361 - Establishing New Power Dynamics in the Middle East

Israel's War

”Our fight is with the brutal dictatorship that has oppressed [Iran]for 48 years. I believe that the day of [its] liberation is near.” Those were the words of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the eve of this weekend’s series of Israeli strikes against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities and the assassination of its political and technological leaders. Regime change, at the risk of heavy military clashes in the explosive Middle East, is what Netanyahu is after. He also risks a wider war, as does the U. S.

Israel is “changing the face of the Middle East,” Netanyahu said during a Monday press conference. He spoke after Israeli bombardments destroyed ten Quds Force command centers and interrupted a live Iranian tv broadcast with a bomb blast.

Netanyahu also talked about finally destroying Iran’s ability to build a working bomb. But Israel has not done so. It has not tried very hard to blast deep into fortified Fordow, the putative home of major enrichment efforts, centrifuges, and available pools of bomb-ready fuel. It has not done so because the attacks this weekend, yesterday, and last year's air attacks are designed to facilitate regime change, not necessarily to remove Iran’s capability to produce nuclear weapons. Reducing nuclear capability is an excuse for a larger objective.

There is a compelling argument that Netanyahu is less interested than he says he is in neutering Iran’s nuclear ambitions – that the attacks this weekend and yesterday are focused on removing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s grip on power. (Trump apparently asked Netanyahu to spare the Ayatollah's life.) Whether Israel's assaults will trigger a popular uprising is unlikely, but Netanyahu obviously thought it was a perfect moment to try.

Isreal did not directly facilitate the demise of the Assad regime in Syria or sponsor the rise of Ahmed al-Sharaa and his Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) movement. But once the Assads and the Shiite leaning Alawite despotism was under attack from Turkish-backed Sunni Syrians, Israel and Netanyahu knew that they could remake the Middle East to Israeli and Arab advantage..

Syria was the final ten-pin to fall. Now Iran, Netanyahu plans and hopes, will falter and collapse. That would increase Israel’s ability to shape its neighborhood as it wishes. More significantly, success over Iran means unquestioned success for Netanyahu personally, increasing his ability to remain prime minister, evade conviction for corruption, avoid likely responsibility for Hamas’ dastardly sabotage of Israel on Oct 7, 2023, and gain respect beyond Israel for his strategic acumen and game-changing tactical abilities. No one would like him more, but his ability to alter agendas in material ways would be well recognized.

The stain of excessive gun-slinging in Gaza and the inhumane near starvation of Gazans might be subsumed given Netanyahu’s strategic power play regarding Iran. In a profound sense, and to Netanyahu’s advantage, Hamas’ Oct 7 outrages have played materially, if unwittingly, into Netanyahu’s strategic hands.

Without Hamas erupting, Israel would never have had the motive and the collective will to attack a previously believed formidable force in Lebanon. Hezbollah was once thought to have too many missiles aimed at Tel Aviv and other cities in Israel. But first mercilessly pummeling Hamas (and huge numbers of collateral civilians) in the Strip and then discovering Iran’s unexpected inability to help Hamas led fatefully to the realization that U.S. sanctions and internal unrest had greatly weakened Iran – that the once powerful state was ripe for undermining.

Israel surprised itself by decapitating Hezbollah with relative ease (and lots of assassinations and bombings). Iran had not the means nor the will to rescue its satellite. Nor could Iran even contemplate assisting Hamas except by motivating the Houthi in Yemen to fire missiles at Israel and take pot shots at ships trying to transit the Red Sea.

Once Netanyahu realized that Iran was more a paper tiger than a menacing force, he could orchestrate a major pounce. He could also – a reason for bombing Iran now – prevent Trump from concluding any deals that would reduce sanctions on Iran and give it the license to keep enriching uranium even to a theoretical threshold below the weaponizing threshold.

Netanyahu is a calculator. He also knew that he could operate within Trump’s shield. The Biden administration could not have been trusted to acquiesce. But with the Trumpers Netanyahu knows that he has leeway to be used to shore up his own position at home and in the world. U. S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio keeps repeating that America’s hands are clean – that the U.S. air force did not bomb Tehran -- but Netanyahu could not have unleashed Israel’s bombers if the U.S. had truly wanted to spare Iran and its now annihilated generals. Moreover, Trump has brought Israel under the umbrella of U.S. military intelligence.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes have so far been punishing but still less than successful. Given how weak the regime has become and how little popular support it has, the missiles hurled at Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities show the Iranian regime's failure to do more.

Netanyahu’s genius is his ability to calculate the military odds and to take advantage of the winding down of religious autocracy in Iran. Whether that regime falls as swiftly and decisively as the Assads did in Syria is as yet a work in progress. But Netanyahu may well be triggering the regime change that he seeks – strengthening Israel in the Middle East, removing a broader Iranian orchestrated threat to Israeli hegemony, and buttressing his own power. By deviously but cleverly bringing Israel back from the low point of Hamas’ murders and by making Israel safe in its or le neighborhood, Netanyahu erases or at least pushes aside his own moral failings. But whether he can build a better Israel and hold his extreme rightwing supporters from ravishing the West Bank (and Gaza) is a much different and much more difficult and compromised story.