Beginning with their rise to power in 1933, the Nazis cultivated contacts with Iraq; after the war ended, no small number of former Nazis took refuge there. These Germans stoked the flames of local anti-Semitism, eventually leading to terrible pogroms that culminated with the expulsion of Jews from the country. Edwin Black writes:

[In the 1930s and 40s], resident Gestapo agents such as Fritz Grobba . . . employed such tactics as dispensing [large amounts] of cash among [Iraqi] politicians and deploying seductive German women among ranking members of the army. From 1933, Radio Berlin began broadcasting hate messages in Arabic, including fallacious reports about non-existent Jewish outrages in Palestine. Grobba cultivated many Iraqis as Nazi surrogates. Iraqi Arab Hitler-style youth marched in Nuremberg torch-light parades hosted by their Berlin counterparts. German was taught in Iraqi schools. When World War II broke out in 1939, Nazism became a fervent cause among many Iraqis.

In May 1941, Iraqi fascists backed by popular support tried to overthrow the pro-Western monarchy and seize British oil fields in Iraq to facilitate the oil-dependent German [plan to invade] Russia. That failed. The Iraqi coup plotters in Baghdad decided to do the next best thing: exterminate its Jews in a single blow. Jews were ordered to stay in their homes, and their doors were marked with a red hamsa.

At the last minute, the extermination plot fell apart. But as the coup leaders fled, in that momentarily power vacuum on June 1-2, 1941, dejected swarms of soldiers, in concert with police, common criminals, and nondescript mobs rampaged through Baghdad hunting for Jews. They were easily found. Hundreds of Jews were cut down by sword and rifle, some decapitated. Babies were sliced in half and thrown into the Tigris. Girls were raped in front of their parents. Parents were mercilessly killed in front of their children. Hundreds of Jewish homes and businesses were looted, then burned. . . .

The persecution grew worse with the formation of the state of Israel; by the end of 1951 almost the entire Jewish population had relocated to the Jewish state. The result was Israel’s gain, and Iraq’s loss:

An estimated 130,000 Jews lived in the Iraq of 1949, with about 90,000 residing in Baghdad. The Baghdad Chamber of Commerce listed 2,430 member companies—a third were Jewish; in fact, a third of the chamber’s board and almost all of its employees were Jewish. Jewish firms transacted 45 percent of the exports and nearly 75 percent of the imports. A quarter of all Iraqi Jews worked in transportation, such as the railways and port administration. The controller of the budget was Jewish. A key director of the Iraqi National Bank was Jewish. The Currency Office board members were all Jewish. The Foreign Currency Committee was about 95 percent Jewish. Over the centuries, Jews had become essential to the economy.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.