less-reported but equally significant development is that the Biden administration seems to have largely given up hope of negotiating a cease-fire in the Gaza conflict, at least before November’s presidential election. In fact, Israel and Hamas had opposing goals that could not be compromised. Israel was prepared to accept a brief cease fire and releasing some Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for its hostages, whereas Hamas wanted a definitive end to hostilities, with all Israeli forces withdrawing from Gaza. Almost certainly, there was never to be a meeting of minds.
Accordingly, Israel’s pursuit of Hamas’s remaining top leadership and the ongoing efforts to degrade and destroy its combat capabilities will continue. Moreover, operations to destroy Hamas’s extraordinarily extensive fortifications under Gaza will also continue, aimed at totally destroying every cubic inch of the tunnel system. Thus, at least for now, Iran’s initial sally in the Ring of Fire strategy is on the way to ignominious defeat. Tehran’s dominance in Gaza has brought only ruin.
By contrast, Yemen’s Houthi terrorists, with Iran’s full material support and political direction, continue to close the Suez Canal-Red Sea passage to most traffic, while also targeting US drones in international airspace. This blockage us causing significant economic hardships. In the region, Egypt is suffering major declines in government revenue from lost Suez Canal transit fees, which can only increase economic hardships for its civilian population. Worldwide, the higher costs of goods that must now be transported around the Horn of Africa are burdening countless countries, all with impunity for the Houthis and Iran.
Allowing Tehran and its terrorist proxies to keep these vital maritime passages closed is flatly unacceptable. Even before the United States was independent, freedom of the seas was a key principle of the colonies’ security. As with many other aspects of Iran’s Ring of Fire strategy, the Biden administration has been wringing its hands, not taking or supporting decisive action to clear these sea lines of communication. Whether the next US President continues the current ineffective approach will obviously not be known until after January 20, 2025.
Similarly, the United States has failed to exact significant retribution against Iran and the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, also largely armed and equipped by Iran, that have conducted over 170 attacks on American civilian and military personnel since October 7. The Biden administration has effectively left these diplomats, soldiers and contractors at continuing risk, especially as tensions and increased military activity in the Ring of Fire area of operations escalate. An Iranian or Shia militia attack that inflicted serious American casualties, which is unfortunately entirely possible due to the Biden administration’s passivity, could prompt major US retaliation, perhaps directly against Iran.
Tehran’s mullahs remain the central threat to peace and security in the Middle East. As its terrorist surrogates are steadily degraded, and the Ring of Fire Strategy increasingly unravels, the prospects for direct attacks on Iran’s air defenses, its oil-and-gas production facilities, its military installations, and even its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs steadily increase, Moreover, as Iran’s deeply discontented civilian population sees increasingly that the ayatollahs are more interested in religious extremism than the welfare of their fellow citizens, internal dissent against the regime will increase. The real question, therefore, is whether Iran’s Islamic Revolution will outlast its current Supreme Leader.
This article was first published in Independent Arabia on September 24, 2024. Click here to read the original article.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to America last week reflected long-term pluses and minuses for the U.S.-Israel relationship. The historical relationship between Israel and the Democratic Party hit its lowest point ever, while that between Republicans and Israel has never been stronger. Driving these developments are tectonic shifts of power and demographics among Democrats and, even more importantly, tectonic shifts in Israeli public opinion about how to achieve lasting peace and security.
Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress echoed both alterations. His Gaza objectives were clear: “Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home. That’s what total victory means, and we will settle for nothing less.”
The prime minister rightly laid responsibility for the threats facing Israel on Iran, the principal menace to Middle Eastern stability. This reality has still not sunk in with Democrats, particularly in the Biden White House. In Israel today, whatever Netanyahu’s personal popularity, there is little debate on these points.
America’s core national interest in supporting Israel against Iran and its terrorist surrogates is more than religious, historical and cultural. Iran’s nuclear and terrorist threats both currently manifest themselves in the Hamas war against Israel, the “little Satan,” but Tehran also targets America, the “great Satan.” Gaza is not the main battleground, but merely one front of Tehran’s threat, which Netanyahu spelled out clearly, yet again. And yet again, the Democratic establishment didn’t get it. Fortunately for Israel, most Americans do.
Netanyahu’s meeting with President Biden was apparently workmanlike, focusing on Biden’s continuing, misbegotten pursuit of a cease-fire-for-hostages deal between Hamas and Israel. Ominously for Netanyahu, however, Biden has already moved far away from the “ironclad” support for Israel he pledged shortly after Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7 attack. Inevitably, the leaders’ meeting reflected the unrelenting, unprecedented pressure the White House has put on Jerusalem to end the Gaza conflict.
When still a candidate for reelection, Biden wanted the Middle East (and Ukraine) off the front pages, hoping to conceal the spreading global chaos caused by his own foreign policy’s grave weaknesses. Biden also wanted to avoid offending tender Iranian or Russian sensitivities, lest increased global oil prices reignite inflation, thereby diminishing his waning chances of victory in November. Although Biden is now a lame duck, his and Vice President Kamala Harris’s interests still converge on this point.
For Israel, Biden truly is a transitional president, the last vestige of President Harry Truman’s pride that the U.S. was first to recognize Israel’s independence. Those days are over. As Netanyahu said to Congress, Biden described himself as “a proud Irish-American Zionist.” Vice President Harris is not a proud Zionist of any variety, which, if not already clear, became so in her Netanyahu meeting, evidenced by her frosty manner and both her public and private remarks.
Afterward, Harris said, “let’s get the deal done so we can get a cease-fire to end the war.” Easy to say if eliminating Hamas’s threat (let alone Iran’s) isn’t your foundational objective. But Harris wasn’t finished. She proclaimed that she would “not be silent” about suffering Gazans, although if suffering Gazans were her true concern, she would be pressuring Hamas, not Israel.
Hamas, after all, turned Gaza into an underground fortress at the expense of its civilians, whom it has used ruthlessly as human shields. Failing to acknowledge this reality effectively endorses a terrorist veto against Israel’s right of self-defense. Let Harris explain that during the campaign’s final 100 days.
The Democrats’ split with Israel mirrors Britain’s new Labour Party government. Labour has a long, disturbing history of antisemitism and doubtful support for Israel, and once again disdains the Jewish state. Last week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer pleased Labour’s hard left by lifting U.K. objections to the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and others. Another question for reporters to ask Harris: Does she support Biden’s continuing opposition to the warrants?
Netanyahu’s meeting with Donald Trump was no picnic either. The day before, Trump said, “I want him to finish up [in Gaza] and get it done quickly. They are getting decimated with this publicity. Israel is not really good at public relations, I’ll tell you that.” It suits Trump politically to pretend that his personal relationship with Netanyahu was always good, and the meeting provided Trump an excellent opportunity to recall his presidency’s pro-Israel decisions, like moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The risk underlying these comments, like similar Trump remarks recently, is not abstract concern about Israel losing the propaganda war with Iran and Hamas. Instead, Trump fears that his pro-Israel stance is now bringing him political costs rather than benefits, which is not how Trump thinks the world should work. His interests alone dictate his political positions, so Israel needs to shape up and stop troubling his already difficult presidential campaign.
Post-visit, Netanyahu and Israel have a better picture of the troubling tendencies of America’s three most important political leaders before Election Day. Whether Harris or Trump wins, Jerusalem’s relations with Washington will be more difficult. This is not the road America should be on, but these are the candidates we have, and one of them will prevail in November.
This article was first published in The Hill on July 30, 2024. Click here to read the original article.
Masoud Pezeshkian probably never expected to become Iran’s President, nor did most of his countrymen, nor the outside world. Whatever the reasons for his success, Pezeshkian’s victory means only that Tehran now shows a smiley face to foreigners rather than a mean face. Beneath surface appearances, nothing substantive has changed.
Westerners especially have long misunderstood that Iran’s elected Presidency does not hold decisive political power, certainly not on Tehran’s critical national-security priorities like nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and supporting innumerable terrorist groups. Ayatollah Khamenei is the Supreme Leader, like his predecessor and father of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini. “Supreme Leader.” That title tells you everything.
Elections for Iran’s presidency are hardly free and open. To start, only candidates satisfactory to the Guardian Council may run, and the Council has never been slack in applying rigid ideological standards. The races are ultimately never more than hardline-hardliners running against moderate-hardliners. If the Guardian Council had wanted to exclude Pezeshkian from the election, they could have. If they wanted to ensure he lost, they could have allowed multiple “moderates” in the race and only one “hardliner.” Instead, they did the opposite, and Pezeshkian prevailed. If the regime had really been worried about such an outcome, it would simply have stolen the election, as in 2009. Interestingly, voter turnout figures remain hotly disputed, so we may never know exactly how many people legitimately cast ballots.
Until the regime finally issues a definitive statement on why Pezeshkian’s predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash, questions about regime stability will linger. Whatever the cause of the crash, Pezeshkian is an accidental President. For Raisi, the presidency may well have been but a steppingstone, given Khamenei’s age and infirmities. He had been fingered by the Supreme Leader and others as potentially Iran’s third Supreme Leader upon Khamenei’s death or incapacity. Pezeshkian, by contrast, seems to be a temporary fill-in, even more of a figurehead than other Presidents, until the key ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard decide how to proceed.
Over 45 years, Iran’s two Supreme Leaders, through successive presidencies, have never deviated from their fundamental national-security precepts: (1) pursuing nuclear weapons and ballistic-missile delivery capabilities; and (2) creating and enhancing multiple terrorist proxies across the Middle East and globally. These have been foundational both to Tehran’s hegemonic regional ambitions and its broader aspirations for dominance in the Islamic world. No mere substitute President is going to obstruct that strategic vision.
What Pezeshkian does for the mullahs is to provide what Russians call “maskirovka”: camouflage that disguises Iran’s real foreign policy. Like other puppets and front men Tehran has used over the years, including former Foreign Minister Javid Zarif and Hossein Mousavian, a former nuclear negotiator now nestled comfortably at Princton, Pezeshkian is a walking, talking disinformation campaign. Susceptible Westerners, longing for resumed nuclear talks with Iran, now have a straw to grasp at. Nothing will come from any resumed diplomacy, of course, because there is no sign Iran the Supreme leader has made a strategic decision to change course.
Ironically, therefore, the mullahs have scored a public-relations coup by having an empty suit like Pezeshkian replace Raisi, widely called “the butcher of Tehran” for his judicial role in ordering executions of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of political prisoners. If Pezeshkian chooses to attend the UN General Assembly opening in New York this September, one can imagine the welcome America’s credulous media and academic institutions will afford him. He smiles, he waves, he acts informally, perhaps he likes progressive jazz, maybe he drinks a little Scotch whiskey in private (who knows!), he must want to make a deal the United States!
US liberals and the Biden Administration can dream about this scenario, but they may not be in office after November’s election. Even if they were, of course, the compliant Pezeshkian they imagine would not be making nuclear-weapons policy, nor would his Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, chief negotiator of the 2015 nuclear deal. Americans are all too apt to succumb to the diplomatic phenomenon known as “mirror imaging,” where negotiators look across the table and see people just like themselves: reasonable men and women simply looking to find practical solutions to shared problems. That’s exactly opposite from how the Islamic Revolution views the outside world.
Instead, if Donald Trump wins, now more likely than ever after the failed July 13 assassination attempt, his propensity to treat national-security issues simply as opportunities for making deals could lead to a Trump-Pezeshkian get-together. French President Emmanuel Macron almost seduced Trump into meeting with Zarif on the margins of the Biarritz G-7 in August, 2019. Trump’s “zeal for the deal” brought him within an eyelash of seeing Zarif, and foreshadows a contemporary version of that meeting early in a new Trump term. It may take second place to Trump visiting North Korean leader Kim Jung Un in Pyongyang to reopen nuclear negotiations, but it suits Trump’s singular focus on personal publicity.
Thus, while Pezeshkian’s election as President may not have been conscious Iranian maskirovka, there is no doubt the Supreme Leader and his cohorts can take advantage of the opportunity presented if they so choose. Such circumstances do not mean a new nuclear deal would emerge, since that would certainly not be Tehran’s negotiating objective. Instead, the mullahs would be playing for more time, which is uniformly beneficial to would-be nuclear proliferators, hoping to achieve a nuclear-weapons capability, and then to decide how to employ it. The same would be true for Iran’s terrorist objectives in the region and beyond. Trump would not even realize he was playing according to the Supreme Leader’s script.
Although the unsuspecting Masoud Pezeshkian may not realize it, he may be exactly the gift the ayatollahs never thought to ask for.
This article was first published in the Independent Arabia on July 16, 2024. Click here to read the original article.
The world has truly turned upside down when a U.S. president begs America’s allies to have a United Nations agency go easy on a terrorist nuclear proliferator. The Biden administration’s reported pleading on behalf of Iran isn’t merely a tactical error about yet another biodegradable U.N. resolution. It’s a persistent strategic blindness that existentially threatens key U.S. partners and endangers our own peace and security.
Iran’s largely successful effort to conceal critical aspects of its nuclear-weapons complex from scrutiny by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Western intelligence services is nearing culmination. IAEA reports about Iran’s uranium-enrichment program—and Tehran’s disdain for IAEA inspections, extending over two decades—finally have the Europeans worried.
Instead of welcoming this awakening, President Biden is reportedly lobbying European allies to avoid a tough anti-Iran resolution at this week’s quarterly IAEA board of governors meeting. The administration denies it. But limpness on Iran’s nuclear threat fits the Obama-Biden pattern of missing the big picture, before and after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, including cash-for-hostages swaps with Iran as recently as last year.
Mr. Biden has two objectives. The first is to keep gasoline prices low and foreign distractions to a minimum before November’s election. The second is the Obama-Biden obsession with appeasing Iran’s ayatollahs, hoping they will become less medieval and more compliant if treated nicely. Both objectives are misguided, even dangerous.
Election worries about gas prices have also weakened U.S. sanctions against Russia, which are failing because of their contradictory goals. It simply isn’t possible to restrict Russian revenue while keeping U.S. pump prices low. The ayatollahs don’t worry about elections, but they know weakness when they see it, including Mr. Biden’s relaxed enforcement of sanctions on Iranian oil exports.
Mr. Biden’s greater mistake is refusing to acknowledge Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy to intimidate Israel and achieve regional hegemony over the oil-producing monarchies and other inconvenient Arab states. The foundational muscle for achieving these quasi-imperial aspirations is Iran’s nuclear program, precisely the issue at the IAEA. Starting in his 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden repeatedly alienated Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, which felt particularly threatened by his zeal to rejoin the failed 2015 nuclear deal. Mr. Biden’s willingness to exclude Israel and the Arabs from negotiations with Tehran, as Mr. Obama did, convinced Arab governments that Washington was again hopelessly feckless. Israel concurred.
Arab leaders privately see the need to eliminate Tehran’s terrorist proxies. Saying so publicly, however—even quietly—requires political cover, which Washington has failed to provide. The Biden administration could have sought to destroy, not merely inhibit, the Iran-backed Houthis’ capacity to close shipping routes in the Suez Canal and Red Sea. Since the U.S. failed to do so, rising prices from higher shipping costs increase the risk of a de facto Iran-Houthi veto over freedom of the seas. Not surprisingly, Iran now threatens to blockade Israel itself.
Mr. Biden decided to concentrate world attention on Gaza rather than on Iran as the puppet-master. Doing so has helped obscure that Gaza is only one component of the larger ring-of-fire threat. Many Israelis, including several members of the war cabinet, have long focused on the close-to-home threat of Palestinian terrorists rather than the existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. This joint failure enabled Tehran’s propaganda to outmatch Jerusalem’s, leaving the false impression of a moral equivalence.
Had the U.S. and Israel explained the barbarity of Oct. 7 in such broader strategic terms, they would necessarily have concentrated attention on Iran’s coming succession crisis. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is old and ailing. President Ebrahim Raisi’s still-unexplained demise has already launched a succession struggle that could transform Iran. The U.S. and its allies should help the Iranian opposition fracture the Islamic Revolution at the top. Instead, Mr. Biden, who couldn’t conceive of overthrowing the ayatollahs, has dispatched envoys to beg Iran not to stir things up further before November.
Sending Tehran what diplomats call a “strong message” from the IAEA isn’t much, but treating Iran as if it calls the shots is far worse. Praying that Mr. Biden wakes up to reality may be the world’s only hope.
This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on June 4, 2024. Click here to read the original article.
Something is changing. The Western world was asleep, adrift, and decaying. But then came the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. It instantly became a clarifying moment for Israelis – something which put them at odds even with their own elites, let alone the rest of the world. They were fighting for the very survival they thought they had reliably secured. But then came the campus frenzies against American Jews, as well as European Jewish communities, which became a clarifying moment for young American and European Jews and their families. And then the burning of American flags and the ensuing flag wars in the Palestine Encampments, the “little Gazas” as Senator Tom Cotton calls them, across American academia, in war memorials and on the streets, which became a clarifying moment for many Americans. And now we see the Eurovision song contest, which became a clarifying moment on the European continent. What started in the horrific shock of the depth of human moral depravity exhibited on October 7 appears to have a profound series of direct and ripple effects across the West, baring bankrupt elites, exposing rising new ones, and perhaps even signaling a return to the values and ideas grounding Western identity and civilization.
Everyone approached their clarifying event differently, as it was filtered through deep questions of identity, culture, pride and security – all issues unique to each of the communities mentioned. But there is across the broad a common theme: elites have failed and the populations – the common man – are stepping up to the plate. And they are all showing remarkable sobriety, resolve, leadership and moral lucidity in contrast to their drifting, weak, sheep-like and morally conflicted elites.
Israel
Israel is perhaps the easiest to grasp and understand. So much of the country donned their uniforms and for months – without internet, without social media – fought for their very lives. They came together in unity and wanted nothing short of full victory. They held a common sense of purpose. They defended their families and their homes and buried their friends and loved ones. They braved the missiles and sent another generation of their young children to battle.
Israelis all retreated more into their identity and deeper connection with the experience and trajectory of their 4000-year history that had been shunted onto the sidetrack of their culture for decades. Israeli soldiers took strength and meaning from their Jewish history, heritage and for many, their religion. The drift and complacence of Israeli society ended and its delusion burst that it had transcended its 4000-year fate and had became a normal nation among nations in a region that no longer sought to eradicate it. Wisdoms, admonitions, and enemies from the Bible sprang back to life and were reanimated in the Israeli psyche. Israel was suddenly intensely Jewish – for some in a religious, for others culturally and historic sense. Israel was fighting Amalek, and it was a unified family fighting to survive a siege.
But all Israelis understood one thing: what was before October 6 – the failed acrimonious debates, the intensity of brotherly hatred, and the bizarre perversion of elites – political, social and media — that relished the rising divisions as Roman emperors once did both in commanding and enjoying the mortal combat of gladiators – cannot be any more.
The debates now are shelved, the brothers fighting and dying shoulder to shoulder, and the elites in all sectors of society awaiting their verdict to go home which will come as soon as the guns fall silent. Israel will have a rebirth, and it will need a new elite to do so. All Israelis understand now they were in one boat; disagreements were and still will be there but the fate of all was common.
So now, a new Israeli, akin to the World War II generation of Americans, is being forged from the horrors of the dark Sabbath of October 7 and the grit of the battlefields of Gaza, Judea, Samaria, the Golan and Lebanon.
American and European Jews
American and European Jews grasped early, as well, that this was about them too. They quickly began to rally behind Israel and pay closer attention to their cousins. Their plight was neither theoretical nor separate. Jewish communities across the globe instinctively knew that the fate of Israel was their fate. Soon, the war thousands of miles away came closer and closer personally to them, not just their cousins. The taboo on antisemitic rhetoric in polite society was broken. There were random attacks on Jews – some fatal — and antisemitic hate crimes skyrocketed. And then came the Palestine takeover of our educational institutions. Left unprotected by the Biden administration, Jewish children found themselves exposed to hatred, physically prevented from access to libraries and free movement in campuses and ability to study, marked as separate, terrified of encountering teachers and professors that would fail them because of who they were, and finally facing increased threats and finally violence.
The curtain seemed to be descending on the golden age of American Jewry – the greatest Diaspora Jewish community of all times – as each American Jew personally, felt under siege. The moment that unleashed the realization into acute form was when the Chabad Rabbi at Columbia University declared in early April that the university’s Jews should leave the campus because their security could no longer be guaranteed.
The dam burst. Parents pulled their children out of school. Jews had lived in American paradise. The very foundations of the American enterprise was intertwined with the flourishing and freedom of the Jewish community for more than three centuries. The New Jerusalem and the Old Jerusalem were blood brothers in the American experiment. The rise of antisemitic hatred, however, not only shattered the Jewish sense of security, but also made Jews wonder how solid the American idea – upon which the welfare of the Jewish community is anchored – still is. Jews inherently understood what they faced was not just a wave of antisemitism, but something that so deeply threatened America that it could signal the passing of a great historical era, leading to another age of mass Jewish wandering to find safe harbor.
But then a remarkable thing happened. Young Jews, profoundly failed by elite Jewish institutions that stood helpless at this moment of truth, began to assert themselves. A new generation of Jewish leaders – eloquent, proud, rediscovering their faith and identity in parallel to their Israeli cousins, but also unwilling to give up on the American home and the idea behind it that supported their aspirations, dreams and gave them secure life – suddenly emerged on the campuses. They testified powerfully to Congress. They spoke on the quads and stairways to make a stand. They wove their affinity with Israel, respect for Jewish history, and love of America together. Socially and even physically brave, they stood up to their peers and professors to fight back.
Jewish elites had failed. Elite Jewish institutions stood paralyzed. But a new generation of Jews – which was more anchored to their Jewish history and identity, but also more unwilling to take the American idea for granted – rushed to the trenches and now rises to sweep them aside.
America more broadly
Non-Jewish Americans came next. The change emerged directly form the campus Jewish question and the chain of events originating in the October 7 attacks by Hamas. The “little Gazas” sprung up around the country like mushrooms not only focused on hating Jews, but also on attacking the idea of America – the very thing that these radicals understood was what made the Jews so secure and allowed them to flourish either as an American community or as the Israeli nation. Moreover, harboring the deep objective of destroying the ideas and cultural foundations of the American idea, these radicals – Islamist green or socialist red — knew the Jewish community embodied a strong part of the American nation’s Judeo-Christian core, and thus the road to destroy America lay through destruction of Judaism and Christianity. Soon, imported European ideas of antisemtic fascism – the Black – also appeard. The attack on American Jews was just part of the progressive Bolshevik-Islamist-Fascist attack on America itself. So, flags were burned. War memorials that have nothing to do with Jews or Israel were desecrated. Dead Americans who paid the ultimate price to defend their freedom and country were dishonored.
But the antisemitic assault was not broad in American society. They were not like the deep sense of guilt Americans still harbored in the summer of 2020 of the issue of the American Black experience – misplaced guilt because such feelings persist despite the remarkable arc or moral progress over a century – which led the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Even that was a bait and switch exploiting genuine feelings of guilt to launch a violent attack on the very goodness that animated Americans. But that took time to sort out and realize.
But not so with the Israel issue. Polls consistently showed broad and deep American support for Israel, so there was no deeper sentiment of “anti-colonial” civil rights guilt these riots evoke. Americans identified with Israel and understood its attachment as an indigenous nation to the land for which it was fighting.
Moreover, Americans had become, even in its earliest days before independence, a remarkably Judeophilic culture. Whether George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, whether Mark Twain or John Steinbeck, American leaders and cultural icons committed to letters and words their respect and affinity with Jews. And Israel seemed to have struck the deep sense of Cincinnatus virtue that Americans always valued within themselves: the agrarian, farmer spirit of independence and making the land bloom, the fierce attachment to their values and willingness to alone defend them. So, Americans all along filtered their understanding of October 7 through such a favorable view of Israel.
But the frenzied world of the Palestine encampments and their flag-burning and “death-to-America-chanting” zombie seances not only triggered disgust and evoked a deep sense of American patriotism, but it also showed Americans how profoundly rotted their elite institutions were. Their kids were not alright, and they were not alright because the people to whom Americans had entrusted their childrens’ education was instead turning them against everything they held dear. Congressional hearings of college officials became awful spectacles of mediocre wokeness. Americans on the national level began to see the entire educational system – for which every American family had to part with their life-savings to pay for — the same way as local parents in Virginia had seen their school boards in 2022-23, which led then to pitched arguments across the country as well as the election of Republicans as senior state officials. Americans understood their elite institutions no longer transmitted to their young American values or culture, nor taught civic virtue, nor nurtured patriotism, nor even respected family or faith in any way.
And then came their moment. The Israeli and American Jewish question suddenly flowed together into the broader American question. In late April at the University of North Carolina, the little Gaza encampment – as all other encampments across the land – tore down the American flag at the university’s flagpole, burned it and replaced it with the Palestine flag. The president of the university sent for police and marched along with them to take down the flag of Palestine and raise the American flag, accompanied by a rousing speech about the meaning of the American flag and its unique purpose in flying above us all. No sooner had the flag been raised than the progressive Red-Green-Black (Bolshevik-Islamist-Fascist) radicals from the Palestine encampments sought to tear it down again. But it was not to be. They were met by a group from the university’s Jewish fraternity, Alpha Epslion Pi (AEPi), who in a Iwo-Jima like moment, surrounded the flag, protected it from touching the ground and being soiled, and stood firm against projectiles to ensure the American flag remains flying on the pole. The image that emerged from that incident was iconic and captured the American nation.
Those of us who remember the late 1970s, remember the humiliation – already bubbling from the fall of Saigon – reverberating as American hostages were taken by Iran’s Ayatollahs. They also remember the American victory in the Lake Placid Olympic hockey game of 1980, and the shift toward patriotism and energy generated by pride that took over the American soul in its wake. As Iran had done in 1978-9, Iran’s proxies (Hamas), their minions and their Bolshevik and fascist allies of progressive radicals on American campuses had done in 2024. So, those of us who do remember the American awakening of 1979-80 easily identify the current American re-Awakening of 2024 emerging from the images of the AEPi defense of the flag at UNC. The young frat boys were the equivalent of the young US hockey Olympic team at Lake Placid. Across the country, young Americans – indeed many frats but then far beyond– began to mobilize to defend their flag and march to assert their pride in America.
Israel, the American Jewish question, and the reawakening of America were all now flowing in alignment – and all by virtue of a young new leadership emerging on the ossified husk of their community’s elites and their failing stagnant structures.
Europe
But to the surprise of many Israelis, American Jews, and other Americans, it appears this is beginning to grip even Europe in the last weeks. True, there were signs: the wave of elections, starting with Brexit, that symbolized a welling rejection of elites, elite culture, and elite power, had been brewing for years. The discerning observer could see it. But there still wasn’t the moment – the defining event to lay bare the vast chasm emerging between the elites and the societies over which they lorded.
The moment may well have come this week – the usually politically marginal Eurovision song event. The artistic elites of Europe, along with the state broadcast authorities which ran it considered not inviting Israel – a traditional powerhouse at this song competition – to bow to the ostensible antisemitic sentiments gripping the European. Trying to use Israel’s song entry as “too political in hopes that Israel would thus disqualify itself – saving the EBU from the embarrassment of singling out and banning the Jewish state,” Europe’s elites demanded the wounded Jewish nation to go through several iterations of its song before the European Broadcast Union (EBU) would allow it to perform. But Israel played along, watered it down until its words were anodyne and palatable enough that the EBU could no longer hook its hopes of disqualification on them.
Israel came to the event in Malmo, Sweden – the epicenter of Islamist radical hatred of Jews and Israel — and so did the masses of enraged radicals and European Muslims from across the continent. They threatened the Israeli singer, forced her to lockdown in her hotel room and brave riots attacking her convoy on the way to perform. Other nations’ delegates refused to have their rooms in proximity to the Israeli singer, and thus she had to be removed to a remote and isolated wing of the hotel. Several delegations threatened a boycott and virtue signaled through costume and press conferences their dripping disdain of the Jewish singer. Those few singers who in an unguarded moment had been photographed interacting with the Israeli singer, even in fleeting moments, were forced to apologize and ask that the picture be expunged from the public record. Israeli journalists and presenters were even forced by the European Broadcaster Union to remove their small yellow ribbons some wore to symbolize their hope of the return of Israel’s 132 hostages from Hamas torture and captivity. The elites of Europe had decided that the people of Europe could not stomach association with Israel, in even song. Still, the desire of their national delegations to be feted outweighed their ostensible rage and they all performed.
But Israel’s 20-year old Eden Golan still quietly took the stage, stood alone in front a loudly jeering audience of booing and shrieking pro-Palestine chants that tried to drown out the performance. But in an act of bravery and immense discipline, she sang and sang true.
And when she did, a remarkable thing happened. The competition had a 50% popular vote across Europe and 50% an elite-board driven vote of judges that would combine to produce the winner. Israel swept the popular vote. Golan garnered a remarkable 327 points from the voting populations of Europe. Moreover in 15 of the 35 nations, Israel outright won the popular vote (12 points for each win) and took second place (10 points) in seven more. Clearly, the people of Europe made their voce heard: Israel was not to be shunned, and in fact was wildly popular.
Then the elites spoke through the EBU judges. They knew better what the people wanted than the people. While the judges’ votes historically have never varied too sharply from the popular vote, this time they did – and across the board. Israel received only 52 votes by the EBU judges’ panels. 24 nations awarded the Israeli singer 0 votes. 11 more gave her extremely low votes (3-5 votes). And no nation awarded Israel winning tallies. In fact, many of the nations in which Israel won the popular vote by wide margins had their judges award Israel zero points. Western European elites led the trend: the UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, San Marino, Spain, Finland, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Andorra, Belgium, and Sweden all had been won by Israel with 12 points on the popular vote, but all had the judges award Israel zero points. Four of the five UK judges had ranked Israel as the worst song of the 35.
On the immense strength of the popular vote, and despite the unprecedented split action of the EBU broadcasting and artistic elites of Europe, Israel still finished in fifth place overall. What was equally interesting was not only the popularity, but the image of the Israeli next to the other contestants. Ireland and others fielded singers that were all twisted, depraved or sexually conflicted. They were all orc-like caricatures of art. Except Israel and one or two others (such as Armenia). It was really a contest not only over songs, but over avant-garde artistic depravity versus wholesome ballads. In many ways, Israel represented a return to normalcy, though swirling in a maelstrom of hate and threat. Most European singers represented the degeneracy of a dying culture – a dying culture not only tolerated by but peddled by the continent’s elites. A picture of the most anti-Israeli singer, Ireland’s Bambi Thug (right), juxtaposed with Israel’s, Eden Golan (left), could not be more symbolic and stark:
And yet, what had been laid bare was that the populations of Europe were just fine with Israel and liked the wholesomeness they saw, but the elites of Europe knew better and had to punish Israel and ensure it would lose to protect their twisted cultural bizarreness. The tide of antisemitism, and the self-destructive depravity of it and accompanying it, was largely an immigrant and elite phenomenon; it was not at all populist.
We have yet to see if a new generation will emerge in Europe that will seize the reins from their obviously out of touch elites. Recent elections suggest that may be happening, but it is too early to tell what sort of impact the Eurovision event had and what it may trigger.
Observations
But from these events from Israel on October 7th to Eurovision on May 11, several things are clear. Elites have failed the young generation, and a new generation is arising. In Israel and among American Jews, a new leadership is rising in front of our very eyes from the battlefields of Gaza and U.S. campuses. Among non-Jewish Americans, a new patriotism seems to be stirring that reminds one of the eve of the Reagan era. And in Europe, the populations seem refreshingly to be unmoved by their 2000-year legacy of hating Jews.
Antisemitism is dangerous and rampant, but it is not just tolerated, but encouraged and fomented by elites. We have learned how in the past how antisemitism was the vehicle used by cynical elites to tap into their population’s worst instincts – implying elites may be cynical but not the ultimate font of the evil. But what we see here and in Europe is the opposite: antisemitism is held by elites against the sentiments of the populations. It takes an active role of elites and tolerance, including the protection and encouragement of a minority of antisemites, as well as expressions of their own antisemitic libels, to create the 1930s-like climate of antisemitism that we see today. And still the population did not buy it, or at least this time.
October 7 was a horror. But it triggered an historic change, perhaps a change of eras. And this time, the Jews and Israel are not mere subjects of history, but its catalyst. Jews for two millennia spoke of being a light among nations – much like the American idea of itself being a beacon, John Winthrop’s shining city on a hill as the pilgrim leader on the Mayflower suggested – but by being disempowered, there was hardly any reality of this role for Jews as their quest for mere survival was all-consuming. But now, despite being small and in a war again for its every survival, Israel seems to be casting some light that is shining onto populations and peoples far away, triggering in them a rediscovery of themselves and what made those distant lands and cultures great. Rising from the ashes of October 7, Israel is leading the world to realizing the failure of its elites, the threat to their cultures, and the need to rally to defend the long line of western civilization that ran from Mts. Moriah and Sinai, and from Plato to NATO.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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