Iran’s Ever-Louder Threats to Bahrain

Granted independence by Britain in 1970, the Shiite-majority island kingdom of Bahrain has long been the object of Iranian designs. Tehran, which has been supporting insurrectionist groups there for years, has recently escalated its rhetoric. Michael Rubin writes:

[T]he Iranian government appears determined to test President Trump’s resolve by ramping up pressure on Bahrain. Earlier this month, Hojjat al-Islam Mojtaba Zonour, [a high-ranking Iranian official], explicitly threatened to level the U.S. base in Bahrain with ballistic missiles. . . .

Every Friday for 38 years, either the supreme leader or a cleric appointed by him has led Friday prayers in central Tehran and delivered a sermon that highlights the official priorities and positions of the Islamic Republic. This past Friday, the appointed prayer leader . . . told the Bahraini government, “Failure awaits you; your destruction is near.”

Such rhetoric should not be dismissed as empty. After all, the Islamic Republic is on the warpath. Its carefully cultivated proxies are the dominant power in Lebanon, prop up the Syrian government, . . . and have staged a coup d’état in Yemen. The possibility that Iranian officials might target not only the U.S. presence in Bahrain but the entire country is not unthinkable. . . .

If President Trump, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wish to show allies that America will once again stand by them, and if Trump is serious about standing up to terrorism and aggression, it is time to support Bahrain forcefully and openly. Simply put, Tehran will interpret silence as weakness, and weakness as an invitation to further aggression.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Bahrain, Iran, Politics & Current Affairs, U.S. Foreign policy

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF