Seth Cropsey
The United States is pursuing a backward Middle East strategy, one in which it seeks to avoid conflict by restraining its allies, rather than deterring its adversaries. (Note, for example, Mr. Biden lecturing Mr. Netanyahu about avoiding civilian casualties while Hamas seeks to increase innocent Palestinians’ suffering as a spur to international protests). The issue is, the White House’s baseline strategic assumption, that Israeli aggression has prompted a crisis, is radically out of touch with reality. All policy stems from choice, but the U.S. must recognize that its options have narrowed. The war that is now underway must be fought and won.
Since Hamas’ 7 October attacks, Israel, the U.S., and Iran have been engaged in a bizarre diplomatic dance. There is no question that Iran’s hand supported Hamas’ massacres. Tehran has been Hamas’s major benefactor since 2018 and integrated Hamas into its Axis of Resistance in 2021. Hamas receives military and technical support from Iran – Iranian weapons and intelligence were undoubtedly used in the 7 October attacks.
All of Iran’s proxies in its Axis of Resistance share two interests: the destruction of Israel and the displacement of American power in the Middle East. Hamas is no different. The 1998 Hamas charter, still in effect despite former Hamas leader, Khaled Mashal’s obfuscations, states the only solution to the Palestinian issue is “Jihad.” That means Israel’s destruction.
The Iran and Hamas pieces fit together cleanly. Hamas staged the 7 October massacres at Iran’s behest to drag Israel into a brutal conflict in Gaza. As the IDF smashed into Hamas’ well-prepared defenses, Iran would then trigger an uprising in the West Bank – which it has seeded for months with its agents running arms – and execute an assault from Lebanon and Syria. This assault might well involve a ground invasion of the Golan, an eminently possible step considering that Iran controls Syria’s 4th Division and 5th Corps and can leverage at least 50,000 proxy fighters in Iraq who are willing to sacrifice themselves for al-Aqsa’s liberation. All the while, Hezbollah’s missiles can pummel Israeli infrastructure, destroying the economy, inflicting thousands of casualties, and, per Iran’s vision, shattering the morale of the Jewish state before its 80th birthday. A mass exodus of Jews to Europe and the U.S. will leave only a handful remaining, who can be dispensed with through the means on display 7 October.
The Biden administration may well know this, just as it must grasp that Iran is responsible for some two dozen-plus recent attacks across the Middle East against U.S. bases. Why, then, does the administration insist that Iran has “nothing to do” with any of these designs?
The answer lies in the Biden administration’s fear of escalation. In no circumstances has the Biden team, and the Obama team the preceded it, been willing to use force decisively to accomplish American policy objectives, or to allow U.S. allies to do the same. From a half-hearted, belated engagement in the Syrian War under Obama to the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the priority of escalation management in Ukraine, the Biden team has conditioned itself to believe that conflict-avoidance is the end state of strategy.
In some respects, this resembles the logic of the British policy system during the 1920s and 1930s, up until months before the Nazis’ invasion of Poland. Appeasement is a hackneyed term, but the strategic history behind it is illustrative. The British calculation until the mid-1930s was that French revanchism was at least an equivalent threat to German ambition. London’s premised its view on two assumptions: first, that Germany, whether Weimar or Nazi, had no real desire for the ruinous brutality of a European war, and second, that the USSR was ultimately an equivalent if not greater threat than Nazi Germany. French expansion would at worst resurrect the specter of Bonapartist conquest, and at best weaken the German bulwark against the Soviet menace. Hence the British consistently opposed even limited French action against Germany, up to and including during Munich. British pressure on France granted Germany by diplomacy what London sought to avoid by war, the absorption of much of Czechoslovakia’s military-industrial capacity, and with it, mortgaged any possibility of an encircling coalition against Germany. The result was strategic calamity.
Appeasement was justified on strategic grounds, not only psychological ones – its failure was foremost political, with its moral failure a derivative.
The same is true of American policy toward the Middle East. With only two brief exceptions – the last three years of the Bush administration and the latter half of the Trump administration – the U.S. has viewed Israeli power as the problem. Through this distorted lens, the Israel-Palestine conflict poisons any chance of a regional balance, which demands that the U.S. remain engaged in the Middle East, dirtying its hands by working with the odious Arab petrostates. The solution, per the Obama administration, was to bring the U.S. close enough to Iran to generate daylight with Israel, and then leverage the new relationship to force Israeli concessions on the Palestinian issue and on regional order. Integration, the Obama-Biden regional catchphrase, was meant to induce Tehran’s participation in a Middle Eastern economic system that would maintain the peace, enabling an American regional departure.
British pre-WWII and current American policy made parallel mistakes. The British assumption that no leader could desire European war was defective. Hitler planned on igniting a conflagration in his bid for German-Aryan supremacy and induced the German people to accept his vision.
Similarly, the Iranian regime rests on expansionist premises. Khomeinism dictates that Tehran export the Islamic Revolution across the Ummah in a quest for global strength. Israel’s democratic particularism is inimical to Iran’s theological universality, while the U.S. is the crusader-usurper that stands with Israel blocking Iran’s strategic path.
Because Iran’s goal is regional conflict, the U.S.’ attempts to “deescalate” the situation only guarantee a wider war. The prudent move would have been to allow an Israeli strike in the north shortly after 7 October, while using U.S. naval air power and rapidly deployed tactical aircraft and air defense units to demonstrate to Iran the real cost of escalation. By contrast, the Biden administration blocked an Israeli offensive in the North while also restraining action in Gaza. This is coherent only if the Biden administration is correct that Iran seeks de-escalation, and that it will only attack if “provoked” by an Israeli or American countermeasure.
This assumption is as farcical as it is dangerous. Mr. Biden is committed to a policy of restraint that allows Iran to harass and probe the U.S. and Israel, escalating at a time of its choosing after it has thoroughly prepared the battlefield. Iran is proving this in Lebanon, where Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both under IRGC control, are eroding Israel’s surveillance system in the north in preparation for a major attack. It is doing so in Syria, setting the conditions for an attack on al-Tanf, a U.S. base that sits astride the Baghdad-Damascus highway on the Syrian-Iraqi-Jordanian border, the natural logistics route for Iran to support Hezbollah and Syria in a conflict with Israel. Iran is playing for time, setting the stage for a much broader set of operations that are meant to end America’s Middle Eastern position.
Fortunately, the Biden administration has moved into position the elements needed to remind Iran of the power the U.S. military can deliver at short notice. Independent of the fighter squadrons deployed throughout the Middle East, the U.S. has also surged two Carrier Strike Groups to the region, along with their complement of two guided-missile cruisers and eleven guided-missile destroyers, an unknown number of submarines, and a Marine amphibious ready group. This is more than sufficient for a major response to any Iranian attacks.
Yet as long as the U.S.’ strategic calculations remain fixed, Iran will keep pressing, resulting in regional war. The U.S. can deter that war through prudent, decisive action – at minimum a series of strikes on Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq, and at best a full-scale air campaign in Syria that shatters the Iranian logistical network. This would require an about face in the current administration’s view that Israeli aggression is the cause of regional tension. Until and unless such a change occurs, Mr. Biden’s refusal to acknowledge that the root of evil in the Middle East is Iran’s theocrats guarantees more—and far deadlier—strife.
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