Italy’s Misplaced Deference to the Iranian President

When the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, visited Rome earlier this week, ancient nude statues in the Capitoline Museum—where he and the Italian prime minister held a press conference—were concealed behind large partitions out of deference to Rouhani’s sensibilities. Franck Salameh comments:

The symbolism of [Rouhani’s] January 26 meeting with Pope Francis in Vatican City, both lurid and grandiose in its optics, must have sent chills down the spines of disappearing Near Eastern Christians; dwindling, bruised, besieged “first nations” who owe in no small part much of their decline to Iran’s decades-long aggressive illiberal practices throughout the region.

Yet in an abject gesture of cultural genuflection—or abdication, or diplomatic etiquette, depending on the universe one wishes to live in—Italian officials opted to reward Rouhani for the harm that his government continues to breed around the world, [even going so far as] removing alcohol from the menu of the state dinner given in his honor. . . .

Ought Hassan Rouhani’s “religious special needs,” in the capital city of Christendom no less, be seen as the innocent sensitivities of an innocent Muslim cleric, or might there be something more nefarious afoot? Is Rome’s yielding to Rouhani’s antics in line with common diplomatic courtesies, or is this a form of submission, . . . a Muslim cleric’s thumbing his nose at practitioners of a creed he considers inherently inferior? This all may very well be a tempest in a teapot, but the optics are supremely emblematic, especially to those “once bitten twice shy.”

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Hassan Rouhani, Iran, Islam, Italy, Politics & Current Affairs, Vatican

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