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The war has highlighted the depth and scope of Iran’s capacity to mobilise its proxies: Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. (Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)
Amid the continuing destruction in Gaza and the surrounding global fallout, one thing becomes ever clearer. Even as Israel’s war stutters, Iran’s broader campaign against it, and by extension what we might call the American-led order, is growing in strength.
Six months on from October 7, it’s hard to see how Israel can achieve its stated goals of dismantling Hamas and rescuing its remaining hostages. The IDF has only rescued three hostages during its ground operations in Gaza, which is a good indicator of how unrealistic the latter always was. But Hamas is also far from defeated: the terror group’s top three commanders remain at large, and its fighters are already re-emerging in areas of Gaza City that were supposedly cleared. Israel claims to have killed approximately half of its 40,000 fighters, but given the amorphous nature of the terror campaign, and the radicalising effects of Israel’s operations on the Gazan population, the notion of totally eliminating Hamas remains fanciful.
According to the February 2024 US Annual Threat Assessment report compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Hamas will be able to continue as “lingering armed resistance… for years to come, and the military will struggle to neutralise Hamas’s underground infrastructure, which allow insurgents to hide, regain strength, and surprise Israeli forces”. And all of this for near-universal global outrage and condemnation.
Israel had not just a right but a duty to respond to the October 7 atrocities. No state could stand by and do nothing. No nation could suffer such a loss and not respond. But the events set in motion by October 7 were always going to be about more than just Israel and Gaza. A localised war has now become perhaps the primary front in a much broader conflict between the American-led order on the one hand and, on the other, a loose axis of states with little in common except a common desire to oppose that order. In the Middle East, the primary player is Iran — and it is exploiting events with sadistic ruthlessness and efficacy.
As ever, its strategy is somewhat ad hoc — especially given its own internal unrest and dying Supreme Leader — and based around opportunism as much as forethought. As ever, it also combines political and military objectives. Beyond Iran’s longstanding armed support for both Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, its major concern — and indeed that of Hamas and all states opposed to Israel — was the apparent integration of Israel into the Arab world following the 2020 Abraham Accords, which saw normalisation (as opposed to peace) treaties between Jerusalem and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. Next up on the diplomatic slate was an even greater prize: normalisation with the Sunni Lion and home of Islam’s two holiest sites, Saudi Arabia. The thought was simply too nauseating for Hamas or Tehran to bear, and it was their desperate desire to sabotage further Israeli-Arab rapprochement that, in part, triggered October 7.
And it worked. For the moment, the Abraham Accords are holding. But a daily stream of the most visceral suffering from Gaza is enraging Arab populaces across the Middle East. For now, there is no talk of further normalisation. The February US threat report also assessed that “Iran will seek to use the conflict in Gaza to denounce Israel, decry its role in the region, and try to dissuade other Middle Eastern states from warming ties with Israel.” It was spot on. Tehran, which had arguably been more isolated in the region than Israel, has used the war to expand its regional diplomatic relations. In November of last year, el-Sisi of Egypt and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had a meeting on the side of the Arab Summit in Riyadh to discuss a possible expansion of bilateral relations. Then, this February, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, went on a tour of Lebanon, Syria and Qatar. Tehran is on the diplomatic offensive.
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SubscribeThe year … was born https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pYxOzIvug9c&pp=ygUOaXJhbiBpcmFuIHNvbmc%3D
Extremely serious.
This is an excellent up to date strategic analysis of the Iran and regional proxies aspect of the war on Israel. It connects the Hamas unprovoked October attack, to Hamas’s goal in doing that, of creating an image of Israeli belligerence; and suggests Iran is planning to follow the same playbook. That confirms this is a new warfare strategy that takes advantage of social media virality, Western intellectual trends such as “decolonisation”, and the vulnerability, especially of elites, to manipulation by information warfare methods ( e.g. “Pallywood” emotional narratives), in order to control and manipulate the United Nations and what have historically been pro-Israel states (especially the USA, but UK etc as well).
The article makes it clearer that the point of recent initial strikes into Israel, such as Hamas’s October attack or Iran’s planned mass drone attack, isn’t an underwhelming attempt to dislodge Israel directly by such an attack per se, but are a leveraged pincer tactic intended to put Israel into the dilemma of, as Patrikarakos says, having a duty to respond militarily: but thereby also walking into the propaganda ambush mentioned above, that Israel is unprepared for and has poor capacity to counter.
The article also demonstrates that the international dimension of the conflict also has two distinct elements: 1) weaken Israel’s alliances while 2) building a ring of hostile state and non-state actors around Israel, to lay a siege. It’s highly complex as a war fighting strategy and Israel is certainly existentially vulnerable.
We in Western countries can, and must, counter at least part of this strategy by confronting our addled progressive elites, who pressure our own states into appeasement of or complicity with Islamic extremism and Western anti-Israel activism.
Agree to a point IS. Would add alot of the strategy used by Iranian regime and IRGC is not as coordinated as we might think. Different elements look to outdo each other in constant internal power plays. The IRGC also has a power-play currently with more moderate Iranian leaders over the Supreme leader succession. We should assume things not always as joined up as the regime itself may want to convey. That of course creates a danger as well that they’ll have elements ‘madder’ than even the core of the regime, but Mossad and US will be well aware all is not straight-forward and it’ll want to divide and rule where it can.
It is extremely serious.
If Israel has walked into a trap, perhaps it needs better leadership? Perhaps supporters of Israel’s actions in Gaza should consider that it may be committing a strategic mistake?
Whether you like it or not, and regardless of the horror of Hamas’s initial attack, the majority of the relatively neutral Western population is not going to look at the events in Gaza and decide to pressure Govts into backing Israel to a greater extent than they already do. It’s a fantasy and it would be better to deal with reality.
I had a reply to this in the other thread, but UnHerd won’t allow it. Certainly is a fickle site.
New leadership is desperately needed within the state of Israel. When i put this point forward several weeks ago, some chose to see it as an ‘attack’ on Israel. We’re now seeing the consequences of such political illiteracy.
I’ve also made previously made comments regarding Israel’s leadership and received dozens of red downvotes. But it seems to be moderating now.
At the moment it looks to me like Netanyahu was caught out and is now desperately trying to make amends, but only making things worse. It’s a tragedy for everyone.
Polls in Israel show the Centrist National Unity Party would win if an election were held now, change may be on the way.
Even if Netanyahu goes, polls show that Israelis are overwhelming in support of the present military actions designed to eliminate Hamas, as are all the opposition parties. So I wouldnt expect any changes in the current military ops, even if Netanyahu exits the political scene.
Most of the readership on here see anything less than blind praise of everything Netanyahu does as anti-Israel.
I’m not sure that’s true. I am a supporter of Israel and jump to it’s defence when I feel it’s being criticised unfairly. But, I completely get that Netanyahu might not be perfect. My issue when I think this way though is that I don’t know what perfect might look like. If this was a game of chess, the October attack would have seemed like a very powerful move. My problem is that it’s hard not to conclude that it might have been a checkmate. In which case, what might anyone have done differently? Would the country have accepted that ‘we’ll do nothing and negotiate in the hope they apologise for the rape and murder and return the hostages’? Obviously not so what could the alternative have been to an all out attack as Netanyahu has done?
That’s a very fair point. What we do know is that the families of the hostages were not happy with Netanyahu and the invasion, seeing (correctly I think) that it puts at risk the lives of the people it claims to be saving. I’m no military strategist, but why not a prisoner exchange followed by a more discriminatory special operation to take out Hamas leaders?
Because Hamas demands that 100 or more terrorists in prisons will be exchanged for one Israeli hostage.
I still don’t get, what all the critics in Western countries wanted Israel to do. None of them would have tolerated that over a thousand of their citizens were killed or kidnapped. US and NATO went into Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11. How many innocent people were killed in those wars?
None of the neighbouring “friendly” Arab countries offered refuge to any of Palestinian during this war. What about their “sisters and brothers” in Jordan?
Well most Palestinian prisoners being considered for a prisoner swap are ordinary women and minors convicted for throwing stones so not sure how much of a threat they pose. Many of Israel’s detainees get locked up for months, or even years, without ever being charged with a crime, so you could argue that Israel should release those prisoners anyway. Again remember the behaviour of the settlers in the West Bank who no one – not even Unherd commenters – ever condones.
But that’s a good point re the US reaction to 9/11, and to criticise Israel now without criticising the US response then would be a contradiction – only, I don’t think the US response was necessary, and the killing of almost 1 million (and the deaths of 3 million more through the disruption that followed) which resulted was extremely wasteful and yet another example of how wars against committed insurgents are fruitless (Vietnam, Northern Ireland etc). I can’t think of any that have succeeded without a peace deal with the adversary.
I wish people didn’t just seize upon implausible anti Western propaganda figures for casualties! 4.5 million casualties seems extremely high to me. Nothing like that number were killed or injured by the Allies (mainly Americans) in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Could I have your numbers then please? Simply telling me I’m wrong without supplying anything won’t convince I’m afraid!
PS here are mine to clarify:
940,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence.
An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.
38 million — the number of war refugees and displaced persons.
The U.S. federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $8 trillion.
This doesn’t seem implausible to me over a 20 year conflict. And all this to create chaos in Iraq and effectively install a more extreme Taliban in Afghanistan.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/#:~:text=Over%20940%2C000%20people%20have%20died,4.5%2D4.7%20million%20and%20counting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/15/war-on-terror-911-deaths-afghanistan-iraq/
‘we’ll do nothing and negotiate in the hope they apologise for the rape and murder and return the hostages’
It’s a very difficult thing to accept, but having being out-manoeuvred by the initial attack the above may be something like the best bet, alongside making Israel’s defence more effective. It would have cost Netanyahu his job but resigning would have been the honourable thing to do in the situation anyway.
Yes I wonder the same. Take responsibility for his neglect of the border, which seems to be the key secondary cause of October 7th, and then put the money which has gone into offensive measures into greater defensive ones? The resignation was already being called for by thousands of street protestors in Israel during the summer.
Let’s assume there is new leadership in Israel.
How would new leadership respond differently to Hamas attack?
If you scratch under the surface of many “poor Gaza people, blah, blah” comments, they basically advocate appeasement of genocidal antisemites of Iran and its allies.
Real question is, why Israel should be held to different standards than every other government.
Idea that failed states like Mexico or South Africa have any rights to lecture Israel on correct policies is beyond joke.
New leadership will also support the war on Gaza. The people have made their stance quite clear, including those that are liberal.
“If Israel has walked into a trap, perhaps it needs better leadership?”
The problem with this perspective is that it ignores what this trap is. One side of this war is perfectly willing both to intentionally kill the other sides non-combatants, and to deliberately increase the risk of its own non-combatants’ dying, in order to make the other side ‘look bad’ to useful idiots in the West.
This “trap” is more like ‘suicide bombing’ on a society-wide scale, by Hamas – the elected and widely-endorsed govt of Gaza has decided to turn its entire society into a collective of suicide bombers, some actually crossing the border to kill Israelis, other standing shoulder-to-shoulder with terrorists to shield the terrorists with their ‘innocent’ bodies.
If you have lived in the age of the Geneva Convention (as we all have), it is easy to forget that it is a product of a specific kind of Christian-inflected post-Enlightenment intellectual and moral framework. Hamas does not subscribe to that perspective, and neither do many of its religious and ideological fellow travelers in the West – they think “resistance” justifies any kind of immorality.
In a nutshell, there is only one thing for Israel to do… it must walk into the trap. And then through it.
I don’t ignore what the trap is. Regardless of any differences in moral code or historical context, a trap is a trap is a trap. You don’t knowingly walk into a trap unless you have a way of defeating that trap, and I’m not sure Israel does.
Nor does Israel have any way of not walking into the trap… and still protecting its citizens. ‘Not walking into the trap’ = letting Hamas kill Israeli citizens. The so-called trap is better than that.
Better leadership would always be attractive – but is that what the other potential leaders offer? What are their alternative strategies?
Agree. One of this writer’s best articles, since it’s informative in addition to being an opinion. Both the writer and yourself highlight the ad hoc nature of the strategic manoeuvres co-ordinated by Iran which can be pieced together and make attempts to defend (let alone strike back) very difficult, the targets being multiple and disparate.
While Israel struggles to respond, the Western response starts to show signs of weariness, and Iran is taking it’s lead here from Russia. On both fronts (Gaza and Ukraine), it’s the West that’s under attack. Meanwhile, we’re beset with hoards of quislings on our own turf.
The fightback involves the traditional use of weapons, but even more important is the fightback in terms of propaganda (as per my comment in the other of today’s articles, and misunderstood – probably wilfully), morale and a re-assertion of the values of freedom and democracy, however imperfect these might appear to some who know only the value of false ‘certainty’.
After the progressive response to Oct 7th, my contempt of progressives shifted towards animus. I now think of them as enemies of humanity. I’m sure I am not alone in this shift in thinking. My question is how we confront such people who seem so ideologically possessed. Especially when the judiciary of many western countries are captured by progressive activist judges who stifle democratic reform. The suppression of the AFD in Germany is a prime example.
You’re definitely not alone Arthur
“Enemies of humanity” … or certainly Western civilisation.
An interesting and apt perspective!
How about a PR campaign in the west highlighting the threat from the Red/Green Alliance, showing the ties between The Far Left and Radical Islamists. Also use free speech more creatively. For example at Pro-Hamas rallies hand out cards or bring posters saying:
Deport Radical Islamists Now! Have a Nice Day
PR campaign by whom?
BBC other MSM, civil service, education and both main parties are captured by the people who would need to devise and implement such campaign.
The same goes for Police forces who ignore supporters of Hamas and various green terrorists but arrest people who oppose them in a way you suggest.
Good point, however in the USA, thanks to James Madison and the First Amendment to Constitution, this can and should be pursued. If Nazis can march in Skokie and pro-Hamas can march in Deerborn, then you can have posters at rallies, business cards, maybe billboards, flyers, you-get-the-idea saying “Deport Radical Islamists Now”.
And maybe in the UK, you can get away with “Deport You-Know-Who Now” Posters.
Good comment. One of the ways we, and perhaps Israel, could confront our ‘addled progressive elites’ would be to give far more prominence to what’s happening in Iran. The religious regime’s murder, torture, and persecution of women; there’s an occasional story of a particular individual, but no exposure of the sustained campaign of violent repression. The mass murder, torture, and incarceration of the ‘wrong’ sorts of Muslims. The corruption, protection rackets, and high lives lived by the IRGC top brass and their wives, and so on. Drive home the message that, far from having any sort of affinity with ‘progressive’ causes, Iran’s religion, government, and behaviours is the exact opposite.
Absolutely. But the Iranian guy who keeps turning up to the marches with a ‘Hamas are terrorists’ sign keeps getting arrested by our police!
But that will never happen for obvious reasons.
Main one being that any such campaign will be considered attack on Islam, while we continue importing Muslim savages in ever increasing numbers.
We can’t afford to fight in every war on the planet.
Bibi’s Israel will just have to fight alone–until a less murderous govt and strategy emerges.
Iran is not going to conquer Israel.
And if it gets to a nuke exchange, we don’t want to be involved with either side…
IDF’s ‘trigger happy’ outrages are clearly a boost to all Israel’s enemies. Own goals don’t come much bigger and a gift to the Iranian regime. On this I’m sure general agreement.
The Author makes many other valid points but I think he misses mentioning the Iranian regime is much less stable than his article would suggest. There is a big power play also underway in Iran as the Supreme leader is not in great health and the succession battle is underway. There is considerable dissatisfaction and opposition below the surface in Iran and of course we’ve seen that with the suppressive actions following the murder of Mahsa Amini. It thus would have been better if the Author didn’t imply the entire populace of Iran lined up behind the Regime’s foreign strategy.
However that insecurity at home means the regime needs foreign distraction and will be welcoming the turmoil and some of the behaviour of Israel as an aid to shoring itself up at home. But it also won’t want to overplay it’s hand and draw a much fiercer response from Israel and US because that could destabilise it at home much more than we sometimes appreciate. Thus rhetoric will be ahead of actual actions.
Ultimately, the West won the cold war by out-competing the USSR. It took a long time but eventually the better life available here made the population of the USSR want something else. We had to be prepared to vigorously defend ourselves, and then wait.
Unfortunately, life in the West is less great than it used to be for a whole range of reasons. In Europe we have forgotten that we need to defend ourselves (except in the countries nearer to Russia).
Was bringing the former Soviet Union to its knees victory? Do you like the look of what you now see?
We didn’t bring the USSR to it’s knees, it did that to itself and we offered a better alternative.
The fact that the victory has since been squandered is unfortunate to say the least, though perhaps inevitable. But it is still better now than it was in the 80s, with the prospect of going to nuclear war with the USSR plus the Warsaw Pakt.
It’s quite arguable that the USSR/Russia squandered the opportunity of a better alternative.
Yes, a bit of both really. They could probably have done with better advice from us.
The problem, arguably, was fossil fuel wealth meant essential economic and societal changes could be avoided and the state security apparatus resurrected itself along with the Oligarchs as a mafia form of Government bankrolled by Gas and Oil. The fact Yeltsin spent his last few years, after his initial great bravery and leadership, as an alcoholic, also a factor.
Yes, though I’d also suggest that Western advice to immediately liberalise was poor advice.
And in the West I’d suggest the lack of an existential threat meant we got lazy and disolute, concerned ourselves too much with wealth and not enough on security.
Not sure DR on first para. They got same opportunity as the other eastern bloc countries. On your 2nd para I would agree more though
It’s the liberalisation of markets, under a corrupt / dysfunctional Govt, that facilitates the oligarchs. Probably wouldn’t have been so much of an issue without the fossil fuels, though I suspect Russia would’ve ended up more like Romania than Poland or the Czechs.
So why did every other post-Communist nation first survive and then thrive?
We have to face the cold fact that Russian culture may always default to “power verticals.” Russians always look for a protector who will take are of them, and thus relieve them of any responsibility of making their own decisions.
Any other model is alien to their culture…
You ignore real history.
Initially Gorbachev tried to reform Soviet system, but it was never going to work.
Other Soviet Block countries reformed to various degrees (so Polish approach was liberalisation but Czech more gradual) and prospered.
Even approach more akin to Chinese would work out better.
There are many historical reasons while Russia ended up where it is but blaming the West is not the main one.
You’re assuming they would actually listen, understand and follow the advice … I’m not convinced of that. Corruption seems so embedded in the Russian way of government that there’s little we can do apart from trying to stop them exporting it.
Exactly. Further, it was naive to think that Russian politics and society would end up anywhere but where it is now, because Russia will inevitably be Russia. Brutal, corrupt totalitarian governments are all Russia has ever known and is what the majority of them apparently want. No tears for Russia from me.
No. And yes.
And yes, the Soviet Union did that to themselves. Anything bad that happened is on them.
Around 100 million people who used to be little more than slaves – no freedom, national wealth siphoned off by Russia – within the Soviet empire are now free. The Gulags are (more or less) closed.
If that upsets Russia – or you – that’s too bad.
It is frankly childish to expect perfection here. What we have now is beyond question better for most people in the world than it was from 1945 to 1991.
Did you ponder for a nanosecond whether the old Eastern bloc nations now no longer behind an Iron curtain would prefer to go back to that?
Probably not. That rarely seems to matter to some of these critics of the West. They see two classes of nations – historically big and powerful ones like Russia whose extra-territorial demands somehow deserve our sympathy and the rest who don’t even deserve their own autonomy.
Keep calling out their BS.
Where do we ever see that?
Even the virulently anti-Russian Poles got rid of their right wing govt.
And seen the mass demos in Budapest?
What’s this? Orban is being opposed in Hungary not because he is right wing, but because he is corrupt. His biggest political threat comes from the right. And in Poland, the Law and Justice Party is still the most popular political party. It simply failed to form a coalition govt. These eastern euro nations are fundamentally more conservative than the west.
Sort of what you get in a democracy.
Reflecting the will of the people–as opposed to Russia & China, who fear free discussion.
PiS government was not right wing.
It was socially and culturally Conservative but with many economic policies similar to old Labour Party.
Somehow anti democratic measures of Germany gaulaiter in Poland (Tusk) do not bother EU, which constantly attacked PiS government.
I think Mahsa Amini, and all those who bravely demonstrated following her murder, would have be/been overwhelmingly happy to have the sort of freedoms we have in the West.
We have problems, but it’s light and dark compared to life in a Theocracy.
If Israel continues to behave as it has been doing, then I say come on Iran! Get the job done boys.
What size is your brown shirt?
If Israel’s existence is threatened it will use nuclear weapons. Iran will be a radioactive rubble. Israel’s citizens will be welcomed into the USA and Canada.
Yes, you are right: Israel is doing everything to bring in Iran so that their ‘boys’ can eliminate the Iranian threat forever.
Hope not!
You don’t deserve to live in the free west. Disgusting.
“The February US threat report also assessed that “Iran will seek to use the conflict in Gaza to denounce Israel, decry its role in the region, and try to dissuade other Middle Eastern states from warming ties with Israel.”
It doesn’t help when Biden and Blinkin also denounce Israel!
They have little choice but to do so given the callousness of Israeli actions.Biden is losing his supporters and needs them to stay onside if he is to beat Trump in November. He is also gradually losing the support of the rest of the world which the US needs to maintain its hegemony. Europe can already see that the US will become less important to it in the coming years and will have to look to itself. Most if not all countries in the EU are signatories to the Convention on Human Rights and will have to follow the findings of that court and their own domestic courts on Israeli contraventions. Israel has completely demolished itself as a state that deserves sympathy.If the US continues to support it come what may, it will be rightly shunned by the rest of the world.
Israel is fighting for its survival and to protect its Jewish population against the forces of Islamism. As such, it can be as callous as it needs to be, imo, to defeat the savages. And no, countries don’t have to follow the findings of the Convention on Human Rights and could pull out of it if they wished to. Nor do the domestic courts of European countries have any business whatsoever to sit in judgement on Israel’s military strategies.
Where were the Conventions of Human Rights in the Iraq, Afghanistan and Syrian wars? It is such hypocrisy to now finger point at Israel. The Western countries seem to be more afraid of their increasing Muslim population and how they will react, than any Conventions.
I’m surprised that an intelligent person like yourself (or anybody else for that matter) would believe all the propaganda coming out of Gaza.
Iran, being on the other side of the world from America is no threat to America. It’s not much of a threat to Israel either but the neo conservatives who see everything through the lens of Israeli interests will proclaim that.
You appear to be ill-informed. Iran has ballistic missile capability of reaching Europe and the US and will, within a year or two, have nuclear weapons to fit on them. If one enjoys being humiliated by N. Korea, wait for Iran. Nothing like a theocracy armed with nukes to make the world a bit nervous.
I like this bla-bla-bla about “Israel needs new leadership”… Netanyahu is the main culprit of what is happening, we will replace him and we will be happy.
.
This is simply a wonderful illustration of the intellectual level of those who write this, and none of them think about their own leaders, elites, nations and themselves. Your elites and leaders are derivatives of yourself, which do not want to give up even from part of today’s comfort for the sake of the future of their children and grandchildren.
.
The time of darkness is coming and you yourself are accelerating its arrival.
huh?
It’s a bit presumptious to think those of us criticising Netanyahu don’t realise our own leaders would’ve been found similarly wanting in the same situation.
but probably true, if you are talking about UK, France,Canada and the US.
Hamas has consistently outplayed Israel in this war.
And the reasons have to do with the IDF itself:
1) The bottom-up nature of the IDF insures that its soldiers can commit any act and get away with it. They may cheer when they blow up municipal buildings. But it just destroys discipline and leads to random killings of any Gazan.
2) Israel doesn’t have enough troops to garrison all of Gaza–a sine qua non for victory in any guerrilla war. So instead, it makes destructive raids that just kill more people.
3) The “ground-breaking” use of AI, as detailed by Yuval Abraham, actually mandates the sort of “accidents” like the WCK strike. It doesn’t help that its main proponent, Yossi Sariel, outed his leadership of Unit 8200 by accident.
These are all part of the “recipe for disaster” that Israel has been following for 6 months. Moreover, with Bibi in charge it will never change.
Our main struggle is in Ukraine, and potentially Taiwan. We cannot provide support as well to a nation whose troops have never fought alongside us in any war. Nor can we bear teh shame of openly supporting Israeli war crimes.
The best we can do is protect the Gulf states and the Red Sea passages.
Israel must take care of itself until someone other than Bibi takes charge.
We cannot bear this shame any longer…
The only “recipe for disaster” is that antisemitism assures that people will condemn Israel for doing what eveyrone else does and has done.
The next six months will be far more of a nightmare for Israel & its supporters than the last six.
The model of an ethno-nationalist state, on the model of failed 20th C European states just shows how flawed Zionism is.
It has nothing to do with our values–or the best values of Judaism…
This article begs the question: why did the US overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003 and turn Iraq over to Iran? My guess is that the US expected to use Iraq as a base to attack Iran. Why then did this attack not happen if it had been planned in 2003?
The US hardly needs Iraq as a base to attack Iran. All available intelligence at the time — all, from all countries — was that Iraq was prepasing mass destruction weapons. That is why the US invaded. In retrospect, bombing Irans’ clear capabilities woudl have been the wiser course. But in retrospect, a lot of things in life might be done differently.
This completely misrepresents the situation.
Yes, we (the West) knew that Iraq had once had chemical weapons – because we gave them to Saddam Hussein, so he could use them against Iran in the 1980-88 war.
The question was whether Iraq had destroyed all of them, or still had them. And for that, there was no indication Iraq still had chemical weapons or other WMD. The UN’s inspection programme was working, but US and UK conspired to halt the programme and attack anyway.
As for Iran, the IAEA consistently reported that Iran was in compliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That was also the basis for the JCPOA. But the US never complied with its obligations under the JCPOA, and then Trump, in breach of the JCPOA, repudiated the JCPOA. Biden promised to re-engage, but didn’t.
Soon (perhaps next week) Iran will respond to Israel’s deadly attack on its personnel in Damascus. Israel will counter with a devastating possibly nuclear attack seeking to destroy Iran’s atomic project. If Israel does not destroy this then Israel will itself be destroyed by it. So who is provoking who and for what strategic purpose remains unclear.
That Irans had generals stationed in Syria answers your question of who is provoking whom.
By that standard all of the attacks against personnel and infrastructure within Iran over the years would qualify as ‘provocation’.
Israel did not attack Iran’s embassy, it was a building completely seperate from their embassy. I am getting tired of correcting this. Are you just ignorant of the facts, or are you purposely promoting a lie?
You got me, I’m in the pay of Al Quds.
In addition, Iran and Hamas are winning the PR battle here in the USA. More and more pro-Palestine, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests show up at political events, even in local city council meetings and even in Jewish neighborhoods. Democratic party support for Israel erodes daily with elected officials who once championed Israel are now calling for a cease fire with no demands for a release of hostages. Iran and Hamas can sit back and enjoy the free support. Palestine has surpassed BLM, gender and climate in terms of energy of the protests.
Hamas and Iran strategy of using its civilian populations has human shields has paid off. Some of you may remember that in the Iran-Iraq War, Iran send young boys to run across Iraqi minefields. How will the west fight its next war, if there is a next war, where the enemy puts its armaments in and under civilian infrastructure? Aid flows to the Gazans through the Israeli port of Ashod and soon through the now damaged Erez crossing. Imagin allowing food and supplies to go into Germany during the last months of WW2 before surrender.
Think about what will happen in the next elections in English speaking western countries now that Hamas and Palestine have growing support, and what that means for culture and freedom.
Yes, unfortunately they are winning PR battle. I think the best way to fight back is to focus on the generic Radical Islam, rather than the specific–Hamas. Radical Islamist groups (Sunni and Shiite) are uniformly anti-Semetic, anti-Christian, homophobic, and misogynistic and want to impose Shari Law. For example at pro-Hamas rallies, counter demonstrators can carry signs saying “Deport Radical Islamists Now!” In other words, raise the ante. As in, you want to use freedom of speech to advocate for destroying Israel, and I want to use freedom of speech to advocate for deporting you. Let’s see how you like it.
This week, Britain has been in understandable uproar over the death of seven aid workers, three of whom were British nationals. Condemnation piles upon Israel at the UN. Talk of sanctions grows.
Well I imagine it is difficult to fight a terrorist regime with a complex network of tunnels that is armed to teeth without some civilian casualties.
The un is absolutely useless, double standards when compared to the talks that should have been held between the west and Russia – when dealing with Russia the entire un turned its back and walked out on lavrov, scuppering any thought of diplomacy or negotiations. Why have they not done the same to Iran? Why can the un refuse to negotiate with Russia but on the other hand pay lip service to regimes that support Hamas? How is what hamas is doing, better than what russia has done in Ukraine? What are they going to do, sanction the sh*t out of Israel now? This is getting more and more ridiculous.
If they had dealt with Russia through the un in the first place a war in Ukraine could possibly have been avoided, now the us is stretched over multiple fronts and can’t even apply the same standards to each of its enemies. If the us is going to say we won’t negotiate with Russia – it should then apply the same standard to its other enemies, not threaten a regional ally with sanctions.
The UN is corrupt and useless and feckless and should be disbanded and knocked down and thrown in the sea.
The us has been caught napping – russia, china and Iran are all making moves against us hegemony, the shipping lanes in the middle east are now at serious risk as is our supply of energy, it’s no good turning round to Israel at this point and threatening them with sanctions when it is the US that has made mistake after mistake after mistake and the UN is happy to apply double standards when it suits them.
The US needs to get its act together.
The UN is clearly rotten to the core and should be immediately disbanded, it is causing more problems than it is solving and can’t even fulfil its mandate which is to prevent a global conflict – global conflicts can’t be prevented if diplomats walk out. If the are going to refuse to negotiate with some (russia) and on the hand pay lip service to others (iran) it is a massive pointless exercise since these conflicts are clearly interlinked and no progress can be made while so many double standards are in place.
How do we know the Abraham accords ‘are holding’ ? What’s the difference between that and describing them as a ‘dead letter?’
Could we please see your league table of ‘murderous regimes’ in the Middle East and how it’s scored. Are countries not of the Middle East who commit murders there also figure in the table?
And, most of all, we’d like a full length account of under what conditions Tehran’s advantage is at ‘our’ cost.
The Oxford dictionary definition of ‘unprovoked’ is:(of an attack, or a display of aggression or emotion) not caused by anything done or said. Patrikarios clearly doesn’t understand the word.
75 yrs of dis-possession, ethic cleansing, arbitrary arrest, systematic torture, random state approved murders and 75 yrs of an entire population being treated as sub-human according to Patrikarios is not ‘anything done’.
In the real world any human claiming to be even vaguely a moral and/or rational agent can only conclude that the October 7th attack was probably the MOST PROVOKED ATTACK in human history.
Well, by your definition of provoked, Arab repeated invasions of Israel were, shall we say, provocative. As were Palestinian attacks on Olympic athletes, Israeli school children, weddings, pizza parlors, funerals, universities, transit buses.
If rape and driving nails inrto the genitals of Israeli girls, or cutting off their breasts, or murdering parents in front of children, is your idea of resistance, then sit back and enjoy Israel’s response.
When Israel left Gaza on its own accord in 2005, if left behind hundreds of fully functional, commercial greenhouses. Hamas burned every single one of them to the ground. Thousands of Palestinians actually worked in Israel at the time of the Oct 7 massacre. No region in the world receives more human aid than Gaza. Hamas has chosen to invest this in tunnel building and terrorism.
Israel doesn’t have a perfect track record here, but Hamas keeps its people poor on purpose. It has agency. It choose terrorism over the welfare of its own people.
The attack was entirely unprovoked. Hamas pretended. It was interested in governance rather than conflict, which is why Israel agreed to issue work permits to people from Gaza. Israel had absolutely no responsibility or obligation to do that. It was a gesture of goodwill, not a provocation.
Your mind is screwed. That’s obvious from the all-caps emoting. Basically you’re an apologist for extremist political violence. The thing I’ve noticed for a very long time about leftists (I matured out of it), is that they act all sanctimonious and know-best, but at the first hurdle in a difficult political situation, they advocate violence over the hard work of reconciling. PB, the world is a palimpsest of historical population movements. Should I go to Norway to blow up some Norwegians for the colonisation and rape of one of my celt great grandmothers centuries ago? Where would it end? Advocating violence is just savagery, it’s not a principled solution. It’s what thugs do. You, Slobodan Milosevic and Franz Fanon are just reaching into the depths of humanity’s darkness.
Exactly. And the thing I’ve noticed about radical leftists: they tend to be physically very weak / unfit men whose only outlet for their violence is wreaking it theoretically on others from behind their laptop screens…
“This week, Britain has been in understandable uproar over the death of seven aid workers, three of whom were British nationals.”
Hmm. How many did the UK kill and burn to death in Dresden, Hamburg and Berlin? The death of those aid wirkers was terribly sad, but hardly unusual or unprecedented. Only when Jews defend themselves does the world metaphorically clutch its pearls.
A somewhat disingenuous statement. Other than the Axis powers, at the time no-one opposed or actively protested about the strategy or act of aerial bombardment. Besides the death of the aid workers can hardly be described to have been necessary for the Jews to defend their homeland.
Channeling the UN sec. gen., the British should be telling themselves that the aid worker deaths didn’t happen in a vacuum. Isn’t that the kind of thing they like to say?
Cameron, our unelected Foreign Secretary had been busy making money in the Middle East until his elevation to the Lords. Biden is a vain weak unprincipled lefty. With allies like them Israel can only rely on themselves. Sooner or later Iran will feel it has the military strength to overwhelm Israel. This will be a disaster for the world, two nuclear armed powers in a fight for existence. When this happens there will be much hand wringing in Washington and other Western capitals as to where they went wrong.
A very clear analysis of the situation in the Near East. Iran is expanding its influence against the West including Europe for that matter. The West is trying to control the situation by measured action. In fact by doing nothing. This a false strategy and will give the axe of evil with Iran in the lead an advantage. The PR of the Shite Moslims is a clever organized one It mobilizes the many Muslim migrants who have fled the conflict in Syria or the Palestinians themselves and are now residing in the the big European cities, where they have gained influence by using the open democratic society, and at the same time keeping their passports of country of origine with the controlling organization like the Brotherhood of Muslims. Via these organizations which cooperate with mainly left wing parties. The result mass demonstrations in the streets of Europe , where they for instance during the opening of the Holocaust museum in Amsterdam, appear in the streets with their Palestinian flags and anti semite slogans. This is the kind of war Israel is losing.
Much in this article is very good and informative.
But this part is a straw man: “…given the amorphous nature of the terror campaign, and the radicalising effects of Israel’s operations on the Gazan population, the notion of totally eliminating Hamas remains fanciful.”
The objective is to defeat Hamas’s organized military forces, not to totally eliminate Hamas’s presence. The campaign to do this has been going well. Hamas has one last major stronghold in Gaza’s south, in and around Rafah.
It’s shameful that the US, which couldn’t funnel money to Iran fast enough under Obama and Biden, has been meddling in Israel’s internal politics and trying to force Israel to stop short of deposing Hamas. Better American leadership would make a huge difference towards securing Hamas’s timely defeat.
As for the idea of further radicalizing Gaza’s population, I’m not convinced there’s a real worry here. Gaza’s population was pretty radicalized before October 7, as some of the horrific footage shows. It’s not as if they can rapidly be integrated into new fighting forces.
There is also this to consider: if Hamas is decisively deposed, a portion of the population is sure to direct its anger toward Hamas’s remnants. That portion currently fears that Hamas will remain in power, but, given the opportunity, it will vent its anger on Hamas. It doesn’t have to like Israel to be intensely angry with Hamas.
Every day we find how the IDF’s “bottom up approach” just leads to new violations of the Law of War.
Soldiers understandably appalled by 7 Oct consistently take their rage out on any prisoner that falls into their hands.
Now Israeli doctors have to amputate the hands of many of their prisoners–because the handcuffs were purposely left on too tight.
IDF officers fail to make their subordinates accountable–or even encourage barbaric actions.
This is an army in which war crimes are now routine…
Evidence for your amputation story please?
We rightly support Ukrainians who are fighting a Russia that denies their very existence as Ukrainians.
Yet at the same time we support an Israel that denies Palestinians have a right to live on their own.
Israel opposes every value we in Europe and the US hold dear…
I comment to count downvotes. Sorry, a State does not have the right to “defend itself” (by carpet bombing) against its own internal prison where some of the inmates got out because the state didn’t want to pay for the proper guarding of the prison (not that I believe the walls should be there in the first place).
Israel could wipe out Gaza if it so chooses. Gaza has had independence since 2005 and has done nothing with the control given to them except breed terrorism and build terrorist tunnels.
I would have thought that a good way to deal with Hamas’s tunnels network would be to pump some nasty gases into them.
Stop Press! 14th April.
Iran is a busted flush. The IRGC drive a bicycle while Israel cruises in a Roller.
After last night and Israel’s and some of its allies intercepting 99% of the 300 warheads Iran threw at Israel, perhaps it more of a draw now.