The Many Lies of the Iranian Foreign Minister

Responding to an op-ed in the Washington Post last week by Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s oleaginous foreign minister—he asserts that Tehran’s military programs are purely defensive, attacks Saudi Arabia’s military spending, and makes a snide reference to the Holocaust—Reuel Marc Gerecht exposes some of its falsehood:

[Despite Zarif’s insistence to the contrary, the] Islamic Republic’s nuclear program has not been “peaceful.” The United States and its European allies have a very long dossier, which has included information provided by highly knowledgeable defectors, cataloguing the clerical regime’s nuclear-weapons ambitions since the late 1980s. . . .

And as the foreign minister might be aware, Iran’s ballistic-missile program makes absolutely no sense if it is tipped with conventional warheads. . . .

Zarif alludes to Iran’s legitimate defense needs [by referring to the Iran-Iraq war]. He could, perhaps, explain why long-range missiles that can fly way beyond the Persian Gulf are a function of the clerical regime’s continuing post-Saddam Hussein trauma.

Zarif is . . . right about the dangers of Islamic extremism, except that he forgot to mention that Saudi Arabia’s hugely destructive practice of spreading Wahhabism, the foundation of modern Sunni jihadism, is matched on the Shiite side by the Islamic Republic’s aim to radicalize the Shiites wherever Zarif’s bosses gain influence. The clerical regime has [also] tried to replicate the Lebanese Hizballah elsewhere in the Arab world, especially in Iraq and Syria. . . .

And concerning Iran’s military expenditures, wouldn’t it be a good idea to allow Iranians free elections so that they can decide how they want to spend their own money?

Read more at Weekly Standard

More about: Hizballah, Iran, Iran sanctions, Politics & Current Affairs, Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia

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