I’d like now to turn to the geopolitical questions at stake in the war in Israel. It may never be entirely clear why Hamas decided to plan last weekend’s assault, but it’s likely that factors distant from Israel’s borders came into play. Richard Kemp urges us to look as far afield as Moscow, and Vladimir Putin’s failure to subdue Ukraine:

Unwilling to take the fight directly to NATO, instead, Putin has been fomenting conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Serbia and Kosovo, in West Africa, and now in Israel. . . . Just as Russia used Iran to supply large numbers of drones to attack Ukrainian civilians, it is now using Iran to encourage and enable these attacks in Israel. Iran is of course a more than willing partner whose leaders have repeatedly sworn death to Israel and America; as are its proxies in Gaza and also in Lebanon.

Iran has long been directing, training, funding, and supplying weapons to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza as well as in Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank. Moscow too has maintained and developed connections with Palestinian terrorist groups and individual extremists, going back to Soviet days, when Putin himself as a KGB officer was dealing with Middle East terrorists, including during his time in Dresden.

Hamas leaders, including the terrorist boss Ismail Haniyeh, have made a number of visits to Moscow since the Ukraine war began, meeting with senior government officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. A delegation from their Gaza terrorist bedfellows, Islamic Jihad, led by its chief, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, also visited Moscow in March. Likewise, leaders of another Iranian proxy, Lebanese Hizballah, have been welcome guests in Moscow.

Turning back to the Jewish state and its immediate environs, Kemp adds another critical observation:

Israel cannot afford to show any weakness in this dire situation. Aside from the overriding need to protect its own people, other countries in the region, including Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE, depend on Israeli strength.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.