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What Would be a Productive Israeli Response?
I’m generally pretty hawkish about Israel responding to its enemies — about responding to militant Islamic theocracies and genocidal maniacs (but I repeat myself) in general, in fact. But Israel has choices, and I wonder if, in this case, the best choice might be to continue with the current effort of destroying Hamas, and t0 leave the response, or at least the visible response, to Iran for another day.
I think Iran has demonstrated its current lack of ability to seriously harm Israel. Let that message sink in, and let Iran’s dependents live with the realization that Iran has invited eventual Israeli retaliation through an unprecedented yet embarrassingly ineffectual act.
The October 7th attack forced Israel’s response. Accepting the continued threat of Hamas was simply unacceptable, and Israel had no choice but to respond. The Iranian attack is different. If anything, it highlights that the threat from Iran is not immediate, and that Israel can pursue a more strategic approach with Iran than with Iran’s proxy in Gaza.
Israel must ultimately do what America is currently unwilling to do (thanks to Obama, America’s true Worst President), which is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Israel should remain focused on that, and not let a reaction to this most recent attack distract from that critical undertaking and further c0mplicate an already problematic situation.
Published in Foreign Policy
Some say the best way to hurt the Iran regime is with a color revolution. This would have the regime focus their efforts on fighting their own people. It would be a difficult task and Israel and US cannot be seen as being behind it. The next best option is probably whacking Hamas.
Taking out more senior Iranian handlers of their proxies would be a start.
Obama’s disastrous decision not to support Iranian dissidents still haunts us. Almost half the population of Iran are non-Persian ethnicities who mostly resent how they are treated. And the Persian plurality is far from unanimous in support of the mullahs. Stirring that pot instead of constantly trying to support the mullahs’ tyranny is insane.
I still don’t get why the Houtis don’t get beaucoup ordinance in response to attacking international shipping.
We should support a rapid final push against Hamas followed by a deal for Sunni Arab states to take over the running and rebuilding of Gaza. They would happily suppress a return of Hamas and be less tolerant of aid workers being assaulted than the UN or Joe Biden.
How’s that for leadership? When Israel strikes, it will be with weapons provided by the Biden administration, and they will be destroying nuclear facilities built with the palettes of cash provided by the Obama administration.
It is not in his Wikipedia entry but Barrack Obama should get credit for breaking Pablo Escobar’s old Guinness record for most cash on palettes in a single shipment.
If Iran is saying that this is a once-and-done retaliation, then fine, let it be done (for now). Hamas, on the other hand has not surrendered. What’s more, they are close enough to walk into Israeli homes. Henry’s recommendation seems reasonable to me.
Agreed. I only wish Biden, et. al. would behave like adults, and not as if Israel and Iran are engaged in some sort of Middle Eastern Super Bowl, apparently interested only in scoring points (there I go myself) among left-wing voters in the United States.
“Take the win!!”
Next, Joe will be accusing Israel of taunting, or of unseemly celebrations in the end zone, and will start issuing 15-yard penalties all over the place.
Oh, wait….
Lecturing a partner nation in this way, especially one facing an existential conflict, is childish at best, and–at worst–incredibly dangerous.
Fantastic post…thanks for starting the conversation.
I will start with two points that are a not totally aligned with the post so I hope that is okay…
First of all Iran looks absolutely foolish and incompetent today. Their proxies can’t be very happy with that showing. Sure…this could have been a “salvo” to check out the neighborhood but still they launched hundreds of projectiles and all but one failed miserably…in many ways Iran’s military ability looks worse than Russia at the moment.
Secondly…the Iranian Revolution has been an utter absolute failure. The main goal of the Revolution is to unite Islam behind this new Islamic Revolutionary and behind Persia….the fact that major Islamic nations helped in the defense shows that 45 years after the “this is the voice of a free Iran” they have very little to show for it; accept for the backing of some fundamentalists that will turn on them at the first chance they deem it prudent. The Revolution as envisioned by its founders and current revolutionaries has failed.
What should Israel do? They argument they should just sit back and let Iran continue to hang themselves is not without merit but does not in the really world of geo-politics. I mean Iran launched a bonafide attack on Israel…they must respond Biden be damned. It’s not like the U.S. would have just said okay…that’s a tit for tat if they had launched and attack of this sort on U.S. soil after we killed Sulamani or if the Taliban launched an attack after Biden blew up a neighborhood and called it successful…we would retaliate in kind…so Israel has little choice…however being that Iran looks so feeble at the moment (this could change if all things remain then they look pretty feeble) so a surgical strike on the IRGC would maybe be the best response.
At the end of the day it is up to Israel not the U.S. how they should respond…nobody would tell an U.S. administration how to respond. I hope and pray it is surgical.
I don’t pretend to know what Israel should do. But the two facts that need to be stirred into the decision are that (1) the Hamas training camps were in Iran and (2) this weekend’s attack could have resulted in a much more serious attack engineered by Iran-backed Hezbollah to the north of Israel from Lebanon.
This is about as serious a situation as Israel has ever faced, in my opinion. I think that’s what Jordan and Saudi Arabia also see.
I agree that half of the Iranian population is moderate, but it takes so few nutcases these days to inflict major casualties in any conflict that I don’t know how those numbers work in the world of war.
The anti-Israel demonstrations in Iran this past weekend that I’ve seen pictures of with no Iranian political or religious leader quieting them down make me think it is still too early to know exactly what to do.
All Israel (8,500 square miles) wants is to be left alone. Why that is too much for the Arab peninsula (1,250,000 square miles) in a landmass the Arabs control is a mystery for the ages. What I do know is that Israelis should not have to live in fear.
I would favor a united global response to this attack by Iran.
The Massachusetts land court established in 1898 should be a model for an international court that establishes and then enforces international borders and sovereignty. Ultimately, the wars in Ukraine and Israel are about sovereignty. Western civilization has to get serious about this one aspect of international law. The United Nations and the International Court of Justice in the Hague have worked on sovereignty issues, and their decisions should be sufficient to ensure the sovereignty of Ukraine and Israel. For reasons that escape me, their decisions haven’t been enough.
I don’t see another answer at this moment. This is not Israel’s problem to solve alone.
A productive response is one with at least a hope of resolving the situation long term.
Knowing that a substantial fraction of the Iranian people would like to be rid of the mullahs, I suggest that Israel attempt to decapitate the regime, by a combination of anti-personnel strikes and attempts to heavily degrade Iranian command and control networks. This gives the Iranians themselves the best chance to solve the mutual problem.
I suggest that their just passed response to exactly this type of strike at the IRGC shows it’s precisely this that the mullahs fear.
A winnowing attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, or the destruction of an Iranian military airfield, would be the minimum response. Nuking Tehran is not a bad idea.
If the current Administration had behaved like adults, I don’t think October 7th would have happened and potentially for that matter Ukraine would not have happened.
1. Finish Hamas, completely
2. Create the impression Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear program, let them sweat
3. Sabotage the Iranian oil terminals
4. Rest and reconstitute the ground forces
Is the question about the Israeli response to the Iranian attack?
The Iranian attack was the response. It was retaliation, against an open and outrageous act of war committed by the Israelis against Iran — and Syria — by bombing an Iranian consulate in Damascus.
Do you all remember how outraged we were during the Iranian revolution, when they captured the US embassy? Embassies and consulates are inviolate. Even in the Iranian case, there was plausible deniability, at least as I recall, as it was a group of students holding the US embasssy.
The Israelis, though, are so shockingly lawless that they openly attack a consular facility.
Why would you think that the Israelis have any right to respond? They carried out an illegal and wrongful attack, and there’s been a measured response by Iran. Time to stop, at least when it comes to violence.
If Americans weren’t so hypocritical, we would severely sanction Israel for such a violation of international law. But hey, we don’t mind mass-murder, open use of famine as a weapon of war, even de facto apartheid and genocide.
The October 7 attack was a response by Hamas to Israeli provocations, by the way. But I think that the present post is about the recent Israeli attack on Iran, and the Iranian retaliation.
Jerry, my understanding is that the target of the attack was a building adjacent to the Iranian consulate that was, Israel alleges, being used for military purposes — which would arguably make it a legitimate target. (Given that high-ranking military officials were killed in the attack, but the Iranian Ambassador and his family were apparently unharmed, that seems plausible.)
The Islamic states, including Iran, have a well-documented tradition of using non-military facilities for military purposes. Again, the argument can be made — and has been made by people more knowledgeable about international law than I am — that the Israeli strike was defensible assault on a military target.
I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.
The arab and muslim world is making fun of Iran.
One thing totalitarians cannot tolerate is being laughed at.
Here’s one that is going around:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hilzfuld_this-video-is-making-its-rounds-in-the-muslim-activity-7185596712344780801-VIAm?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
How many battalions does the World Court have?
Israel should put this one in the bank. Yes, Iran considered it a response to two of their generals being killed. It seems pretty disproportionate. Iran claimed the attack was an escalation, but they back Hamas and Hezbollah. If we include the actions of Iranian proxies, it doesn’t seem an escalation at all.
The general perception is Iran raised the level of conflict. They managed to make fools of themselves as they did it as well. If I’m Israel, I keep this one in my back pocket and continue to focus on the elimination of the Hamas threat.
From time-to-time Biden wants to exceed Obama’s accomplishments. Pallets of cash could be one way of doing so.
Too late. Joe already Venmo’ed/wired the remaining billions we held.
Many of the Iranian people are not enemies of the US or Israel. They would have no problem with US or Israeli support in a color revolution. The problem is color revolutions have been tried but the Basij (and in emergencies the IRGC) have no problem using guns to suppress them. They have no problem spraying crowds with bullets.
This is a different reality than in Eastern Europe.
And, of course, the resistance is unarmed.
The way to solve the puzzle is to blow open the doors on the Basij armories and effectively letting the masses arm themselves.
To defend Pablo, it was easier for Barrack who has access to the money printing press.
I wonder where that falls on the list of charges for treason?
The mullahs demanded a mix of currencies, not just dollars. Naturally, Obama did what he was told and so the feds gathered up beaucoup Euros and whatever else was required. Must have been a real confidence booster for the mullahs to know that POTUS was (is again?) your bitch.
Pablo did not need to call the mint–he could have just ridden a forklift into one of his guest bedrooms and grabbed up some already-wrapped stacks.
I seem to recall reading news reports of a few cases where Iranians carefully walked around American flags that had been placed in corridors to force people to walk on them and thus desecrate them.
Not just the US, also Israel.
We’re talking about the remnants of Persia and a beautiful culture. In the 50’s, it was the highest-educated populace in the world in terms of Ph.D.’s per capita. I don’t know what percentage we’re talking about, but for those whom the system does not produce an advantage, there is still, somehow, an aspirational aspect there (or just my wishful thinking).
The first one I was thinking of, but couldn’t find in a search, just popped up again:
This is allegedly a picture of college students in Iran in 70’s
