By Noah Rothman
Monday, April 15, 2024
We can dispense with the fashionable solipsism at
the outset. Iran’s direct attack on Israel over the weekend should not be the
subject of wildly divergent interpretation. It was not “designed to fail” or an elaborately telegraphed
de-escalatory overture masquerading as a destabilizing revision to the regional
status quo. It was a radical and audacious assault on Israel, and its aim was
to kill as many Israelis as possible.
In wave after wave, over 300 munitions were expended in a
coordinated assault on Israel by both the Islamic Republic and the
constellation of terrorist groups it controls. It was an unprecedented event.
This was not a deniable spasm of violence perpetrated by Iran’s proxy forces or
even the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It was conducted by the Iranian
military proper. It was endorsed and announced by the regime. It was intended
to overwhelm Israeli air defenses and culminate in “mass casualties and infrastructure
damage,” as one senior American official told Semafor.
This was as conventional an attack on the State of Israel
by a hostile sovereign nation as has been seen since at least 1991 — and
arguably, since 1973. By any rational interpretation of the laws of armed
conflict, a state of war today exists between Israel and the Islamic Republic
of Iran.
This uncomplicated interpretation of the weekend’s events
has many virtues. Foremost among them, it is undeniably true. But equally
valuable is that it makes no ideological demands on its subscribers. By
contrast, those who have committed themselves to the proposition that Israel,
unlike any other sovereign state, must restrain itself in responding to brazen
acts of war have twisted themselves into highly theoretical pretzels to avoid
the obvious conclusion that Israel is obliged to respond to this attack in more
than equal measure.
That reaction has come from Israel’s ostensible friends
as well as its enemies. “We’re trying to avoid escalation,” said, by way of
illustrative example, British defense minister David Cameron, “and the action we took alongside the
Americans and others clearly has helped to stop that escalation because the
Iran attack was an almost total failure.” The relative efficacy of Iran’s
attack on Israel is immaterial. Yes, Israel’s layered air defense and
proficient GPS jamming along with the intervention of its Western European and
even Middle Eastern partners helped prevent the worst-case scenario from
materializing. But there can be no doubt that Iran’s intent was the worst-case
scenario. Israel cannot afford to allow periodic direct Iranian attacks on its
territory to become the background soundtrack to daily life. It certainly
cannot establish a precedent whereby its allies have a veto over its ability to
defend itself — not unless it wants to become a bystander to its own fate.
Cameron seems to have positioned himself in the vanguard
of a united front in opposition to the exercise of Israel’s right to
self-defense. “We’re advising them to take a breath before responding,” another
U.S. official told Politico in remarks that appear to confirm
reporting that suggests President Biden is also lobbying Jerusalem to take it
on the chin. It seems to be the administration’s preference that Israel avoid
responding at all. If it does, “it needs to be proportional and bring this
cycle to an end,” the official said. That is precisely wrong.
The official’s confusion is exposed in a subsequent
remark asserting that the support the U.S., the U.K., France, Jordan, and other
responsible states provided in shooting down the incoming attack was designed
so that Israel would not feel “compelled to come back with another overwhelming
response and we can de-escalate and be done.” Had Israel lacked that kind of
support, more Iranian ordnance would have slipped through Israel’s air-defense
net, resulting in serious damage and significant casualties. Israel would
likely have had to respond in real-time with overwhelming retaliatory force.
Israel’s allies bought Jerusalem time to calibrate its response. But the notion
that the Jewish state can simply absorb this attack so “we can de-escalate and
be done” is fanciful to the point of delusion.
Yes, the vast majority of the ordnance Iran launched at
Israel didn’t make it into Israeli airspace, but ballistic missiles most
certainly did. If the reporting around the Islamic Republic’s atomic-weapons
program is accurate, Iran is on the cusp of a nuclear breakout. If any of those
missiles were armed with nuclear warheads, Israel would face a genuinely
existential disaster. The October 7 massacre — an atrocity conducted by one
Iranian proxy force, which was subsequently followed by a coordinated campaign
of terrorism against Israel and its allies (America included) by the rest of
Iran’s terrorist proxies — demonstrated that Iran has the will to eradicate
Israeli Jews from the earth. This weekend’s attack proves that it also has the
means. From Jerusalem’s perspective, there can be no living with an undeterred
millenarian outfit like the Islamic Republic. Barring a radical change in the
character of that regime, deterrence will have to be restored.
Israel has a playbook for that sort of thing. The
terrifying scenario that unfolded in the region early Sunday morning is not one
into which the Jewish state went unprepared. Israel cannot afford to take the
advice proffered by its allies, if only because it is their interests that are
reflected in their petitions — not Israel’s. And when Israel retaliates, it
will be because Jerusalem had no choice but to establish a precedent in which
direct attacks from Iran will be met with disproportionate force. We can
anticipate that Israel’s allies will respond to its effort with the
theatrically drawn faces they have previously reserved for the conduct of
Israel’s defensive war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Jerusalem has and will
continue to take its allies’ advice into consideration, but not to a
prohibitive degree. After all, it’s not their national survival in the balance.
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