Iran Won in Lebanon. It Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Win in Iraq, Too

Given the general chaos in the Middle East today—and its own bloody recent history—Lebanon seems almost an oasis of peace. But looks can be deceiving, writes Danielle Pletka; Lebanon should instead be seen as a warning. In the years following the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1989, its various militias disarmed or were integrated successfully into the Lebanese Armed Forces—all except the Iranian proxy Hizballah, which has since come to dominate both politically and militarily. Iran has similar designs for Iraq:

The Baghdad government has accommodated the so-called Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Forces [or PMFs, as the Shiite militias fighting Islamic State are called]; Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, one of Shiite Islam’s greatest eminences, has blessed their fight. The Iraqi legislature has approved the PMF’s nominal incorporation into the Iraqi army, even as Iraqi government officials acknowledge that 30 percent of the PMF are under Iranian government control. Once the fight with Islamic State ends, what will happen to these militias?

There’s already a hint of how the future of the PMF will play out. Like Hizballah, some units are fighting at Iran’s behest in Syria on behalf of Assad. Iraqi leaders, as their Lebanese counterparts once did, are fretting about the future of Iran’s proxies. The Iraqis rightly see the militias as instrumental in the counter-IS battle, and also rightly judge them a danger when that fight is done. . . .

That is why more must be done soon to ensure that the Iraqi leadership understands, as the Lebanese government does not, that the continued existence of Iranian proxy forces within and working alongside its military is incompatible with long-term assistance from the United States.

Congress can predicate assistance and weapons transfers on clear assurances that Iran and its proxies are not indirect beneficiaries. If it does not, Iraq, like Lebanon before it and others to come, will become yet another pawn in Iran’s Middle East game.

Read more at American Enterprise Institute

More about: Hizballah, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, 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