Israel Should Join the U.S. and Its Other Allies in Policing Regional Sea Lanes

Last week, the U.S. Navy intercepted a fishing vessel in the Gulf of Oman loaded with thousands of AK-47s, which it was bringing from Iran to Houthi militants in Yemen. The interdiction underscores the importance of policing these waters, a task often shared by the Combined Maritime Task Force, a U.S.-led league of 34 countries that includes such Middle Eastern states as the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, and Egypt. Bradley Bowman and Ryan Brobst argue that Israel should be invited to join:

Iran has repeatedly attempted to seize American unmanned surface vessels (USVs). On August 29, 2022, the U.S. Navy detected an Iranian ship in the Persian Gulf towing an American USV. When U.S. forces responded, the Iranian vessel cut the line towing the USV and departed. Two days later, another Iranian ship seized two USVs that had been operating in the Red Sea for more than 200 days without incident. Two U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers responded quickly, seeking to recover the USVs. The Iranian crew refused to release them for approximately eighteen hours, eventually relenting the next morning.

Israel shares an interest in countering smuggling and other malign activity in the Red Sea, and it previously conducted naval exercises with Bahrain, the UAE, and the U.S. in those waters focused on “visit, board, search, and seizure tactics.”

The Israeli navy is one of the more capable in the region and has a naval base at Eilat located on the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba. . . . Israeli naval assets also include dozens of patrol boats operated by crews experienced in detecting and interdicting smuggling operations, especially those conducted by Iranian proxies.

Read more at Defense News

More about: IDF, Iran, Naval strategy, U.S. Security, Yemen

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