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Anything written on the Middle East at this moment in history is almost instantly out of date.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.

Ebrahim Raisi, the hardliner jurist-turned-president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, died in a plane crash over the weekend after coming back from a ceremony marking a new joint dam project with Azerbaijan. Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who was also on board, perished in the crash as well.  Few Iranians outside the political system will mourn their deaths. Raisi, for instance, was a notorious, unapologetic defender of the Iranian regime and first got involved in its machinations in his mid-twenties. In 1988, he served on a panel that handed down death sentences for thousands of dissidents.

Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel Saturday night represents a dangerous escalation for three reasons. The first is its scale, some 300 drones and missiles. Second, it marks the first time the Islamic Regime has launched a lethal attack on Israeli territory from Iran itself, rather than through proxies. Most important of all is the combination of the first two: a major attack launched against Israel from Iranian territory. Although Israel, the US, the UK and, surprisingly, Jordan managed to shoot down nearly all the incoming drones and missiles, it was the thought that counts. And it was a very dangerous thought. Within hours, the Iranian attack changed the region’s strategic landscape.

Twenty-one years ago today, the United States committed its worst foreign-policy mistake in generations: invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the despot who ruled the Arab country with an iron fist for nearly a quarter-century. The entire operation was supposed to be a “cakewalk,” in which the mighty US military, stocked with the best technology and weapons the world had to offer, would pummel a decrepit Iraqi army that was hobbled by international sanctions for the better part of a decade. The mood at the time was serious but stoic. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, argued that the entire war wouldn’t last more than five months.

What do you think of the apothegm “Better late than never?” I think it is often dubious. For confirmation, I adduce the airstrike the Biden administration just conducted against eighty-five targets in Iraq and Syria. The attacks, against infrastructure associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, are billed as the opening salvo in response to last week’s drone attack by Iranian assets in Jordan that left three Americans dead and more than forty injured. Taking a page from an earlier, square-jawed time, officials from the administration tersely commented that America’s “multi-tiered” response would continue at a “time and in a manner of our choosing.”  Spoken like a real administration. I wonder from what storeroom they got the script?

The drone strike that struck near the sleeping quarters of a small US outpost in northeastern Jordan, killing three American troops in the process, has landed like a thud in the corridors of the Biden administration. Hawkish lawmakers who have been jonesing to bomb Iran into the Stone Age for years, such as Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, are using the weekend’s travesty to push the argument to an even higher decibel. The logic: Iran and its proxies need to understand that the US won’t be pushed around. It’s an emotionally satisfying response, but one that could get the United States into a heap of trouble if not thought through and tailored appropriately. President Biden and his advisors have spent the last forty-eight hours talking through options.

Hamas’s most valuable assets are the American hostages it holds. That simple fact means the terrorist organization will demand the highest value in return. What can America give Hamas in exchange? Not prisoners, since the US doesn’t hold any Hamas fighters. That means the US cannot follow the Israeli pattern of giving Hamas three Palestinian prisoners in exchange for every one held by Hamas. Nor can America provide boatloads of cash, as the Biden administration has for Iran. Biden could continuing giving Iran money, but that is much harder in the midst of war. And it is untenable politically to pay Hamas directly while the fighting continues. The Biden team might promise to help rebuild Gaza later, but that’s not valuable to Hamas right now, as it fights for its life.