War or no war... in Israel's north?
War or no war... in Israel's north?
Your vote matters
TAT readers,
I sincerely hope that all of you survived the last, very long TAT essay and that you enjoyed your weekend, thoroughly. Today, I’m approaching one aspect of the last essay, for a variety of reasons but includes a personal perspective. I hope that you will follow along.
There is a lot of talk in the US and in national security circles, about another war in Israel, this time with Hezbollah, which is for all intents and purposes, a subordinate force of Iran’s and by proxy, Putin’s. Such a war would have far-reaching effects, at home during our election season, in Israel, in the greater Middle East and in fact, regarding what the Pentagon and most thinks tanks call, GPC or Great Power Competition. While that we covered a bit of this in the essay over the weekend, today it is becoming important for Americans and allies, to understand the potential winners and losers, as well as everything in between.
Before I get started writing and for full transparency, my youngest daughter is a dual American/ Israeli citizen and lives in the north. Of course, concern for her safety is no different than any father would have but, she refused to come home and has since the beginning of the war. Instead, she has done as all Israelis do, pitched in to help the war effort, in any way possible. She’s been volunteering in her hours off of work, supporting IDF soldiers away for the war in Gaza, and increasingly in the north.
Like most Israelis, she knows the way to the bomb shelter in her building, a norm in Israel. If not in a building, there are safe rooms and plenty of other precautions taken and for good reason. Rockets have fallen near her apartment and not infrequently. This is also the norm for any Israeli, of any age. It is part of everyday life. Terror attacks are something citizens learn to live with albeit, most of the time, there is less violence in Israel than daily in any American city of comparable size to the one she lives in. Sirens go off and people simply do as they have learned to do their entire life. This is hard for most Americans to understand.
Her first siren in late October, startled her as she heard it. She peered out the window and watched as people quietly stopped their cars and proceeded to the side of the street on foot, lying down or huddling at the base of adjacent buildings. As one with a lot of time in combat zones, I understand the calm and relying on training, tactics and strategies, instinctively. By the second time around, she was acting as a local. She has a small backpack/ “go bag” with a variety of essentials like, water, snacks for her and the dog, phone, charger, extra battery and a list of emergency numbers, etc. She has seen the inside of the bomb shelter in her apartment building often, as have all Israelis.
Israel has nowhere to retreat to, if they lose a war. It’s a tiny state and they have had to defend it fiercely from the very first minute of Independence, in 1948, when all surrounding Arab nations, attacked her, expecting an easy victory. Nothing makes defense fiercer than having nowhere to retreat to. There was no cavalry to the rescue in 1948 and a very careful and reticent cavalry now. Providing weapons and other support is not the same as helping do the fighting.
Men and women, all contribute to the IDF and serve mandatory service post high school. Until just recently, the ultra-orthodox were exempted from service, in a very unpopular policy. That policy has now changed and there is enormous pushback from the Israeli/ Jewish version, of US Christian Nationalists. It was these ultra-right-wing Israelis that both support Netanyahu’s far-right governing coalition and who recently attempted to overrun a prison where detention center guards were being held, under arrest for mistreating Palestinian prisoners.
In Israel, the extreme-right, just like here in the states, Russia, India, Europe and elsewhere, are catalysts for chaos, instability, oppression, etc., not the menders of the fabric of the national identity, as based on her true national values. In one of my first reports of some 20, I blamed the Netanyahu administration, as one of six entities to blame for the barbaric, Hamas attack on October 7th.
Like most of the world, the overwhelming majority of Israelis are as fed up with the far-right extremism of Netanyahu as we are with Trump and MAGA. Hate, corruption, ignoring the law and instigating trouble for their own ideological goals, accompanies all extremism. Trump and MAGA are no different. In the past decade or so, it is far-right extremism that has created more global instability, than even occurred when Islamic violent extremism was the cause de jour, during the war on terror. Just before the war began in Gaza, Israelis took to the streets for months and by the tens and hundreds of thousands, to protest “Bibi” and his far-right government. Now, like Trump he holds onto power, in order to stay out of prison, as an indicted felon.
With all of the political turmoil, the country still comes together to fight quite literally, for their lives. “From the River to the Sea” is a promise of genocide against Israel. Iran leads the world as a Holocaust denier and is the primary enemy of the state, funding terrorism globally and training, equipping and providing far more to Hamas and Hezbollah. Iranian covert forces murdered US troops by providing the specialized “roadside” bombs” to insurgents, the year I spent in Baghdad and far afterwards.
In the end, my baby girl, Israel, innocent Palestinians and the innocent and long-oppressed Iranian people, will not be safe until Iran’s terrorist regime is gone and until Bibi is in the prison he deserves to inhabit. It is this simple.
Okay, enough background. Let’s get look at what happens with or without a war in the North.
So, here’s the deal about Hezbollah; they are a competent military force with their own facilities, manufacturing, training and other military related facets for making war… up to a point. They have significant combat experience and could wreak havoc unless degraded militarily but for only so long, without support from either Iran or Russia, or both. Hezbollah, has fought in Syria for Putin, participating in Assad’s genocide of his own people. In Lebanon, Hezbollah, doing the dirty work for Tehran has taken on more and more authority, mostly via thuggery and under the tutelage of Tehran and Nasrallah, a fiery ideological leader. Israel is their arch enemy, and they hold the same genocidal views as Hamas, regarding the Jewish State. Both the Hamas Covenant and a Hezbollah manifesto from 2009 call for Israel’s utter destruction.
Herein lies the difference between Israeli safety and Nasrallah’s verbose threats. Israel not only could support a long war against Hezbollah which would eradicate their threat for a generation, but Hezbollah in the current situation, cannot. The reasons are quite simple. Iran’s military is sub-par, even for a third world state and at the moment, they are providing a large percentage of military manufacturing and technology, to Putin in Ukraine. Putin cannot do without Iran’s support militarily, diplomatically and as a mercenary, willing to do Putin’s dirty work.
Just today, Putin’s National Security Council Secretary, Shoigu, a former Minister of Defence for Putin, is in Tehran, strengthening military support for Putin and his poor logistics capabilities. He’s building for the long-term. Any full-scale war in Northern Israel would remove Hezbollah from Putin’s proxy portfolio. The decimation of Hezbollah would most certainly degrade the stability of Assad in Syria, which would cost Russia significantly. Anything that threatens Putin’s warm water port in Syria and diminishes potential oil revenues in Syria and Kurdistan, won’t go over well at the Kremlin. This means that Putin, via Shoigu is doing to Tehran, what the US is doing to Netanyahu, cautioning against an open, full-scale war.
Iran, since the war in Ukraine and Russia’s evolving dependence on their military support is just finding her way forward a bit, after decades of sanctions from the west. Not only does Putin require Tehran’s support but Xi, now the new senior partner of the Axis of Evil, requires an intact Tehran with military capabilities. Should Iran retaliate disproportionately for the assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran, Israel would decimate Tehran’s primary military potency, i.e. the IRGC/ QF and it would also remove the manufacturing Putin relies on so heavily. Neither Putin, or his now senior partner Xi, can afford this.
Iran is a very important component of Xi’s flagship strategy of global domination by 2049 is the BRI/ Belt and Road Initiative. Iran, in the Middle East and a key supplier of oil to China’s manufacturing sector plays a key role although you would never know by comparing Chinese investment in Iran as compared to much more extensive investment in Israel. Beijing’s economy has been in significant decline for years, and this was exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Now, Xi cannot afford to lose Israel and for a long list of very logical reasons.
Israel is a prime provider of technology to multiple nations and China is the most consequential. Also, Haifa’s port in Israel’s north, has become a very large investment for China, as are most Mediterranean ports. Israel though, is key among most other ports in the Med. Just like the old adage about real estate values, the three primary factors are location, location and location. At the head of the Suez, the major port in Eilat and with largely, Chinese rail investments crisscrossing Israel, has extraordinary strategic value.
The best way to see all of this background, is that neither Xi or Putin, can at the moment, risk losing Iran as a key player in Xi’s China Dream strategy. Any war with Hezbollah would force Tehran to make a painful choice, support Putin or Hez. They cannot support both concurrently. In a matter of speaking, this becomes a tug-o-war between Xi and Putin too. Putin is far more desperate at this point, due to his hapless war in Ukraine. Losing Hez means not only Hezbollah’s support in Syria but Iran as the primary supplier of technology, especially drones for the war in Ukraine. Since Putin now “owes” Xi, there is really not much of a tug-o-war because Xi will get his way. His BRI needs Russia even more than Iran. Again, there is another factor.
Iran, relatively intact militarily, has another strategic value to both Xi and Putin, they enable all manner of destabilizing forces in the region, not just Hamas and Hezbollah. For example, we have all come to hear the word, “Houthis” in our newscasts and articles. They are direct proxies of Iran and hence… of course China. They also control access to the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean. As noted, prior, the BRI is the key to Xi’s China Dream and control of global infrastructure like ports, airports, rail, highway, undersea cables etc. are his core leverage over global economies. Between Israel at the North end of the Suez and the Houthis with the potential to control the southern access, a functioning and strong Iran, is a “must have” for Xi.
So, if you are wondering what all of this means to US elections, it is the following. No one in the West will nor should support Iran. They are in my opinion, a critical link in the chain, called the Axis of Evil. Iran’s baggage is just too much after decades of terrorism by the Quds Force against western targets. To make matters worse, Iranian support to Putin’s genocidal war against Ukraine has created ever deeper animosity against the theocratic terrorist regime in Tehran. Besides all of the trouble that Iran has created for herself with her ignorant and oppressive theocracy, the people of Iran are always on the edge of a revolution. Most Iranians also have no love for the way China has taken so much control of their economy and put thousands of Iranians out of work. If there were ever a ship-of-fools, Putin, Xi and Tehran’s thugs, are all on the bridge and sailing the ship into an iceberg.
All of this last paragraph combines to show voters, what GOP support for Putin means. Any war involving Iran or major conflict with Hezbollah, would destabilize the region and potentially the globe, precipitously. Trump, Mike Pompeo and the rest of the coven, never understood any of this, arrogantly believing, that they could just operate like Putin in the Middle East and get away with it. Like Xi, Putin and Tehran, the MAGA crowd have a place on the bridge of the ship-of-fools. Years of MAGA support for Putin was and still is, quite literally supporting the Axis of Evil. Voting for MAGA in November would impose enormous risk on global commerce, stability and all markets, but weapons.
To date, the current White House has done an excellent job juggling both Ukraine and Gaza, so that these conflicts don’t break out into WW III. The grotesque incompetence from the Trump White House resulted in, zero foreign policy successes of consequence. To make matters worse, Trump was normally making decisions on global affairs that either benefitted him personally or Putin, often both. Foreign leaders were either confused by the chaos or didn’t trust the United States. I know this because I talk with foreign professionals in national security roles, frequently. He did not operate in support of US interests, nor those of our allies. NATO saw Putin-love and Trump’s selfish interest quite clearly. Ironically, the GOP still doesn’t.
There is no reason to believe that Kamala Harris administration would make serious deviations from the Biden administration, in terms of foreign policy. Slow and steady is the best approach in such turbulent waters.
As it pertains to our election, there are some critical challenges regarding Israel and Judaism.
American Jews in the MAGA camp must choose whether they support MAGA or the US and Israel. Both cannot be true at the same time. They must abandon a GOP that via Putin support, is attempting to weaken the Jewish state
They must advocate at home and within Israel proper, for the end to the manic Jewish extreme-right, who now make up a decisive element within the Netanyahu administration. There can be no peace or restoration of their national values, with Bibi and his extremists in office.
Much of the left, including within large portions of Judaism, have bought into the false narratives regarding the Palestinian people as they pertain to Hamas, Gaza and other similar movements
Overwhelmingly, US Jews in the diaspora along with Israelis support Palestinian rights
The narratives of Israel, as far back as Independence in 1948 have been dominated by Arab interests. They have dishonestly sold the lies regarding history, ownership, expulsion, occupation and far more. This doesn’t mean that Palestinians have not suffered, but putting the blame exclusively on Israel, could hardly be more dishonest
Their support for Palestinian rights based on the persistent false narratives, complicates the issue of unity during election campaigns and development of thoughtful policy, if they win. At this dangerous point in US history, unity is the most important factor, not bickering.
Israel must demonstrate that they are committed to rid themselves of Bibi and his fellow far-right extremists. Like Trump here in the States, they must show that there is accountability. Nothing builds trust like saying the right thing and then backing it up with actions.
A quick summary:
Today, I wanted to put a finer point on the Israel portion, of last Saturday’s comprehensive threatscape essay. There are a variety of reasons however, that we must all maintain a level head, and have reasonable confidence that a full-scale war will not erupt in the north too.
So far, cooler heads in Washington and NATO have kept Bibi from prolonging the conflict by expanding the war into Lebanon
Russia and China both, have exercised similar influence over Tehran to restrain themselves.
Most serious global leaders, understand that any such conflict would not only deprive Xi and Putin of Iran’s value to them, but any conflict would also devastate commercial shipping in and around the world’s most important oil region.
This would especially impact global oil supplies in a devastating manner
Energy disruptions would have an immediate and deeply negative impact on the global economy.
Russia and Iran depend primarily on oil revenue. Both economies would be catastrophically impacted by serious interruptions, due to war. This major, global economy disruption would have dramatic, ripple-effects, around the globe.
The theocratic terrorist regime in Tehran, has been hanging onto power for dear life the past decade. A significant military loss would almost certainly provide opportunity to the majority Iranian population that despises the oppressive ruling theocrats.
At the moment, we have a good opportunity to avoid a war, that would without a doubt, draw in US and other Allied Forces. Any time that the US and/ or NATO are drawn into conflict, the odds on a long global war increase substantially.
The last thought that I will leave everyone with is this; Every vote against MAGA, is a vote for stability, security and secure markets. The converse is also true. Every vote matters and is an act of supporting national and global security and stability. This is far more critical than partisan politics, it is a vote in the contest between good and evil.
Like my daughter in the north of Israel, I want all of the sons and daughters in the region to remain safe. It’s what all parents pray for.
My best for your week,
Paul