On May 26, Greece—at the behest of the U.S. and EU—seized an Iranian tanker suspected of violating sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s oil exports. Tehran retaliated the next day by seizing two Greek tankers in the Persian Gulf. Herman Shelanski, Ari Cicurel, and Andrew Ghalili examine the incident’s implications:

Iran did what it always does when facing limited, merely economic pressure—it ramped up its own counterpressure; . . . whenever the United States has responded to Iranian malign activity with sanctions alone, or even limited use of force, Tehran sees a green light to escalate.

So far, Iran’s counterpressure strategy has largely succeeded. While President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes in Syria in February 2021 and again in Syria and Iraq in June 2021, in retaliation for attacks on U.S. personnel, Iranian-backed Shiite militias further escalated shortly afterward with no U.S. follow-up. This is not surprising, as decades of U.S. interactions with Iran show that only when Tehran perceives a threat of military action in response to each attack can its leadership be compelled to abandon regional aggression.

Without the backing of credible military options, U.S. efforts to bolster sanctions enforcement encourage further Iranian tit-for-tat counterpressure, especially at the negotiating table. Meanwhile, during the protracted, open-ended nuclear negotiations, Iran continues funding its proxies and regional aggression. A more assertive approach that both enforces existing sanctions and boosts military readiness, offers the best prospects for reducing instability.

What the United States urgently needs and has lacked is a comprehensive Plan B strategy, where the administration declares a “Biden Doctrine.” This strategy should state that the United States will use all elements of national power, including rigorous sanctions enforcement and military force, to defend vital interests in the Middle East, with the highest priority being preventing a nuclear Iran.

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.