Iran

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader and strategist responsible for the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, is dead, killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in a tunnel beneath his hometown of Rafah in Gaza.   Although the Biden administration (rightfully) congratulated Israel, both President Biden and Vice President Harris had previously demanded Israel not stage a major military operation in Rafah, where Sinwar and other Hamas leaders were killed. That advice matched the administration’s strategic wisdom throughout the conflict.   With Sinwar gone, the key questions now are: what is the endgame in Gaza? And how does Israel’s success in Gaza affect the current battle against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the future battle against the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Anything written on the Middle East at this moment in history is almost instantly out of date. As Lenin said: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” The Arab-Israeli war in 1967, the Iranian revolution in 1979, the invasion of Iraq in 2003...the region may once again be at one of those forks in the road that dictate the fate of nations for years to come. Journalists’ predictions age like milk out of the fridge. Nevertheless, here are some: Israel attacks Iran. This isn’t a hard one. The question is what form that attack will take. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has wanted to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before, only to be stopped by the US.

Iran on Tuesday launched 180 ballistic missiles against Israel, a democracy the size of New Jersey. It was the largest escalation to date in a year-long, seven-front war waged by the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism against Israel, the United States, and global maritime shipping. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris must come to terms with the fact that this attack resulted from their own foreign policy — subsidized by billions of dollars in US sanctions relief, legitimized by strategic accommodations to Tehran, encouraged by pressure on Israel and invited by the non-stop signaling of American fear of escalation.

A few hours before Iran launched missiles at Israel, America’s spy satellite saw Iran moving the weapons onto their launching pads. They told Israel (and leaked to the media) that an attack was “imminent.” They were right. Within hours, several hundred Iranian missiles were flying toward the Jewish State, just as they had in April. The earlier attack caused little damage — most of the missiles were intercepted — and early reports are that the recent attack met the same fate. Israel’s success shooting down the missiles is crucial, not only because it saved lives but because it does not require Israel to launch a full-scale counter-attack. Safety from the missiles did not protect all Israelis, though.