255 - Keeping its Powder Dry: Israel Wins if it Holds Fire

            Further retaliation, tit-for-tat, by Israel and its allies, is not yet warranted. President Biden is cautioning Israel not to strike back at Iran despite an enormous temptation and the urging of angry hawks. No one needs a widened conflagration in the Middle East, now or ever. Moreover, Iran says that it seeks no all-out war with the West.

            Indeed, even though more than 300 missiles and drones were deployed in Saturday/Sunday's all-out assault on Israel, the attack was almost purely expressive, not instrumental. Iran's Revolutionary Guards wanted to show Iranians and Iran's allies that Iran was capable of sending a barrage of missiles and drones against Israel. But they neither expected many of them to get through Israel's defenses nor to cause much damage. Indeed, Iran telegraphed its intentions to bombard Israel days before missiles and drones were launched. Further, it said immediately afterwards that it was done (for now) with such all-out (and wastefully expensive) barrages.

            The Iranian assault from the air only harmed a dozen persons, mostly with minor wounds. The most seriously endangered by the Iranians, ironically, was a 7-year old Arab Bedouin girl in the Negev.  Thus, in some senses, Iran succeeded very well in showing force without doing damage and without giving President Binyamin Netanyahu and the Israeli war cabinet a major excuse or a need to respond forcefully in kind. The Iranian strike also took attention away from Gaza to Israel's information war advantage. The Economist termed the Iranian attack a "major blunder." It betrayed Tehran's military weakness rather than any positive strength. Western allies, even Arab states, rallied to Israel's defense.

            In other words, this was an exercise in guerrilla theater. Very risky, yes, but not a real threat and not a signal that should open a much wider conflict for power and agency across the entire Middle East. Indeed, Israel should be more concerned, and more immediately involved, in righting its approach to the conflict in Gaza, where Hamas remains and will probably for a long time remain weakened but not fully extirpated, and in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is much more dangerously poised to continue pummeling Israeli settlements along their shared border.

            The Houthi are still a problem, harassing shipping in the Bab el Mandeb strait at the south end of the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden. Over the weekend, too, Iranian Revolutionary Guards commandeered an Israeli owned container ship in the Persian Gulf's Straits of Hormuz. Recovering that ship will take some major effort by the U.S. and Israel's allies.  Doing so joins the regular attacks on Houthi missile and drone launching sites in Yemen.

            Israel and the U.S. will doubtless find numerous ways of making sure Iran knows that any further attempt to escalate or retaliate via direct and open assault on Israel will result in powerful air, missile, and drone avenging attacks on Tehran and its military installations.

            But no one other than some irresponsible Republican Congresspersons in Washington and extreme right-wing colleagues of Netanyahu really wants to escalate from a first-round tit-for-tat into something much more devastating and destabilizing. Certainly, the Biden administration is pleased that its and British aircraft, and the Iron Dome, Patriot, and Arrow 2 defense systems of Israel managed to down 99 percent of the airborne armaments. Jordan and possibly Saudi Arabia also joined the defense -- a positive omen for Israel. These combined defensive maneuvers constitute an important demonstrative lesson for Iran. They also show what could and should be utilized to keep Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, and the electrical infrastructure of Ukraine safe from what are now nightly Russian bombardments.

            The fact that Iran does not wish a major conflagration -- it knows that it cannot win such a combat nor be safe from wholesale destruction -- is a positive outcome of the weekend's events. Providing that Israel withholds any return fire, keeping its powder dry, also means that Israel can assert a public-relations triumph,

            On the other hand, when Israeli settlers rampage in the Palestinian West Bank and kill innocent and uninvolved villagers, that hardly helps the Israeli cause.  Enabling more aid convoys to reach northern Gaza does, but it is very late in the day and starvation is still a present horrific danger. 

            Providing, again, that Israel stays with Biden and refrains from widening the war with Iran, it must now strive to retrieve all of the remaining hostages, perhaps (my notion) exchanging them for the free passage out of Gaza to Qatar of the top leadership (perhaps 100) of Hamas. Then Israel could let Hamas' remaining soldiers go into exile in Egypt. But, whatever happens, Israel must do what Netanyahu inexplicably wants to avoid -- administer and police the Gaza Strip.

            A vacuum there only perpetuates misery, works against Israel's claims to be humane society, and gives Gazans a reason to submit to future Hamas rule.  Anarchy and anomie are never good, certainly not in this case.  A traumatized population must be assisted if Hamas' appeal permanently is to be stunted.

*****

Thanks to David Andelman and Robert Hubbell's welcome recommendations, this Newsletter has enormously swelled its subscriber numbers. Thanks to all of you who have subscribed this year, and those original subscribers who are an important part of a growing list. Some of you have also chosen to become paid subscribers.  I encourage other readers and free subscribers to follow their lead. Consider doing so more fully to support and endorse what you read.