Will Trump TACO on Iran?

Post Photo

The world is undeniably close to learning whether Iran can yet again out-negotiate and out-last feckless Western politicians and save its nuclear-weapons program.  On June 5, Donald Trump said(https://www.axios.com/2025/06/04/iran-nuclear-deal-trump) Iran was “slow-walking” nuclear negotiations with the United States.  His two-month time limit to the Ayatollah Khamenei has either expired already or soon will(https://www.axios.com/2025/03/19/trump-letter-iran-nuclear-deal).  

The moment of decision is near, but there is no credible evidence which way Trump will go.  Is he prepared to accept Israel using force against Iran’s nuclear program, either acting alone or alongside the United States?  Or will we see another episode of what Wall Street calls the “TACO trade”:  Trump Always Chickens Out?  At this point, not even Trump knows the answer.

He may hope to proclaim he has produced a better nuclear deal than Barrack Obama’s flawed 2015 agreement, but this is a risky domestic gambit.  Trump faces palpable political vulnerability if he agrees to something that looks, in substance, like Obama’s deal, permitting Iran to continue any uranium-enrichment capability, let alone one as large and sophisticated as Tehran has already developed.  Indeed, if Iran were allowed to do so under whatever guise, including an “international consortium,” Trumpian claims of outdoing Obama and actually stopping Tehran’s drive for nuclear weapons will be immediately exposed as false.  

This risk to Trump of appearing to “chicken out” to Iran is just as high even if an agreement is disguised as “interim,” or “time limited” or qualified in any cosmetic way.  A poorly camouflaged deal is so intellectually dishonest that, when inevitably discovered, the political damage to Trump would be  extensive and lasting.  Trump’s “zeal for a deal” has already united congressional Republicanshttps://jewishinsider.com/2025/05/most-congressional-republicans-insist-on-no-enrichment-for-iran/), notably tame on almost every other issue, against allowing Iran any enrichment capabilities.  Trump says repeatedly he doesn’t want to see force used, but he will soon have no choice, given his own framing of the Iran issue, let alone political and military reality.

Middle Eastern oil-producing states are reportedly working  quietly to facilitate a US-Iran deal.  Of course, Gulf Arab states would respond affirmatively if asked whether they prefer seeing Iran’s nuclear-weapons program ended peacefully.  But in real-world terms, they are confronted by a different question.  If they must face the risk of hostilities with Iran, would they prefer to do so before Tehran possesses deliverable nuclear weapons, or after?  Understood fully, there is only one correct answer, unless Gulf Cooperation Council members wish to live in Tehran’s nuclear shadow, or to launch full-scale efforts to achieve nuclear-weapons status, precipitating an arms race in which they start far behind

Unsurprisingly, Arabian Peninsula leaders have indicated their worries that, given Tehran’s bizarre worldview, they might be targets of Iranian retaliation should Israel and/or America attack the nuclear program.  The United States also worries that its deployed forces in the Middle East are possible targets, and that Iran’s support for international terrorists and murder-for-hire criminal efforts might also be expanded.  Israel need not speculate.  Tehran and its terrorist proxies, particularly Hezbollah, will try to strike Israel, in whatever way they can.

But assessing possible Iranian retaliation means more than simply listing measures the ayatollahs can take.  So doing affords all manner of possible threats a level of credibility that only plays into Iran’s hands.  Right now, Iran is in its weakest geostrategic position since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.  Its terrorist surrogates Hamans and Hezbollah have been battered, if not yet fully destroyed;  Syria’s Assad regime has fallen;  the Houthis are at least damaged;  and Iran itself has sustained catastrophic losses to ballistic-missile production facilities and some damage to its nuclear program.  

Is a country already in such dire straits really prepared to add as many as four-to-six new enemies, risking the survival of the regime itself, which is already under enormous threat internally and externally?  In short, Iran’s threats sound decidedly hollow.  In any case, American and Gulf Arab interests coincide, arguing for Washington to meld both its defensive and its deterrence strategies against Iran with interested GCC members, and legitimate for Gulf Arabs to be included in US protective measures for military forces in their territories.

Many believe  Israel will not act decisively against Iran’s nuclear program without explicit US approval.  This is incorrect.  As a geographically small nation, like Singapore and most GCC states, Israel knows that nuclear weapons are an existential threat:  just a few nuclear detonations, and there is no more Israel.  Jerusalem acted without Washington’s blessing against Iraq in 2001;  Iran and Syria in 2007;  and against one facility of Tehran’s nuclear-weapons enterprise (never inspected by the IAEA) at the Parchin military base in 2024.  Faced with Iran’s existential threat, Israel will do what it must,  Bibi Netanyahu in particular understands the American saying, “better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.”  And if the Israelis fail to act, they will have only themselves to blame.

This article was first published in The Independant Arabia on June 11, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Why Trump stopped listening to Netanyahu

Donald Trump was widely seen in his first term as a knee-jerk defender of Israel.  Not so now.  Whether and how far Washington splits from Jerusalem, especially on Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, has enormous security implications for America, Israel, and the wider Middle East.

For Trump, personal relationships with foreign heads of government equate to the relations between their countries.  If he is friendly with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, then US-Israeli relations are good.  And vice versa.  Today, neither relationship is fully broken, but both are increasingly strained.  

Seeking the strongly pro-Israel evangelical Christian vote in 2016, Trump pledged to withdraw from Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, and generally provide Israel strong support.  He satisfied that pledge, exiting Obama’s agreement in 2018.  Moreover, Trump moved America’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, merged the separate Palestinian liaison office into our bilateral mission, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and protected Israel at the UN Security Council.  The transactional basis for these acts was clear.  Having close personal relations with Netanyahu, or at least appearing to, buttressed this political imperative.

How good those first-term relations really were invites debate, but a continuing rationale was Trump’s desire for re-election in 2020 and, later, 2024.  Keeping the pro-Israel vote was a top priority in both.   Even though tensions developed between Trump and Netanyahu, few surfaced publicly.  In 2024, Trump held the evangelical vote, and lost Jewish voters to Harris, 66%-32%.  Even many Harris voters believed Trump would safeguard Israel’s interests(https://www.commentary.org/articles/jay-lefkowitz/jewish-vote-2024/).

Now, that electoral constraint is gone. since Trump has essentially admitted he cannot run again(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/read-full-transcript-president-donald-trump-interviewed-meet-press-mod-rcna203514).  Meanwhile, earlier irritants like Netanyahu garnering publicity for his role in the 2020 strike against Iran’s Qassem Soleimani;  swiftly congratulating Joe Biden for winning in 2020;  and his general aptitude for getting more attention than Trump himself, caused personal relations to grow frostier, very likely fed by Trump’s recurring envy of Obama’s 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

So, in just four months since Inauguration, Trump concluded a separate peace with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, ending inconclusive US efforts to clear the Red Sea maritime passage, and leaving Israel in the lurch while Houthi missiles targeted Ben-Gurion airport.  The White House, without Israel, bargained with Hamas for release of their last living American hostage.  Trump’s first major overseas trip was to three Gulf Arab countries, but he skipped Israel, in direct contrast to his first term.  While in Saudi Arabia, Trump lifted sanctions imposed on Syria’s Assad dictatorship, clearly breaking with Israel, which retains grave doubts about the HTS terrorists who ousted Assad.

The record is not entirely negative.  Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court for initiating investigations(https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/imposing-sanctions-on-the-international-criminal-court/) against Netanyahu and his former defense minister, and broadly, but not unreservedly, backs Israel’s campaign against Hamas(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/26/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-trump-isolation.html).

But the greatest divergence has emerged over the existential threat of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.  On April 7, during Netanyahu’s second post-Inaugural visit to the Oval Office(https://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/president-trump-welcomes-netanyahu-for-2nd-white-house-meeting-of-this-term/), no one seemed more stunned than he when Trump announced Steve Witkoff would soon be negotiating with Iran. 

Trump had previously disclosed writing to the Ayatollah Khamenei, expressing openness to negotiation(https://www.axios.com/2025/03/19/trump-letter-iran-nuclear-deal), but setting a two-month deadline, implying military force should talks fail.  If the clock started from the date Iran received the letter, the two-month period has run.  I f it began with the first Witkoff-Iran meeting (April 12 in Oman), the drop-dead date is imminent.  Trump could extend the deadline, but that would simply extend Israel’s peril.  Reports that Witkoff has broached an “interim” or “framework” deal(https://www.axios.com/2025/04/24/iran-us-interim-nuclear-deal) further exacerbate the dangers of Tehran tapping Washington along.  Time is always on the proliferator’s side.  While discussions languish, Iran can even further disperse, conceal, and harden its nuclear-weapons assets.   

Trump acknowledges(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/trump-israel-iran-nuclear.html) pressing Israel more than once(https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/trump-told-netanyahu-not-strike-iran-nuclear) not to strike Iran’s nuclear program.  Such public rebukes to a close ally facing mortal peril are themselves extraordinary, proving how hard Trump is trying to save Witkoff’s endeavors.  Little is known about the talks’ substance, but media reports evidence signs(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/us/politics/as-trump-seeks-iran-deal-israel-again-raises-possible-strikes-on-nuclear-sites.html) of inconsistency and uncertainty, indeed incompetence, over critical issues like whether Iran would be permitted to enrich uranium to reactor-grade levels, the Obama deal’s original sin.  To say Netanyahu is worried is more than an understatement. 

Trump’s behavior is entirely consistent with greater personal distance from Netanyahu, and a desire to be the central figure, rather than Netanyahu’s Israel, taking dispositive action against Tehran’s threat.  It may also reflect the isolationist voices within his administration, although not among Republicans generally, with 52 Senators and 177 Representatives (https://jewishinsider.com/2025/05/most-congressional-republicans-insist-on-no-enrichment-for-iran/) (https://jewishinsider.com/2025/05/most-congressional-republicans-insist-on-no-enrichment-for-iran/) urging Trump not to throw Iran a lifeline. 

Israel did not ask permission in 1981 before destroying Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor, or in 2007 before destroying Iran’s reactor-under-construction in the Syrian dessert.  Trump is grievously mistaken if he thinks Netanyahu will “chicken out,” standing idly by as Iran becomes a nuclear-weapons state.  Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

This article was first published in The Hill on June 6, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Starmer’s turn against Israel will prolong war

Removing the ayatollahs in Iran is the only route to securing longterm peace in Gaza

Israel is now grappling with possibly the last phases of eliminating the Hamas terrorist threat. Instead of support from a unified West determined to extirpate terrorism, however, Jerusalem is under attack for attempting exactly that. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “horrified” by Israel’s recent “escalation”. Foreign Secretary David Lammy condemned the “dark new phase in this conflict,” suspended trade negotiations with Israel, and said it should agree to a cease-fire to free remaining hostages, as if that were Jerusalem’s only legitimate objective.

Last week, a gunman in Washington brutally murdered two Israeli embassy employees, chanting “free, free Palestine” while being arrested. Thereafter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Starmer and others were “on the wrong side” of justice, humanity and history. Starmer has not responded. Before he does, he should at least check the history.

Immediately after Hamas’s barbaric October 7, 2023, invasion, Netanyahu declared that Israel would seek Hamas’s political and military destruction. This was an entirely legitimate exercise of UN Charter Article 51, which affirms “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense.”

Jerusalem was not limited to a “proportional” response, something comparable to the Hamas terrorist attack, any more than America was limited to a “proportional” response to Pearl Harbor. States are entitled not merely to repel threats, but to destroy them, as the allies did to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Moreover, clear from the outset and becoming clearer by the day as new information emerges, Hamas’s attack was part of Iran’s “ring of fire strategy” against Israel, a strategy implemented by the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.  Just to remind, “Quds” is an Arabic term for Jerusalem, celebrated on Ramadan’s last day by Palestinians as “Quds Day.”  Implementing its “ring” strategy, Tehran created or fostered a chain of terrorist groups: Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Shia militias in Iraq. Bashar al-Assad’s Syria was a key ally.

The anti-Israel strategy unfolded across the Middle East immediately after October 7. From the beginning, Israel saw Gaza as part of a wider war, not merely a discrete conflict. Now far more evident than at the outset, however, is the war’s economic dimension, a critical factor long before October 7.

Iran and other regional states, groups and individuals provided billions of dollars, directly and through international agencies like UNRWA, ostensibly for humanitarian aid. Tragically, however, as we now know, Hamas diverted much of these “humanitarian” resources to build Gaza’s underground fortress of tunnel networks; armed itself to the hilt (including with missile arsenals capable of menacing all Israel); and effectively mobilised most Gazans to serve as human shields for that fortress. If Hamas kept adequate records that can be recovered, the story will embarrass those who enabled this massive fraud, particularly in the West.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem is pursuing its post-October 7 goals, which must include eliminating all potential assets, in cash or in kind, Hamas can use to retain control over Gaza’s population. Working through UNRWA over decades, Hamas seized control over the distribution of virtually all humanitarian supplies entering Gaza. Credible reports (and Hamas records, if recovered) demonstrate how the terrorists rewarded their cadres at the expense of others, using control over the internal distribution of supplies in Gaza to cement their political control.

This pattern is nothing new. After the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein used the UN’s “Oil for Food” programme to gain control over Iraq’s population. As originally conceived, an intrusive UN presence would use Iraq’s oil revenues for humanitarian aid to its people, thus ensuring the non-political delivery of assistance to the truly needy, while also demonstrating to Iraqis that Saddam had effectively lost control of his country. He repeatedly rejected this model, until the Clinton administration conceded that his regime would disburse Oil-for-Food aid. That mistake helped Saddam reinforce his authoritarian grip, repress Kurds and other dissidents, and again threaten his neighbours,

Hamas has thus simply been following Saddam’s plan. Israel, by contrast, has followed principles Herbert Hoover first articulated in World War I when he organised relief programs in Europe, starting in Belgium. Hoover ordered that no aid would go to combatants, and that his volunteers would distribute the aid, or at least rigorously monitor delivery to prevent diversion to combatants.

Hamas scorned Hoover’s principles, and continues to do so. Comments by Starmer, Lammy and others ignore both the reality in Gaza today and Hoover’s wise admonitions about ensuring that relief goes to those who actually need it, not those who use the aid to oppress them.

Israel has a plan to aid Gazans, backed by Washington but opposed by the UN. Instead of criticising Israel, Starmer should support and help perfect Jerusalem’s plan and thereby properly deliver humanitarian assistance.

The only way Gazans can ever be free is to eliminate the curse of Hamas. And because Gaza is part of Iran’s larger war against Israel and the West, that will happen only when Iranians are free of the ayatollahs. That should be our common goal.

This article was first published in The Daily Telegraph on May 26, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Will Lebanon Weather the Moment or Whither?

Post Photo

Dr. Dave Wurmser

There is a spurt of great optimism on both sides of the political spectrum in the United States, and even Israel, that the Lebanese government, now that it has installed Joseph Aoun as its president, will finally leverage Israel’s devastating victory over Hizballah to assert Lebanon’s sovereignty. In order to uphold the November ceasefire between Hizballah and Israel, it will execute not only UNSC Resolution 1701 – under which Hizballah was to be removed from south of the Litani River – but also UNSC Resolution 1559 – under which all armed factions are to be disarmed and the monopoly of power be returned to the Lebanese government. Moreover, for the first time in five decades, powerful regional forces seem held at bay; the PLO is gone and Iran and Hizballah are laid to waste. Lebanon is back in Lebanese hands. And indeed, the speech Aoun gave upon assuming office contained language that lends substance to this promise: “The era of Hizballah is over; We will disarm all of them.” 

Perhaps with age, one’s more jaded and curmudgeonly essence comes forward, but Lebanon likely is far from out of the woods, far from adequately executing its obligations under the ceasefire, and certainly far from emerging as a calm state at peace with Israel.  The problem is because Lebanon’s instability arises not from the external array of forces, but from the very foundations of the Lebanese state that then are leveraged by external forces. 

The quote that never was

Let’s start first with the most obvious.  President Aoun was reported to have said the above quote.  The problem is he did not say it.  He actually said:

“My mandate begins today, and I pledge to serve all Lebanese, wherever they are, as the first servant of the country, upholding the national pact and practicing the full powers of the presidency as an impartial mediator between institutions … Interference in the judiciary is forbidden, and there will be no immunity for criminals or corrupt individuals. There is no place for mafias, drug trafficking, or money laundering in Lebanon,”

To note, he raised this in the context of the judiciary, not the military.  Regarding the disbanding of the Hizballah militia as a military force, he was careful in his words and suggested it would be subsumed into the state rather than outright eliminated – exactly the greatest fear of Israel (Hizbazllah’s integration into the LAF):

“The Lebanese state – I repeat the Lebanese state – will get rid of the Israeli occupation … My era will include the discussion of our defensive strategy to enable the Lebanese state to get rid of the Israeli occupation and to retaliate against its aggression.” 

The structure that cannot reform

Words in the Middle East mean only so much.  One can dismiss this episode of the quote that never as essentially inconsequential.  The problem is that it reflects something far deeper: the structure of the Lebanese state – the National Pact to which he refers — cannot develop into what we hope it will, because the structure of the Lebanese state is not aligned with the only form of Lebanon that potentially gives reason to its very existence as an independent state, let alone one at peace with its southern neighbor.  

The existence of Lebanon is not a result of a colonial gift to a Christian community by the French at the end of World War I.  Lebanon actually has an older and more defined reason to exist than almost any other state in the region but Israel, Iran, Turkey and Egypt. The colonial definition of Lebanon established at the end of World War I unwittingly and out of the best intentions to the Lebanese Christians actually undermined that essence. 

Lebanon embodies the result of a major event: the Battle of Ayn Dera in 1711, where the powerful Chehab clan both converted from Sunni Islam to Christianity, aligned with the powerful Khazen Maronite clan, and unified the remaining non-Greek Orthodox Christians into a powerful force, all aligned with half of the Druze under the Jumblatt, Talhuq, Imad and Abd al-Malik clans. This Maronite-Druze coalition won against their premier enemy – the Ottoman empire and its governors of Sidon and Damascus — and expelled the Ottoman proxies, the Arslan, Alam al-Din, and Sawaf Druze clans from Mount Lebanon to the east in what today is the area of Jebel Druze/Suweida in Syria. This was the key enemy around which the Lebanese state was formed, thus, in 1711 was the Ottoman threat from Damascus and the area of Sidon and ousting the Turkish nemesis than a Sunni Arab issue, which played a marginal role as proxies, if they played any at all at that time. The Shiites were not even a factor, although they too held as a their nemesis the Ottoman specter, of which the Sunni Arabs was a mere instrument.

The problem with the Lebanese structure is that the military and its government are fundamentally anchored to the National Pact: a concept of a multi-confessional equilibrium among four communities, and not around the core idea of Lebanon as established as a result of the battle of Ayn Dara in 1711 around a Maronite-Druze core. This multi-confessional essence divorced Lebanon from its only reason for existence: to be a homeland for a Christian state aligned with the Druze ally. Lebanon, as constructed embodies the multi-confessionalism, and not the alliance of the 1711 Battle of Ayn Dera and its results.

At first, this was a moot point: the Maronites and the Druze were a strong majority, and thus dominated the State. But the Greek Orthodox were never fully on board with the idea, and over the 20th century, the Sunni populations grew, largely through immigration, as did the Shiite, to the point at which the Christians were no longer the majority.  The multi-confessional equilibrium thus shifted from being a cover for Maronite dominance to being a genuine rickety, artificial coalition of forces that could not manage to overpower each other. Any attempt by any faction to overpower the other at this point inherently then resulted in a breakdown of the equilibrium, a collapse of civic order and violent conflict.  

There is really no way to square the structure of the Lebanese government and its premier materialization, the armed forces, which is a manifestation of this equilibrium of forces, to move the nation from the essence of where Lebanon needs to go – a rejection of the National Pact and return to its original and only raison d’être and therein be the only regional Christian nation that at this critical time gathers the various regional Christian communities into a homeland as their last hope for regional survival.

At the end of the day, neither Syria nor Lebanon exist, because they are institutions and institutions don’t really exist in the Middle East the way we understand them in the West. While we believe institutions have a real existence that transcends those that constitute it – even the head of an institution in the West is considered a steward rather than an embodiment of the structure, institutions in the region are merely the embodiment of the people and groups that constitute it at that moment. Indeed, institutions are structures to regulate intercommunal interactions and conflicts, and they do not have an essence, sovereignty, existence of their own. And since the institution of the Lebanese military and state are fundamentally anchored to an equilibrium, they cannot survive any attempt to suppress one element of that equilibrium to the advantage of others without triggering conflict.

Strategic forces at work

That said, neither are the outside forces fully held at bay. Indeed, the looming threats from the outside push the fragile artificial institution of the Lebanese state and army to hedge yet further rather than move decisively to extirpate the remains of Hizballah. And its inherent instability and misalignment with its original purpose invite those external interventions.

Indeed, there is logic in that for the Lebanese government, because it has a neighbor next door – Syria — which essentially has never recognized Lebanon’s existence as a valid state. Syria was also established as an Arab state with large minorities – a multi-ethnic, confessional quilt, and as such is not easily distinguished from a multi-confessional Lebanon. The mix is different; a much larger Sunni Arab community, with large Alawite minorities.  And the Christians in Syria were largely Greek Orthodox – who had made their peace with Arab nationalism since it allowed them to transform the irreconcilable and potentially mortal Turkish nemesis into a digestible Arab one. As such, if Lebanon were to remain a multi-confessional state rather than narrowly a Maronite state with a Druze entity, then its digestion by Syria is conceivable. 

And again, what is most concerning is that what is emerging in Damascus is not a multi-confessional nation with enough of its own problems to leave Lebanon alone, but a Sunni-Arab state under Turkish influence, if not possible suzerainty. And Turks are flooding the new Syria, as well.  As such, the Ottoman nemesis that was defeated in Ayn Dara in 1711 is on the move to reverse that verdict – this time without their Druze allies but with the natural affinity of the sizeable Sunni Arab populations of northern Lebanon.   

As such, the Lebanese government right now is more worried about what will threaten them from Damascus, and about the rise of the Sunni Lebanese alliance with the HTS entity emerging in Damascus and led by Ahmad ash-Shara (Abu Muhammad al-Julani) to subvert Lebanese independence on behalf of the neo-Ottoman project led by Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, than they are with Hizballah — which Israel essentially has reduced to such diminished parameters that they pose a distant, and not acute problem that needs immediate and urgent attention for the central Lebanese government and its multi-confessional military. Indeed, the Lebanese government may even entertain husbanding the remaining forces of Hizballah as an asset to mobilize in a rainy day against the Sunni threat emerging from Ankara and Damascus.

And to deal with such a complex regional context at the same time as injecting a cataclysmic earthquake – namely the erasing of the now-diminished and vulnerable structure of Shiite protection and power — into the domestic tapestry anchored to an equilibrium that no faction can mast and dominate, is likely seen by any current Lebanese government as a prescription for civil war and invasion by the new Syrians and their Turkish overlords. This would be tantamount to willfully inviting the apocalypse.

As such it is unlikely that the Lebanese government will risk its very existence as an artificial institution anchored to a false equilibrium, by trying to rearrange the power structures. It is far more worried about maintaining a sense of stability to not give Syria the immediate ability to interfere and enter through the Sunni question, effectively ending Lebanon as a country.

In the end, Lebanon’s only path to long term survival lies not with this equilibrium, but through returning to the essence of what Lebanon was meant to be, the Spirit of Ayn Dara and 1711, and establish a protective strategic umbrella with other regional forces, such as Israel (whose alliance with Lebanon is the only way for Israel to ever secure its northern border), and the Western world that is still interested in preserving the oldest churches of Christianity in the cradle of Christianity.

But this involves an upheaval which at this moment, the Lebanese people appear unwilling to entertain – and understandably so.  Lebanon’s people, being very averse to conflict after decades of civil war, would rather kick the can down the road and maintain even a bad equilibrium, rather than upset the apple cart and descend into intercommunal strife.  It is in this context that President Aoun’s call for integration of all militias – essentially a re-manifestation of the national pact and integration of Hizballah into it– needs to be understood rather than the clean call to disarm and erase Hizballah which the EU, US and Israel expect.

And given that insurmountable reality, peace with Israel and a strategic reorganization of the coastal Levant will have to wait – until the Syrian cauldron again comes to visit, as Lebanon’s Sunnis align with it, and as the neo-Ottoman empire threatens – of which will shortly happen.  Only in the framework of that will there be a realignment of Lebanon and likely strategic cooperation and even peace with Israel.

Negotiating Advice for Ukraine Supporters

Post Photo

During the 2024 campaign, candidate Donald Trump said he could resolve the Ukraine war in twenty-four hours by getting together with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky to thrash things out.  At a January 7 press conference, President-elect Trump conceded it could take up to six months.  Call that learning.  

Trump fundamentally wants the war to disappear.  He has said repeatedly it would never have occurred had he been President, as he has also said about the ongoing Middle East conflict.  Of course, these statements are, by definition, neither provable nor disprovable, but they reflect his visceral feeling that the wars are Biden’s problem and should disappear when Biden does.

Neither war will disappear so quickly, but Trump’s comments strongly suggest that he is indifferent to the terms on which they end.  That is likely bad news for Ukraine, though it could be good news for Israel in its struggle against Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy.  As Inauguration Day nears, there is precious little information publicly available about what Trump will actually do.  And, because he has neither a coherent philosophy nor a strategic approach to foreign affairs, what he says in the morning may not apply in the afternoon.

Accordingly, those concerned for Ukrainian and Western security should focus clearly on what is negotiable with Moscow and what is not.  Early decisions on the central components of potential diplomacy can have far-reaching implications that the parties will inevitably try to turn to their benefit.  Ukraine especially must make several key decisions about how to proceed.  Consider the following.

Although a cease-fire linked to commencing negotiations may be inevitable because of pressure from Trump, such a cease-fire is not necessarily in Ukraine’s interest.  Talking while fighting was a successful strategy for the Chinese Communist Party in its struggle against the Kuomintang during and after World War II.  It could work for Ukraine today under certain conditions.  Most important, of course, is the continued supply of adequate military assistance, which is questionable with Trump in office.

But a cease fire can be more perilous for Ukraine than for Russia:  the longer negotiations take, the more likely it is the cease-fire lines become permanent, a new border between Ukraine and Russia far into the future.  As negotiations proceed, the absence of hostilities will provide opportunities for Moscow to seek full or at least partial easing of economic sanctions, which many Europeans seem poised to concede.  Moreover, once hostilities stop, they are far harder politically to resume, which is also likely to Ukraine’s disadvantage.  Although Russia would probably win an indefinite war of attrition, it also needs time to rebuild its debilitated military and economy.  A cease fire affords that opportunity, and thereby buys time for Russia to heal its wounds and prepare the next attack.  Russia waited eight years after its 2014 offensive, and can afford to wait again until the West is distracted elsewhere.  

If Trump insists on a cease-fire-in-place and contemporaneous negotiations, Ukraine must be careful to avoid having the talks aim at a permanent solution rather than a temporary accommodation.  Russia will see any deal as temporary in any case, no matter what it says publicly.  Vladimir Putin obsesses over reincorporating Ukraine into a new Russian empire, and each slice of territory Russia takes back brings that goal closer.  Negotiating an “end” to the war plays into the Kremlin’s hands, since it provides the false impression to gullible Westerners that there is no risk of future aggression.

Both the cease-fire issue and the duration of any deal raise two other questions:  should there be “peacekeepers” along the cease-fire line, and should Ukraine insist on “security guarantees” from the West (NATO or otherwise) against future Russian aggression?

Peacekeeping is operationally complex, and rarely successful in any sense other than helping prolong a military stalemate.  That is nearly the uniform outcome of UN peacekeeping.  Peacekeeping forces (like UNIFIL in Lebanon or UNDOF on the Golan Heights) simply become part of the landscape, in peace or war.  The Security Council loses interest in resolving the sources of the underlying conflict.  The peacekeepers become irrelevant, as recent developments along the cease-fire line between Israel and Syria demonstrate.  In short, peacekeepers are essentially only hollow symbols.  

Indeed, it is the recognition of UN ineffectiveness that has likely inspired calls for deploying NATO peacekeepers along the Ukraine-Russia line-of-control.  But does anyone expect Russia to agree meekly?  Will Moscow not suggest peacekeepers from Iran or North Korea along with NATO?  Moreover, there has been little discussion about what a peacekeeping force’s rules of engagement would be, whether deployed by the UN or NATO.  Would these rules be typical of UN operation, where the peacekeepers can only use force only in self-defense?  Or would the rules be more robust, allowing force in aid of their mission?  Really?  In aid of their mission, NATO peacekeepers would be allowed to use force against Russian troops?  Or Ukrainian troops?  In such circumstances, potential troop-contributing countries would make themselves very scarce.

Future security guarantees for Ukraine, which it is insisting upon, are unfortunately likely to be blue smoke and mirrors.  Russia has repeatedly said that NATO membership  —  the only security guarantee that really matters  —  is a deal-breaker.  European Union security guarantees?  Good luck with that.  Security guarantees by individual nations?  That was the approach of the Budapest agreements on returning Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia;  they didn’t work out so well.  In short, “security guarantees” are mellifluous words, but evanescent without US and NATO participation, which Trump seems unlikely to endorse.

Negotiations are looming primarily because Trump wants the war to go away.  Europe is too tired and too incapable of charting a different course.  Contemplating these depressing scenarios, therefore, Ukraine and its supporters may have little choice but to acquiesce in talks on unfavorable terms.  For that very reason, Kyiv should be very cautious on what it agrees with Trump.

This article was first published in 19fortyfive on January 12, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

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

By David Wurmser[1]


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Instead of supporting indigenous Syrian opposition, President Obama subcontracted to Turkey and Qatar the task to define and support the opposition to President Assad of Syria as his regime descended into civil war.  The threat of ISIS has thus remained ever since, and with Iran’s going down, Turkey feels its oats and surfs the crest of the ISIS-remnant wave, — rather than the Free Syrian Army, which sought closer ties to the West — to expansion.
  • ⁠The U.S. remained wedded to trying to sustain Syria as a unified fiction of a state, fearing its partition would set a precedent to trigger a collapse of the Sykes-Picot foundation.  The same mistake was replicated in Libya, which had strategic consequences for Egypt. As a result, Egypt is slowly strategically also now drifting in a dangerous direction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Photo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Photo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Biden-Starmer Giveaway Helps China

Post Photo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first and perhaps last Iran-Israel war

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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