The U.S. Needs a Strategy for Countering Iranian Aggression at Sea

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.

Read more at National Interest

More about: Greece, Iran, Naval strategy, Oil, 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