For Israel’s Sake and Its Own, the U.S. Must Deter Iran

Nov. 30 2023

Since October 17, Tehran’s proxies have carried out 66 attacks on U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria, leaving 62 American servicemen injured. U.S. forces have struck back on four occasions, but only the last strike targeted actual enemy fighters, rather than munitions depots and empty buildings. What appears to have caused a lull in the attacks is the ceasefire in Gaza (achieved through Israeli military success), rather than the deterrent effect of these limited counterstrikes. Seth Cropsey and Shay Khatiri explain how America lost its deterrence, and what it would take to restore it:

Deterrence requires resolve and capabilities. Iran has feared Israel’s resolve and capabilities (though the October 7 attack might suggest a shift), but America does not instill fear, despite its capabilities. So, when Israel conducts military operations against Iran in Syria and Iraq and covert ones against its nuclear facilities, Iran in turn targets American forces in the Middle East in its double proxy war with Israel. To deter Israel, Iran has used its proxies to pressure the United States, expecting that the U.S. government would in turn exert pressure on Israel to de-escalate. Put simply, America has become the proxy for Iran to retaliate against Israel.

Could Iran succeed in pushing the Biden administration to ask Israel to cease operations in Gaza to end increasing attacks against U.S. military personnel?

The United States has never been successful in deterring or coercing Iran by punishing its proxies. But the only times that it [imposed a] direct, strategic cost on the Islamic Republic, it succeeded in enforcing deterrence. . . . Iran has no stomach for a direct confrontation with the United States.

Read more at The Hill

More about: Gaza War 2023, Iran, Israeli Security, U.S. Foreign policy

Donald Trump’s Plan for Gaza Is No Worse Than Anyone Else’s—and Could Be Better

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict