The U.S. Has Won Its Latest Battle with Iran. But the War Isn’t Over

With the death of Qassem Suleimani, commander of the expeditionary wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Efraim Inbar considers what will come next:

Tehran realizes that the disappearance of Suleimani from the stage is a great loss and setback. He was a creative officer who understood the usefulness of proxies and a good organizer able to build a motley of proxy militias ready to fight for promoting Iranian interests. His charismatic leadership instilled motivation and esprit de corps. It will not be easy to replace quickly his skills, experience, and honed instincts.

But Iran’s most significant response [is its] declaration that it is lifting all limitations on uranium enrichment. . . . If Washington maintains economic pressure on Iran and makes additional demonstrations of limited use of force, Iran may change course and come to the negotiating table. This is what President Trump wants.

Renewed U.S.-Iran nuclear talks would be very problematic, because the Iranians are skilled and experienced at using negotiations to shield their nuclear program. Their patient negotiating skills are much better than those of the Europeans and the Americans, as evidenced by the nuclear agreement of 2015. The bitter truth is that the Iranian regime will not give up its quest for the bomb, which is its ultimate insurance policy. Only the physical destruction of Iranian nuclear installations will prevent an Iranian bomb.

Read more at Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security

More about: Donald Trump, Iran, Iran nuclear program, U.S. Foreign policy

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society