In Iraq, the U.S. Can Learn from Israel’s Approach to Confronting Iran

By using its extensive network of local militias to attack American troops and diplomats, Tehran has been trying to drag Washington into a war of attrition on Iraqi soil. To deter the Islamic Republic while preventing escalation, Eliora Katz and Eyal Tsir Cohen urge the U.S. to look to the Jewish state, which has for years been systematically targeting Iranian military installations in Syria. The IDF, waging what it calls the “campaign between the wars,” has conducted hundreds of air raids, degrading Iran’s military infrastructure in Syria, while provoking only very limited response by keeping enemy casualties low and maintaining deterrence. Katz and Cohen write:

The United States can deal with the militia threat in Iraq more effectively by pursuing a [strategy] informed by the principles of the campaign between the wars. Pursuing infrastructure and assets, as opposed to personnel, lessens political fallout, reduces the likelihood of retaliation, and exacts a higher financial toll on the Islamic Republic. In time, it sends a devastating message to Tehran that its investments in command-and-control centers, training campaigns, weaponry, and bases will be lost. A persistent campaign would handicap Tehran’s ability to retaliate given that the United States will have systematically degraded enemy capabilities, and more importantly, would reestablish deterrence.

Flaunting the vulnerability of Iran’s proxies is also a form of psychological warfare. The targeting of highly visible infrastructure denies militia the appearance of strength, tarnishing their public image among local populations. Hitting a militia office and having the image of the aftermath shared widely via traditional and social media is an effective way to humiliate Iran-aligned forces, lower morale, and display how much damage the United States can inflict. This is likely to be met with little resistance by Iraqi citizens who have themselves torched headquarters of Iran-back militias over the past two years.

At the same time, Israel maintains a measure of deniability for its own role in these airstrikes. Likewise, the United States should not rush to claim responsibility for harm inflicted on Iran-linked assets outside of Iraq. Anonymous strikes frustrate the adversary while minimizing the political cost since there is no smoking gun.

Read more at National Interest

More about: Iran, Iraq, Israeli Security, 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