In the Middle East, Escalation Now

By Kevin D. Williamson

Friday, October 25, 2024

 

By all means: Escalate. 

 

To try to follow the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran war through the American press is to read through a glass darkly—and the U.S. press is, in this regard, better than its British and European counterparts. We should try to wipe some of the dust off the glass, that we may see more clearly. One thing we ought to be able to see is the “escalation” everybody is fretting about is precisely what Washington should be working toward. Iran has long been on the verge of being able to deploy a nuclear weapon, and it would be better to confront Tehran before the ayatollahs go atomic.

 

But first: There are three distorting lenses that warp how we see the current Israeli campaign: 1. the belief, assumed as a kind of gospel, that the first order of business should be securing a ceasefire; 2. the related belief, also taken as self-evident and gospel-pure, that the humanitarian situation in Gaza should be an overriding concern for both Israeli and American policymakers; 3. the misbegotten notion, epidemic in these litigious United States of America, that the questions in front of us are mainly, or even in some important way, legal and amenable to legal remedies. 

 

Let us dispense with No. 3 first and briefly: What is happening to Israel right now is not a crime wave, but a war. Even given how lawyered-up the Israeli military is (and listen to David French on this; he knows more about it than most people, having done similar work for the U.S. military) the legal role in this affair is properly a minor one. But we talk as though Israel is going to arrest and prosecute its way to peace, or that the United States is going to do that on Israel’s behalf. 

 

Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, to take one example—an obviously well-intentioned and learned example—insists that the path to peace could be found in pressuring Qatar to extradite Hamas’ new leader, Khaled Meshal, to the United States, where he could be tried as a criminal. Khaled Meshal et al. are criminals in the same sense that Adolf Hitler et al. were arsonists and thieves—yes, of course, but the criminality per se is a minor consideration. The right thing to do with Khaled Meshal is not to put him on trial but to put him in the ground and then to do the same thing to his successor and to his successor and so on until Hamas joins the German National Socialist Workers’ Party in the dustbin of history. This can and should be done in Qatar if necessary: Qatar is a 53-year-old state with fewer citizens than there are residents of Wichita, Kansas. It is a troublesome, sometimes ally. Active Qatari cooperation would be welcome, but it is not, in fact, necessary.

 

It is not wrong to think of Tehran’s proxies as a kind of mafia, which is, of course, one aspect of what they are. (Understanding the Taliban as an organized-crime syndicate might have helped the United States somewhat in Afghanistan a few years ago.) But simply removing senior leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah would leave in place a receptacle for Iranian (and Russian and Chinese) resources that could rebuild these organizations in relatively short order. Israel’s goal, articulated or not, is to leave little or no foundation upon which to rebuild. Washington should be frank about what that means: a lot more fighting. 

 

Which brings us to the most pressing item on our list: A ceasefire should be the last thing the Israelis want right now, and that fact has little to do with the self-serving political calculation of Benjamin Netanyahu. The October 7 attack on Israel was an atrocity, but it also was a half-measure and a strategic miscalculation that has presented Israel with an opportunity it has decided to take. Rather than a coordinated assault by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the regular armed forces of Iran—the joint effects of which would have been devastating—Hamas carried out (with Tehran’s aid and blessing) the kind of operation the world has come to expect from the Palestinians’ champions: one rooted in opportunism and cowardice. They rape and murder and kidnap women and children and unarmed civilians, and then, when the Israelis respond, they cower and beg for humanitarian aid and demand, above all and immediately, a ceasefire. The planners of October 7 apparently believed that Israeli fear of Hezbollah would limit the scope of the Israeli response. The Israelis have decided to take the fight to Hezbollah rather than to be cowed. 

 

As Kenneth Pollack of the American Enterprise Institute explained in a recent Remnant conversation with Jonah Goldberg, that miscalculation means that Tehran and its allies gave Israel the opportunity to respond to the nearest threats sequentially: first routing Hamas; then turning its attention to Hezbollah, which has now lost a significant number of fighters, senior leaders, and about half of its arsenal of missiles; and next, presumably, a wider and more punitive campaign against Iran proper. Israeli forces have not only bested their enemies but also humiliated them, as with the pager caper and other feats that have left Israel’s enemies feeling exposed. And Israel has done so with relatively few casualties. That being the case, a ceasefire makes no sense—there is much more to be gained from continuing the fight. With Hezbollah on its knees and those clouds of Iranian missiles and drones launched to relatively little effect, Tehran’s capacity for that much-feared “escalation”—it is such a misleading word—is limited. 

 

Washington should immediately put a lid on this silly, sentimental talk about ceasefire. 

 

And we Americans might remember that while it wasn’t Americans who were targeted for racial extermination or national subordination in World War II, it was Americans who set the simple terms for peace: unconditional surrender. The alternative offered to Japan in the Potsdam Declaration of 1945: “prompt and utter destruction.” Prompt and utter destruction is the necessary policy for Hamas and Hezbollah, and it would be exemplary as well. Tehran, which has just suffered the destruction of its main deterrent against both Israeli and U.S. action, would do well to take the lesson. 

 

The last question—and it is, to my mind, very much the last question—concerns the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Aid is coming from all quarters: from Israel, of course, and from the United States, from Europe, and from parts of the Arab world. The distribution of such aid in the middle of a war and in the presence of a mob of genocidal terrorists is, as one would expect, complicated. The situation in Gaza is, indeed, a crisis—a crisis created by Hamas, by Tehran, and by their enablers. The situation in Gaza was not created by Israel or by the United States, though the Israelis and the Americans are doing considerably more to relieve the Gazans than most of the Palestinians’ supposed allies are. (Antony Blinken’s carping notwithstanding.) I hope that the Palestinians will one day discover such self-respect as will be sufficient for them to rise up against their oppressors, who can be found in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Qatar, in Tehran, growing rich in relative safety while the Palestinians endure poverty and perpetual misgovernance. I am sure that the world at large would be very happy to see the Arabs of Palestine throw off that yoke. They ought to be fighting Hamas and Hezbollah twice as hard as the Israelis are. 

 

The Middle East is infamously complicated. But the American interest can be outlined in a reasonably direct way: Israel is our only reliable ally in the region, and Washington should work to see that it emerges from the conflict fortified and predominating; Iran is our most vicious and implacable enemy in the region, and every rocket and fighter it loses is to the good. That this is happening now—before Iran has a nuclear weapon in the field—is opportunity knocking very, very loudly—louder than bombs—if anybody has ears to hear.