A year ago, after the brutal Hamas attack, President Biden chose to support Israel diplomatically, militarily, and morally. That was the right decision. The United States offered valuable intelligence information, advanced weaponry, and some prudent advice.
Israel took the weapons and intelligence, but often ignored or rejected the advice.
Now the war in Gaza has expanded to a two-front war with Hezbollah in Lebanon and a third front against Iran is at an inflection point. Israeli operations in Gaza are reportedly winding down, but remnants of Hamas remain and there is no agreement on a ceasefire or a return of hostages or a plan for governance and reconstruction. While commemorating the tragedy of October 7, Israelis are now celebrating the stunning success of its recent killing of Hezbollah leaders and disabling many of its members using Israeli-modified communication devices. But the war in Lebanon is far from over, with Hezbollah retaining huge arsenals of weaponry.
Meanwhile, with its proxies weakened Iran has continued attacks and Israel has retaliated.
Initial reports of minimal damage have now been challenged by some analysts.
At least two dozen long-range Iranian ballistic missiles broke through Israeli and allied air defenses on Tuesday night, striking or landing near at least three military and intelligence installations, according to a review of videos and photos of the attack and aftermath.
Videos verified by The Washington Post showed 20 missiles striking the Nevatim air base, in the southern Negev desert, and three striking the Tel Nof base, in central Israel. Analysts told The Post the visuals were consistent with direct impacts on the bases rather than debris from intercepted missiles. Other videos showed that at least two missiles landed near Tel Aviv in Cinema City Glilot, Hod Hasharon, close to Israel’s Mossad spy agency headquarters, leaving at least two craters.
Joe Cirincione cautions some skepticism.
This situation is very similar to the more limited missile attacks on Israel in 1991. Officials, reporters and experts all rushed to praise the effectiveness of the Patriot missile system in destroying incoming Scuds fired by Iraq. Then-President Bush claimed after the war that the Patriot had intercepted 41 out of 42 Scuds. An extensive congressional investigation (which I staffed) found that the Patriots only hit between 0 and 4 of 45 Scuds fired. Observers mistook explosions in the sky as evidence of intercepts when it was often Patriots exploding near the targets, but missing them or hitting part of the missile but not destroying the warhead…
Although many missile defense proponents are rushing to the airwaves to boost program budgets by claiming this week’s attack demonstrates the effectiveness of missile defenses, policy-makers would be foolish to believe such bombast.
Take a look at the videos. Await reliable ground damage assessments. Above all, don’t rush into new battles believing you have a reliable defense.
Other analysts, such as military historian Eliot Cohen, see an opportunity to take out Iran once and for all.
The series of smashing blows Israel has landed against Hezbollah over the past month—against its leadership, its middle management, its arsenal, and its communications—changes all this. Iran’s most powerful surrogate has been beaten badly in ways from which it may not fully recover. The implications for Iran are profound, coming on top of Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s political leader in a Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse during the new Iranian president’s inauguration. Iran’s attacks in April, and even more so now, are desperate attempts to avoid what Iran’s leaders fear most—strategic humiliation.
To American minds, at least, avoiding humiliation as a strategic objective, or even inflicting it as a tool of strategy, may seem absurd. To the Iranian regime, though, humiliation is potentially lethal. An unpopular regime that is presiding over a feeble economy, backed by a military that cannot protect its own airspace, dependent on a tired revolutionary ideology, led by a repressive and corrupt elite, and directed by the octogenarian last link to the regime’s founder cannot afford humiliation.
One might think that, for Israel, simply parrying the Iranian blow would be enough, as it was in April. It is not. In the Middle East, as in most of the world, if you keep on taking punches without punching back, you look weak, and as Osama bin Laden famously said, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” This is why President Joe Biden’s plea for a “proportional” response by Israel is absurd: The logical consequence would be a large-scale, expensive, and totally ineffective Israeli attack on Iran. Last April, Israel merely hit a radar site in Iran—a flick on the nose to warn of worse to come. This time, it has to deliver…
But this is also an opportunity, for the United States as it is for Israel, to confront an enemy who is in fact weak. Iran has been penetrated by Israeli—and, one must presume, by American and European—intelligence services. The Iranian military is equipped with a mix of obsolete American hardware from the shah’s days, homemade missiles and drones largely intended for offensive use, and a small number of Russian supplied systems like S-300 surface-to-air missiles. Iran is suffering double-digit inflation, a double-digit poverty rate, and a brain drain brought about by its government’s policies. It is heavily dependent on oil revenues to keep going—revenues earned on the 4 million barrels a day exported despite feeble sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.
All of this argues not only for Israeli strikes—which will surely come—but for vigorous American action as well. Israel may well choose to attack economic targets, and in particular the oil industry that keeps Iran’s economy afloat. Attacks on the nuclear program—buried and dispersed at different sites—would probably be more difficult. In either case, Israel will need American help.
Israel has a large and capable air force, including nearly 40 F-35s. But it lacks a large fleet of aerial refueling planes, necessary for long-range strikes, which the United States has in plenty. At the very least, the United States can quietly help supply that deficit. The question is: Should it do more?
The answer is yes. Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden have all insisted that Iran must not acquire nuclear weapons. The first concluded an agreement that would slow but not stop that program; the second scrapped the agreement and tightened the screws of sanctions but did nothing to materially affect the program; the third attempted to resurrect the agreement but failed—and again, did nothing substantive. This is possibly the last opportunity to do something of consequence.
The New York Times reports readiness in Israel to risk that wider war.
For years, Israel and Iran avoided direct confrontation, as Israel secretly sabotaged Tehran’s interests and assassinated its officials without claiming responsibility, and Iran encouraged allies to attack Israel while rarely doing so itself.
Now, the two countries seem prepared to risk a direct, prolonged and extraordinarily costly conflict.
After Israel invaded Lebanon to confront Iran’s strongest ally, Hezbollah, and Iran’s second massive missile attack on Israel in less than six months, Israel seems ready to strike Iran directly, in a much more forceful and public way than it ever has, and Iran has warned of massive retaliation if it does.
“We are in a different story right now,” said Yoel Guzansky, a former senior security official who oversaw Iran strategy on Israel’s National Security Council. “We have a consensus in Israel — among the military, the defense experts, analysts and politicians — that Israel should respond in force to Iran’s attack.”
To many Israelis, there is now little to lose: Iran’s efforts to strike the urban sprawl around Tel Aviv crossed a threshold that Tehran has never previously breached, even during its earlier missile attack in April, which targeted air bases but not civilian areas.
Edward Luce of the Financial Times sees the Israeli Prime Minister moving in this direction while “running rings about Biden.”
Yet somehow Netanyahu — the Houdini of Israeli politics — has managed to survive and even prosper. The latest Israeli polls show that his Likud party would be the largest if a snap election were held now. A large majority of Israelis are opposed to a two-state solution with Palestinians, which Biden has insisted must be Israel’s end goal. Netanyahu has consistently refused to specify the “day after” political settlement for the Gaza war that Biden has been urging on him. “We thought Netanyahu had used up his nine lives,” says Paul Salem, vice-president at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, speaking from Lebanon. “It turns out he had several more lives in his back pocket.”
What happens in the coming days could be fateful for the future of both the Middle East and US politics. At some point Israel will strike back at Iran. The question is whether the Israeli retaliation will qualify as an “escalate to de-escalate” move — as Israel characterised its assault on Hizbollah — or if it will be a full-blown escalation that could trigger a spiralling conflict with Iran. The chances of an Israeli attempt to topple the Iranian regime cannot be fully discounted. Netanyahu earlier this week sent a message to what he called the “Persian” people in which he said: “When Iran is finally free and — that moment will come a lot sooner than people think — everything will be different. Our two ancient peoples, the Jewish people and the Persian people, will finally be at peace.” Last weekend, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and his former point person on the Middle East, urged the US to back an Israeli attempt at regime change in Iran. “Iran is now fully exposed,” Kushner wrote on social media. “Failing to take full advantage of this opportunity to neutralize the threat is irresponsible.” But even a more modest Israeli action would entail risks. Jeffrey Feltman, a former regional envoy for Biden, and who led the US State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in Barack Obama’s administration, says that everything points to further Netanyahu surprises in the coming weeks. “All the indicators are aligning — Israel’s tactical and strategic objectives, Israeli public opinion and Netanyahu’s political survival,” says Feltman.
These comments by Cohen, Kushner, and the Israelis sound terrifyingly like the arguments for attacking Iraq in 2003. Even some who doubted that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program saw Saddam Hussein as a potential threat and accepted war as a quick and easy way to forestall him. Bagdad was a target of opportunity that could be taken with minimal risk. We know how that turned out.
What Cohen and the Israelis don’t say is how this wider war ends. Can regime change in Tehran be achieved without U.S. military involvement in the air and on the ground? Would the Iranian government collapse and be replaced by moderate non-clerics who favor regional peace? Would the Revolutionary Guard admit defeat and turn to managing the businesses they control? Would the Saudis feel free to make a deal with Israel even if there is no Palestinian state?
I fear that Israel is succumbing to the hubris of its recent successes and will overreach, thinking US support is inevitable.
Israel has the right to reject US advice, but the United States also has the right to set conditions on its support for Israeli operations.
Especially dangerous is the Israeli belief in “escalate to deescalate.” I don’t want to risk American lives on the theory that a major attack on Iranian military and economic targets will force Tehran to back down. I don’t think the American people and Congress have signed up for that wider war.