Europe’s Eagerness to Appease Iran Has Led It to Turn a Blind Eye to Terror in Its Backyard

In the past two years, European intelligence services have on many occasions—often with the assistance of the Mossad—foiled attempts at espionage, assassinations, and terror attacks by Iranian agents. But the timid responses of European officialdom, and the unwillingness to confront Tehran over these activities, argues Yossi Mansharof, are part and parcel of the desire to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal:

The result of the European Union’s attachment to the nuclear deal is appeasement of Iran. As part of this appeasement, the EU confines itself to statements against Iran’s missile program and expansionism in the region. The EU has also made its peace with the political and security settlement prevailing in Lebanon, which gives Hizballah effective control of the country. . . .

The EU also responded weakly to the arrest in Iran of dual European-Iranian citizens on various pretexts, including espionage. . . .The weakness of the EU’s policy on Iran was also demonstrated by its feeble response to the arrest of 7,000 Iranian demonstrators in 2018, 26 of whom were executed. . .

The EU’s fidelity to the nuclear deal and its appeasement of the Iranian regime’s aggression both inside and outside Iran have encouraged the Islamic Republic to escalate its terrorism on the European continent. The Iranian terrorist campaign in Europe, which has been mostly unsuccessful up until now, has encompassed many countries. . . . [For example], the German authorities discovered a cell of ten Iranian spies in December 2017 conducting surveillance of Israeli and Jewish targets. These targets included the Israeli embassy in Berlin and kindergartens and other centers of the local Jewish community. In November 2017, a German court convicted Mustufa Haider Syed-Naqfi, a Pakistani citizen living in Germany, of spying for Iran. [Syed-Naqfi] had been tailing Reinhold Robbe, the head of the German-Israeli Association. . . .

European diplomats [have] explained that the EU [has] refrained from strong criticism of Iran because of its wish to strengthen Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, whom they perceive to be a moderate in Iranian politics. This policy facilitates EU efforts to preserve the nuclear agreement with Iran and avoid anything that might help President Trump. Faced with the EU’s [consideration of] sanctions on Iran in response to revelations of growing Iranian subversion throughout Europe, however, Rouhani himself implicitly threatened in December 2018 to carry out terrorist attacks in Europe.

Read more at Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security

More about: European Union, Iran, Mossad, Terrorism

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