America Signals Weakness in Syria

Last week, an Iranian proxy group launched a drone attack on a U.S. military base in Syria, killing a contractor and wounding five soldiers. In response, American warplanes struck military targets affiliated with Tehran—taking care, according to the Pentagon, “to limit the risk of escalation and minimize casualties.” Iran-backed forces attacked two other sites with a U.S. troop presence the next day, wounding another serviceman. Clifford May comments:

This was not an isolated incident. U.S. troops in the region have come under attack from Tehran-backed groups 78 times since the beginning of 2021, according to General Michael “Erik” Kurilla who, as head of Central Command, oversees American troops in the Middle East.

If you’re a proponent of peace through strength, the conclusion you draw is that deterrence has failed, and that re-establishing deterrence must now be a top priority. Those who don’t see the situation this way are calling for retreat from Syria—the response Iran’s theocrats intended to elicit.

To do so would repeat the strategic error President Biden made in 2021 when he surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban and, by extension, to its ally, al-Qaeda. President Obama made the same mistake when he withdrew from Iraq in 2011, giving rise to Islamic State, which went on to conquer 40 percent of Iraq and 33 percent of Syria, establish affiliates in at least eight other countries, spark a refugee crisis, and launch terrorist attacks in the U.S., France, and elsewhere.

Read more at FDD

More about: Iran, ISIS, Syria, U.S. Foreign policy

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