Author Archives: Hussein Ibish

Student protests will shape a generation of Americans’ thinking on social justice

This op-ed was published by The National on May 3, 2024 

The sustained student unrest over the Gaza war may have reached a crescendo. Yet US student activism against Israeli policies may be just starting.

This semester is ending. Israel’s rampage in Gaza appears to have one major target left in Rafah. And the astoundingly self-defeating behavior of the Columbia University administration will shortly be studied by others as an object lesson in exactly what not to do unless you want protests galvanized and empowered.

But perhaps the biggest reason is that the opportunism on the political left and, especially, the right over this issue is probably approaching points of diminishing return on both sides.

The confrontation began over a peaceful student encampment of about 100 students on one lawn out of at least a dozen on the Columbia campus.

The students were demanding a ceasefire, an end to US support for Israel and, crucially, that the university divest from holdings that operate in, or work closely with, Israel.

The university had the option of simply ignoring the students, or even trying to meet some of their demands. But the political right sensed an election-year opportunity to argue that liberal-dominated colleges had created the groundwork for supposedly “anti-Semitic” protests just by being too liberal.

When Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, was summoned by a congressional right-wingers, one radical fundamentalist Congressman asked her if she was worried about Columbia being “cursed by God” because of anti-Israel protests. Unfortunately, that absurd question probably played well in his district.

Feeling the political pressure from powerful national right-wingers, some parents and wealthy donors, Dr Shafik asked police to intervene, arresting 100 students who, police attested, may have been technically trespassing but who were not doing anything but calmly expressing their opinions.

This craven action may have been sufficient to placate pro-Israel parents and donors, and indemnify Columbia’s administration from further right-wing attacks, but it was a massive blunder in terms of limiting the protest movement.

The students were zip-tied, arrested and processed, but quickly released on misdemeanour trespassing charges. Most immediately returned to their encampment, which they of course then vowed to maintain indefinitely. Similar protests spread around the country.

Columbia students began negotiating with administrators over the encampment, but talks broke down, particularly on divestment. Suspecting the university was planning more mass arrests, some students took over an administration building. The university once again decided to send in the police.

These students in some cases are now being charged with burglary and other excessive charges that probably won’t stick. But between its “get tough approach, the end of the semester, and the final stages of Israel’s major operations in Gaza, this batch of protests may have largely run its course.

Yet the Palestinian cause has almost certainly emerged decisively as international social justice cause for the current generation of American students. Unfortunately for campus administrators, the issue is highly unlikely to go away in the short or medium terms, and could potentially flare up even more dramatically in the future.

For all the rhetoric about the appalling war, Israel’s brutality and the virtually unimaginable number of Palestinian civilians, particularly children, who have been wantonly killed in Gaza, the divestment movement will probably emerge as the next phase of a protracted campaign on US campuses. When anti-apartheid fervour gripped campuses in the 1980s, many universities adopted rules prohibiting their own investment in entities that do business with those practicing apartheid, without limiting the ban to South Africa only.

The opportunity for student activists, and the nightmare universities will struggle to manage in coming years even without the Gaza war, is built-into those policies. After all, it is difficult to look at the social, economic and political system enforced by Israel’s occupation army, particularly in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and argue with a straight face that it cannot accurately be described as “apartheid”.

The only effective means of doing so would be to claim that this is a temporary military occupation to be resolved by forthcoming negotiations. But given that it has been ongoing since 1967, and that the policy of the current Israeli government is to eventually annex large chunks of the West Bank and never allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, that claim of a “temporary” status is intellectually, factually and legally baseless.

That could all change if Israel suddenly recognises the Palestinian right to a state and enters into a process to eventually create one. But that would be a total repudiation of the stated policies of the current government, and unlikely to be embraced by any viable alternative coalition

Students may find themselves on rock solid ground in coming years in asking why their universities persist with investments in such a system, or companies with any sort of presence in, or business with, the Israeli settlement project in the West Bank. The pro-Israel and right-wing backlash will be hysterical and reflective of great power, but counterarguments at the universities themselves will be factually hamstrung and intellectually weak.

The rhetoric of the anti-Gaza war protests has been shaped and informed almost entirely by the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, and these protests in turn have galvanised and breathed new life into the BDS project on American universities.

But BDS proponents will be on much shakier ground whenever it insists on breaking ties with Israeli universities and especially refusing to deal with Jewish Israeli faculty. Suddenly, they will find, the moral and intellectual equation flips against them, as they will be painting with far too broad a brush and playing into the hands of those would accuse them of anti-Semitism.

But, especially insofar as they avoid academic and intellectual boycotts and stick to divestment from Israel, and especially anything to do with the occupation and settlements, this coming student movement should prove enduring and potent. It has been operating on the margins of US campuses for the past two decades, meeting with limited success among student structures but virtually none institutionally.

The main legacy of the current organising against the Gaza war is very likely to be a greatly empowered campus divestment movement regarding Israel that, despite pressure from the same pro-Israel parents, donors and politicians, university administrations will find increasingly unmanageable, effective and possibly irresistible.

Unable to ‘win’ in Gaza, Israel sets its sights elsewhere

This op-ed was published by CNN on May 2, 2024

An eerie relative calm has descended on the Middle East — Gaza obviously excluded — since a highly alarming exchange of missile, rocket and drone attacks by Israel and Iran in recent weeks. Fears of an imminent regional war have subsided, with both sides suggesting that, for now at any rate, they believe they have restored deterrence strategically and bolstered national morale enough to offset criticism from hawks and hardliners.

For the meanwhile, it appears that neither Israel nor Iran wants a direct war with each other, and both appear ready to consider the recent exchange of attacks, although not their underlying causes, resolved. It certainly helps that no one appears to have been killed in either country, and that was undoubtedly intentional, since both sides have the clear ability to inflict far more destruction and deaths in each other’s territories if that was what they wanted.

But that doesn’t mean the confrontation is over by any means. To the contrary, just as the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel from Gaza sparked the tensions that ultimately led to the first-ever direct Iranian attacks against Israel and Israel’s retaliation against Iran, the struggle between the two powers appears set to move to the next stage and, more ominously still, the next level.

All eyes on Lebanon

The clock may be ticking for Lebanon, with a possible Israeli offensive looming in the coming weeks that would cause massive destruction in both countries and devastation to the Biden administration’s policy of conflict containment in the Middle East.

Israel was already threatening, and appeared to be preparing for, a major offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon later this spring or in the early summer, according to American administration and intelligence officials. Now, the recent exchange of direct military attacks with Iran might have sealed Lebanon’s fate, unless team Biden can restrain Israel.

It’s important here to recall how the recent Israeli–Iranian exchange of fire originated. On April 1, Israel struck an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus, killing a number of senior Iranian officials including Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi; his deputy, Gen. Haji Rahimi; and, perhaps most significantly, Brig. Gen. Hossein Amirollah, chief of staff in Syria and Lebanon for Iran’s expeditionary Quds Force.

The Israelis insisted that these senior commanders were directing efforts by Iran’s extensive network of militia groups and armed gangs in the Arab world, led by Hezbollah, in helping Hamas fend off Israel in Gaza and the group Hezbollah to prepare for the long-threatened Israeli offensive in Lebanon.

That the accusation is almost certainly correct only underscores why Tehran felt deeply wounded by the attack on its consulate in Damascus, which it considered to be on part of its own territory, given international conventions and norms regarding extraterritorial jurisdiction in diplomatic facilities in other countries.

Laying the groundwork

Washington’s overriding prime directive regarding the post-October 7 crises has been conflict containment, preventing major fighting from spreading beyond Gaza, particularly into Lebanon.

The fear is that such an expansion could easily drag in the United States and/or Iran, leading to the first regional war in modern Middle Eastern history and potential direct conflict between Washington and Tehran. There are, of course, numerous hardliners in Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have long sought US strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities and who might be tempted to escalate simply in hopes of finally realizing that perennially frustrated aspiration. 

But that wouldn’t be the main reason for an Israeli offensive in Lebanon, which wouldn’t guarantee any such eventuality. Instead, October 7 led many Israeli hardliners into a new and much more uncompromising attitude towards national security, especially regarding Iranian-sponsored groups directly on Israel’s borders.

As early as a few days after October 7, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was pressing for a major preemptive strike against Hezbollah because the Lebanese militia constitutes Israel’s most potent immediate threat. The Biden administration made American opposition crystal clear, at least postponing any such operation.

As Israel’s forces moved south through Gaza, obliterating Hamas brigades with relative ease, its thinking relatively quickly turned north again. Hezbollah’s major threat against Israel is its massive arsenal of over 150,000 missiles and rockets, many with precision guidance, that are capable of striking anywhere in Israel and possibly overwhelming Iron Dome and other Israeli antimissile defense systems.

Acting on its post-October 7 sensitivity to border-area threats — including Hezbollah rocket attacks that have persisted since then​ — Israel evacuated about 80,000 citizens from its northern communities (a similar number of Lebanese relocated themselves from southern towns and villages), and the government began insisting that they could not return to their homes in safety and security unless Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force commandos were permanently relocated approximately 18 miles north of the border area.

However, the Radwan force, in my assessment, does not appear to be prepared for or capable of launching a meaningful, large-scale ground invasion of northern Israel, regardless of what Hezbollah says about the force. While it’s understandable for Israel to be concerned about the potential for a dangerous incursion by Radwan, the main purpose of the force is to justify Hezbollah’s maintenance of its private army — and therefore its own foreign policy — by claiming it is defending southern Lebanon and the border area from Israel. Therefore, we should be skeptical about Israel’s motivations.

Even though Hezbollah has made it clear in both word and deed since October 7 that, with Iran’s backing, it does not want a broader war with Israel under current circumstances, despite ongoing tit-for-tat attacks, the Lebanese group would not simply capitulate to a major concession of withdrawing its elite fighters from the southern regions in which the group was formed and that are its heartland.

Israel’s war hawks’ real target in Lebanon is Hezbollah’s missile, rocket and drone arsenal, which it would hope to damage and degrade while inflicting a humiliating blow against its most potent immediate foe.

Israeli leaders would also undoubtedly hope that another potential war in Lebanon would finally provide Israelis with a major victory, the “win” that has never been available in Gaza under any scenario. Hezbollah is much more of a conventional force than Hamas. Damage to its military and other capabilities would be readily quantifiable and, if the cost were tolerable, likely warmly applauded in Israel — and the country would not face the problem of any prolonged reoccupation of additional Arab territory.

In the process, Iran’s regional trump card would be severely degraded, Israeli leaders would hope. However, each time Israel has engaged Hezbollah anew, it has found the group’s capabilities far exceed its expectations, and Israelis may come to regret another avoidable adventure in Lebanon.

Biden’s worst nightmare

For the Biden administration, however, this scenario is a nightmare. One of the main purposes of the bear-hug of support from Washington to Israel in Gaza was to position the US to restrain friends as well as contain foes in the battle to prevent a catastrophic regional conflict.

After the recent exchange of bombardments with Iran, it may be down to the administration and even President Joe Biden personally to restrain the Israelis from moving forward with the threatened major offensive in Lebanon.

If this happens, a primary US goal regarding the Gaza war — conflict containment — would be shattered not by Washington’s adversaries, but ironically by its closest regional partner.

By cracking down on the Gaza protests, US universities are betraying their core mission

This op-ed was published by The National on April 24, 2024

Free speech at American universities is enduring one of its most severe stress tests in decades. Israel’s war of vengeance in Gaza, precipitated by the October 7 killing spree by Hamas-led militants from Gaza, has riveted and appalled the world, even eclipsing the perhaps historically more significant Russian assault on Ukraine.

Huge coalitions of US students have united against Israel’s rampage that has targeted not just Hamas but Gaza society generally, damaged or destroyed the vast majority of buildings, and killed at least 35,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians. The slaughter has been shocking, even given the vicious savagery of the October 7 attack.

Since the end of South African apartheid, Palestine has been the most likely focal point of US student international social justice outrage. This movement was predictable and predicted. Yet pro-Israel constituencies appear taken aback by outrage at the butchery in Gaza and sympathy for Palestinians roiling American campuses, particularly at elite schools. Not since the Vietnam War have university leaders looked this discombobulated, unable to placate any faction or to credibly and creditably defend their institutions from such intense internal and external pressure.

Turmoil over Gaza has already contributed to the downfall of several major university presidents. Others, most recently the Egyptian-American president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, have committed extraordinary miscalculations. Following several other elite university leaders, she was recently grilled by a highly aggressive Republican congressional committee, and told to take tougher action against pro-Palestinian protesters, particularly by Representative Elise Stefanik who is angling to be Donald Trump’s running mate in the coming election.

 

Ms Shafik tried to placate the right-wingers by labelling phrases such as “from the river to the sea” and even just the word “intifada” as “incredibly hurtful”, without any additional context. Upon returning to campus, she ordered police to arrest more than 100 students encamped on a campus lawn. Even the authorities appeared uneasy at the operation, with New York Police Department Chief John Chell noting that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner”.

This unnecessary and chilling crackdown had the inevitable effect of galvanising student protests at Columbia and elsewhere. Ms Shafik is now predictably squeezed between demands for her resignation from dissatisfied pro-Israel Democratic and Republican legislators and a pro-free-speech censure motion filed by outraged faculty in the University Senate.

University leaders find themselves trapped between two competing and crucial values: upholding the protesters’ right of free speech while simultaneously protecting a sense of safety and security for pro-Israel Jewish students.

While the protests have been almost entirely nonviolent, instances of harassment and speech that either is, or is interpreted as, hateful have left many Jewish students – like their Arab and Muslim counterparts, some of whom have even been shot – feeling shaken and unsafe. Both are left wondering if they are truly welcome at their own schools.

Meanwhile, the demonstrators are being systematically and unfairly painted as all or mostly followers of Hamas, proponents of terrorism, and violent anti-Semites. They are being generally conflated with the worst elements of the far left that have, of course, seized a golden opportunity of outbidding everyone with extremist rhetoric that dominates media attention and trying to gain control of a potent fledgling oppositional movement.

The political right, abetted by some liberals, is similarly relishing the chance to paint criticism of Israel as inherently anti-Semitic and claim that liberal-dominated universities have in recent decades created an atmosphere of casual left-wing extremism by not being more conservative. For supporters of Israel’s otherwise indefensible bloodbath in Gaza, pointing to the genuinely extreme, rhetorically violent, or effectively anti-Semitic screeds of the most radical protesters is a desperately needed means of discrediting and delegitimising vigorous opposition to the war.

Panicky universities are not just mishandling a delicate and difficult fissure. They are missing a rare and profound opportunity for academia to demonstrate its unique social role and putative worth.

Rather than arresting students en masse and denouncing them as anti-Semitic because they object to a barbaric war on top of an unjust, predatory occupation, university leaders should be embracing their institutional mission of education. Nothing is going to magically make traumas and bitter divisions evaporate. But everything necessary for universities to foster serious dialogue on a mass and highly sophisticated level is readily available.

There are countless constructive and serious scholars and advocates on both sides who are ready for such a conversation, which should most certainly include students. And the communication technology that all students, and much of society, access daily provides many excellent platforms. These forums should resonate with calm but passionate and principled voices on all sides.

While many Jewish students hear the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as an exclusionary call to get rid of Jews, surveys demonstrate that most Arab and Muslim students hear merely a call for freedom. No one is asking the demonstrators what they mean by such slogans. Instead, malign sentiments are being inferred or presumed. A dialogue is therefore urgently required. What would freedom from the river to the sea entail? Is anyone against freedom? Can everyone have it equally? Must an area be under a single sovereign or system to be free? Is this really anti-Semitism?

Rather than fostering such a novel and broad conversation, many universities are instead trying to limit speech, not just by arresting or otherwise punishing and maligning protesters, but also, as in the shocking and shameful case of the University of Southern California, silencing it outright.

USC cancelled the graduation ceremony speech by valedictorian Asna Tabassum because of her criticism of Israel, citing highly credible and numerous violent threats. This yet again confirms that extreme harassment and intimidation are coming from both sides. Worse, assuming its rationale is sincere, USC is effectively pioneering a preemptive and presumptive heckler’s veto.

Like Columbia and others, USC is charging headlong in the wrong direction. Rather than finding creative ways of tapping into a huge appetite, and the vast intellectual and other resources at hand, for serious, albeit difficult and potentially painful, dialogue – and thereby fulfilling academia’s socially indispensable educational mission – these schools are turning to suppression, marginalisation and demonisation of speech that offends some students, reactionary politicians and pro-Israel donors.

It’s a betrayal of the core mission of academia, a cowardly and short-sighted blunder, and a missed opportunity of epic and historic proportions.

 

 

Iran-Israel conflict poses an existential risk for Lebanon, unless Biden can intervene

This op-ed was published by The National on April 16, 2024

Iran’s failed attack on Israel may have sealed Lebanon’s fate. Israel undoubtedly has come out the winner in the latest exchange, having killed several key commanders who are said to have played a role in directing Iran’s regional network of Arab militias to help Hamas fight Israel in Gaza and help Hezbollah prepare for a potential Israeli attack.

Israel suffered no fatalities, few injuries and very little damage in the Iranian barrage of over 300 projectiles aimed at military facilities. The US estimates about 140 of the drones and missiles failed due to malfunctions. US forces downed most of the remaining 160 projectiles, with the UK, France, Jordan and Israel’s own Iron Dome antimissile system also involved.

Iranian chest beating – and misleading news reports depicting fires from Chile and Texas as damage in Israel – aside, Iran seems to have been effectively thwarted.

Yet Iran does not appear to have intended to cause significant damage and fatalities in its attack, despite its size. Tehran telegraphed both the timing and the nature of the attack to Arab and European diplomats close to Washington well in advance. This explains warnings to Iran from US President Joe Biden, in his now-standard diplomatic catchphrase, “don’t”. Moreover, by using mainly slow, cheap drones, Iran actually may have pulled its punch. These missiles were fairly easily, and almost completely successfully, defeated.

Yet there can be little doubt that Iran could have done a great deal of damage, had that really been its intention. Not only do the Iranians have much greater capabilities than were on display in the attack on Israel, they also held back their biggest weapon, which is Hezbollah in Lebanon and its massive arsenal of over 150,000 missiles and rockets, many with precision guidance. Hezbollah’s stockpile is, if nothing else, capable of overwhelming the Iron Dome, and would have posed a huge challenge even to the US forces that did most of the important work.

So, what did Iran think it was doing? Clearly, Tehran believed that a direct strike on Israel in retaliation for the stinging assassination of its senior operatives in Syria was necessary. But it’s likely that domestic politics and political pressure from hardliners was the main factor, rather than a desire to escalate unduly with Israel. This is reflected in the failure of the Iranian attack, which is rather predictable given its structure and handling, and the obvious alternatives Iran could have used and still holds in reserve.

It appears Iran’s leaders wanted to score a “win” in the eyes of their people, while simultaneously giving Israel every opportunity to avoid feeling compelled to launch an additional new escalation. Indeed, Israeli leaders, too, can look at the score sheet and conclude that they have achieved a massive “win” over Iran. Neither side, rationally, has a real reason to push the confrontation further.

In addition, the Iranian attack was the antithesis for Israel of October 7. Rather than a shock which took the Israeli state and military completely by surprise and overwhelmed it, at least for a couple of days, this was telegraphed in advance and was easily dealt with by existing forces, even if they involved many other countries. Besides, most Israelis think their own military did the heavy lifting against the barrage. Instead of feeling violated, vulnerable, stateless and abandoned, Israelis can now feel a new sense of security, stability, predictability and that they are under the protection of a powerful and effective government that defends them and their interests against powerful foreign attacks.

The real question is, will Israel see this latest round with Iran as a sufficient “win”? Israeli leaders have been looking for such a victory since October 7, under the rubric of “restoring deterrence” but, really, in order to restore the national morale and sense of security and stability among a traumatized Israeli society. It was obvious from the outset to many, and has surely become clear to everyone by now, that such a “win” isn’t available in Gaza.

The great danger in recent months, not just to the region but to US policy as well, has been the prospect that Israeli leaders were seeking this restorative and cathartic “win” against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The group represents the most powerful immediate threat to Israel and is a much more conventional enemy than Hamas. Such a conflict would provide the Israelis with obvious targets, quantifiable metrics of success or failure, and no quagmire of having to occupy large chunks of Arab land indefinitely. They could simply pummel the group, damage and degrade its arsenal, kill some of its leaders and commanders and attack its infrastructure in relatively short order and then declare a victory that could be clear-cut in a way that no development in Gaza could.

The greatest problem with the Iranian attack on Israel is that it could well stoke, rather than mollify, the passion among some leading Israelis, like Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, for a war in Lebanon. Such hawks can point to the Iranian missile attack and claim that Hezbollah’s arsenal represents of much deadlier and intolerably dangerous version of the what Iran ineffectively flung in their direction.

The ball is now in Israel’s court. It could retaliate significantly against Iran, escalating prospects of a regional war. It could employed much more limited, or targeted, reprisals of a kind that has characterized its grey war with Tehran in recent years. Or it can decide to deliver Iran the biggest possible strategic blow by taking on, and, it would hope, taking out, Iran’s strategic trump card: Hezbollah.

If the Israelis decide the Iranian attack justifies an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, it will be up to Mr. Biden, who has successfully held them back from such a folly on numerous occasions since October 7, to once again successfully restrain them. This will not come naturally or easily to Mr. Biden, even though he has made his opposition crystal clear. Nonetheless, his powers of persuasion with Israel may face their ultimate test in the coming weeks. It may be up to the US President to stop Israel from committing the most dangerous and readily avoidable escalation in recent Middle East history by yet again invading Lebanon.

Biden will have to choose between his left-wing base and the Never Trumpers

This op-ed was published by The National on April 10, 2024

U.S. President Joe Biden finds himself squeezed between competing imperatives in the run-up to the November presidential election.

Neither he nor his presumptive Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump, have yet assembled a working coalition that can produce an electoral college majority, delivering either candidate a second presidential term. Mr. Biden is in a far more advantageous position, but he faces a potent conundrum about how best to expand his current base: moving to the right and embracing former Trump voters or tacking to the left and trying to shore up the liberal coalition that secured him victory in 2020.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that Mr. Biden has little to lose by making a concerted push to win over alienated Republicans. But such a move could be very risky.

Traditional assumptions hold that Mr. Biden’s former voters are unlikely to end up supporting Mr. Trump, whose racist, violent and extreme rhetoric is far more radical now than in 2020 or 2016. The overwhelming majority, the thinking goes, will eventually come back to Mr. Biden – even holding their noses – or, at the very least, will stay home.

But how many will really be won over by the current, highly radicalized, version of Mr. Trump currently on offer? Apparently more than most Democrats would have anticipated.

Current polling suggests that Mr. Trump is doing much better among Latinos and non-college-educated African Americans and other minorities, once bastions of the Democratic voter base and core parts of Mr. Biden’s 2020 coalition, than many liberals would’ve thought possible.

Democrats have long suffered from an evident and lazy complacency, with the assumption that Latinos would be impelled by a mixture of immigration and economics, and African Americans by resentment of Republican racism and their own class concerns, to always return to their fold.

Many Latinos are socially conservative, religious Catholics or other Christians, and are therefore responsive to the traditionalist and even reactionary Republican agenda, especially on abortion. Immigration does not trump everything else, and Latinos are by no means united in wanting the US to be more welcoming at the border. Indeed, many working-class Latinos are as resentful of recent migrants using the asylum system to try to bypass formal immigration processes as other Americans.

Non-college-educated African-American men have proved to be particularly receptive to Mr. Trump’s appeals in recent months. The extent to which they are aware of his new rhetoric about immigrants from Asia and Africa “poisoning the bloodstream” of the US population, or if they would care, is unclear. But his populist message, designed to appeal rhetorically to blue-collar constituents outside of the traditional unions, does seem to resonate with many young black men.

Both groups also appear to be receptive to his hyper-nationalism and isolationist rhetoric, wrongly assuming, along with many of their white rural counterparts, that international engagement and leadership are simply a burden on the American people and a boondoggle for wealthy corporations. Finally, both seem responsive to Mr. Trump’s persona as a strongman outsider who can supposedly cut through traditional power structures and impose better and fairer policies on a corrupt and parasitical elite.

So, Mr. Biden needs to be attentive to the drift of these groups away from his constituency, which in some cases could mean tacking to the populist left in order to counteract the populist right.

Moreover, the Gaza war has cast a huge shadow over Mr. Biden’s credibility with progressive left-wing groups, many of them African-American social justice and religious constituencies, who are deeply angered about the carte blanche given to Israel in attacking not just Hamas but the whole of Gazan society. On the US left, there is a conviction that Israel has engaged in an exterminationist, even genocidal, war in Gaza with the strong backing of the President and his administration, and that this has been shameful and morally unacceptable.

Mr. Biden needs to distance himself from this war, and therefore needs an end to major fighting in Gaza before campaigning gets fully under way by the early summer. But there is little sign that Israel views the timeline in a similar manner. Pushback from the progressive left is a key reason that the administration has been slowly ratcheting up pressure on Israel to ease the humanitarian crisis and prepare to end the war in the coming weeks.

But if Mr. Biden attends to these groups, it could be at the expense of the most significant “gettable” group of voters, in addition to the suburban constituencies in swing states that are likely to determine the outcome. While Mr. Biden has his Democratic critics, Mr. Trump goes into the election with a striking number of Republicans who clearly don’t want him as their nominee. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley consistently got between 20-40 per cent of primary votes, and there is ample additional evidence that more Republicans than ever are fed up with his extremism and shenanigans.

Mr. Biden has already attempted to reach out to these voters by embracing what amounts to a Republican agenda on border security in legislation that was killed by Republican House members, precisely to thwart such outreach. But there is much more he can and should do to make it clear to disaffected conservatives, especially those who once supported Mr. Trump but no longer can, that he represents an acceptable, even desirable, alternative.

Mr. Trump’s upcoming legal tribulations, especially the trial on hush money payments to an adult film star that is due to start next week, could well offer the President a devastating weapon. A felony conviction could provide a decisive opening to convince former Trump voters and other Republicans to at least stay home in November.

Mr. Biden wouldn’t have to tack very hard to the right to win over many of them, but he’s going to have to do more than he already has. The problem is that if he reaches out to disaffected parts of his 2020 coalition among minorities and on the left, he may lose the opportunity to steal or silence decisive numbers of Republican votes.

Mr. Biden’s conundrum is that he quite possibly cannot have both or simply rely on one group or the other coming back to him in November in despair. He’s probably going to have to choose between these outreach agendas. And, given what’s at stake in the 2024 election, that’s going to be a momentous strategic decision indeed.

A bit of good news for Trump is still dwarfed by his mounting legal woes

This op-ed was published by The National on March 28, 2024

The 2024 US presidential campaign, already among the strangest ever, has begun to truly unfurl its ineffable weirdness as Donald Trump is buffeted between sporadic campaigning and competing court decisions. Mr Biden remains the conventional candidate of a conventional party. Mr Trump and his Republicans, by contrast, are dispensing with virtually all political norms, expectations and traditions.

The Republican Party appears to have become a de jure as well as de facto Trump personal fiefdom. Desperate for money amid mounting fines, judgments and legal bills, he has installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair of the Republican National Committee which controls party affairs and finances.

When she was initially proposed, RNC leaders insisted that everything would remain entirely aboveboard, and Party funds would only be used for Republican campaigns and not Trump family legal bills. However, Ms. Trump rushed to contradict them, insisting that Republican voters would be delighted to have their political donations used to bail out their adored chieftain.

Recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, which oversees political activities and spending, confirm that Mr Trump’s organisations like Save America and the Trump 47 Committee will have first dibs on future incoming RNC money through a “joint fundraising agreement”. Such groups allow themselves to pay any of Mr Trump’s personal expenses, including legal costs, so RNC fundraising now feeds directly into a virtual slush fund for the former president.

This reprehensible absurdity builds on the 2020 embarrassment of the Republican Party forgoing a normal election manifesto to simply declare that it supports whatever Mr. Trump wants at any given moment. The scandalous new arrangement means that normative RNC activities aimed at helping Republican candidates across the country get elected will only be funded after Mr. Trump skims off the cream for himself. Yet there’s a deafening silence and nary a word of complaint from Republican leaders and activists.

Key RNC staff in the political, data and all-important communication departments have been purged and prospective recruits quizzed on whether the 2020 election was “stolen,” meaning ideological commitment to Mr Trump’s most brazen lie is now, literally, part of their job descriptions. But this transformation of the GOP into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mr Trump’s family business, the Trump Organisation, could well result in underfunded Republican candidates losing otherwise winnable seats in Congress in November. Republicans also appear to be repeating the 2022 midterms blunder, as Mr Trump’s preferred but probably unelectable nominees push aside more plausible candidates, as just happened in Ohio. A once near-certain Republican Senate takeover is increasingly doubtful because of his preference for the most unctuous sycophants over competent politicians.

This is all unfolding as the Trump campaign and RNC coffers are lagging far behind Democratic fundraising that has allowed Mr Biden to already begin running general election television advertisements.

Democrats scored yet another stunning upset, flipping a House seat in Alabama, of all places, with a massive 25-point victory in a county Mr Biden lost by 25 points in 2020, in a special election that became centred on reproductive freedom for women. That clearly remains a massive weapon for liberals even in the most unlikely districts and states.

Mr. Trump did get some good news on Monday as an appellate court predictably reduced the amount he must raise to back his appeal against the $454 million judgment against him for systematic business fraud to a “mere” $175 million. But they haven’t yet reduced the $454 million judgment. And New York State attorneys must be quietly delighted to be assured of getting at least $175 million without having to chase down his assets.

But this win-win was more than offset by another brutal day in the hush money criminal case. Mr Trump’s stalling tactics collapsed as Judge Juan M Merchan scheduled the trial for April 15. The judge became increasingly irate with Mr Trump’s attorneys as they failed to support their accusations of prosecutorial, and implicitly his own, misconduct. “You are literally accusing the Manhattan DA’s office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct and trying to make me complicit in it,” Judge Merchan thundered.

Even worse for Mr Trump, who angrily condemned the whole process in statements immediately involving the Monday hearing, the judge on Tuesday issued a gag order limiting what Mr Trump can publicly say as long as these proceedings continue. Prosecutors requested the order by alleging the former president’s remarks have been “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” to those doing their civil duty rather than other public figures.

Mr Trump and his subordinates will not be allowed to make public comments regarding prospective witnesses, jurors, court staff and prosecutors, or their relatives. This follows the former president’s harsh public attacks on a key witness in the $454 million civil fraud case and previous statements that were widely viewed as attempts to intimidate potential witnesses or their relatives.

This ruling is a severe blow to Mr Trump’s plans to use the trial, which will not be televised, to promote the narrative that he and his supporters – including felons convicted of violent crimes during the January 6 insurrection – are being unjustly persecuted by Democrats and a fictitious “deep state”.

He will still be able to complain in broad terms about being treated “very unfairly” and insist that “such a thing has never happened” – because, he will not mention, no other former president has ever been accused of buying silence from alleged former paramours, including an adult film actress – and that it all constitutes intolerable “election interference.” This final point is absolutely correct. The trial is indeed about election interference – his.

The prosecution’s central assertion that the payoffs, which came long after the alleged affairs ended, were only made because Mr. Trump was running for president in 2016, and to protect his election chances, not his family’s feelings. Therefore, the surreptitious hush money payments constituted undisclosed and unlawful campaign contributions.

His former attorney and self-described “fixer” Michael Cohen, who will be a prosecution star witness in the upcoming trial, was sentenced in 2018 to three years in prison, largely on the basis of these payments that he allegedly (and obviously) made on Mr Trump’s behalf.

The election interference is that because of these unlawful payments, the public never learnt about allegations by the adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, and a former Playboy model, Karen McDougall, that both had extramarital affairs with Mr Trump.

It’s unclear if that information would have made any difference in 2026. But by 2024, a ruinous cult of personality has become so entrenched that many Republicans will allow him literally anything. That may not impress the swing voters who will decide the next election, especially if the Republican candidate becomes a convicted felon.

The April 15 trial will take about six weeks. A felony conviction should initiate an unprecedented political implosion, though that’s dishearteningly unlikely. Nonetheless, it could prove to be a dramatic election game-changer.

Biden’s fiery State of the Union has given him a decisive edge over Trump

This op-ed was published by The National on March 12, 2024

“Dark Brandon” the nickname coined by Joe Biden’s supporters to describe his formidable side was in full effect last week as the US President launched his re-election campaign in a barn-burning State of the Union address before Congress.

Republicans have been painting the 81-year-old President as a doddering octogenarian with pronounced dementia and rapidly decreasing, if any, ability to govern. Huge blunder.

This foolhardy caricature sat uneasily beside its even more grotesque fraternal twin in the right-wing echo chamber: Mr. Biden as the mastermind behind a global network of corruption, siphoning millions from as far afield as Ukraine and China into his family coffers.

Although absolutely no evidence supporting these apparent fantasies has been discovered despite intensive investigations by Republican House committees, American conservatives are constantly told that the President is simultaneously a near-vegetable and a modern Alexander the Great of multinational larceny.

Creeping senility was always the more potent and politically valuable charge. It taps into understandable concerns about Mr. Biden’s unprecedented age for an American president stoked widespread perceptions, while framing him as a criminal kingpin had little traction beyond committed right-wingers.

Even many Democrats shared doubts about his age and fitness, leading to widespread liberal nail-biting and cold sweats before the address, especially since Mr. Biden has been an ill-spoken, self-declared “gaff machine” for his entire half-century in politics.

Both sides, as so often, were badly misled by the same casual assumptions. Mr. Biden took to the lectern and gleefully demolished any thought that he is past it.

Dispensing with the usual thanks to House Speaker Mike Johnson, he immediately tore into Republicans over the military support for Ukraine that Mr Johnson is blocking. The President didn’t spell it out, but he didn’t have to: the only reason Kyiv is being abandoned is Mr Johnson’s refusal to allow a vote on military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, which would easily pass.

Mr Biden also didn’t need to state bluntly that the Speaker is merely acquiescing to the longstanding anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia sympathies of former president Donald Trump. Throughout, Mr Johnson wore the expression of someone in extreme physical discomfort.

While Mr Biden’s speech was neither subtle nor especially artful, he deftly wove together numerous apparently disconnected strands into a coherent tapestry representing his essential re-election narrative.

By starting with an invocation of Franklin Roosevelt’s famous 1941 State of the Union speech when American democracy was simultaneously threatened by aggression abroad and subversion at home, he sought to paint Republicans in general, and Mr Trump in particular, as threats to personal and political freedoms and national security.

Mr Biden slurred some words and stumbled over a few passages that a younger and more eloquent politician would have nailed with ease. But he has always been a poor public speaker. He’s also showing his age, and battling the return of a significant stutter he overcame as a youth – which was nauseatingly mocked by Mr. Trump over the weekend.

But the President exhibited a fire and fighting spirit for which Democrats have been deeply yearning, and surely eliminated any thought of replacing him at the party convention this summer. Mr. Biden is evidently and understandably eager to debate “my predecessor”, whom he mentioned 13 times but never by name.

While Mr. Trump claims to be similarly enthusiastic, despite refusing to take part in any Republican primary debates, based on Mr. Biden’s performance he can probably be expected to find some excuse.

Mr. Biden wasn’t simply reading from a teleprompter. He did that, of course, but he also ad-libbed – considerably more than any previous president ever has in State of the Union addresses – and seemed to lay rhetorical traps for Republican heckling. These he met with largely effective, mocking rejoinders designed to trap Republicans into positions on key issues, such as the budget deficit, taxation and border security, about which they prefer to remain ambiguous.

The President’s folksy, faux-incredulous responses to Republican booing – “Oh, you don’t like that bill, huh? … that conservatives got together and said was a good bill? I’ll be darned” – illustrated that Mr. Biden was not merely quick-witted on the evening but also thoroughly enjoying himself.

He concluded by directly addressing his advanced age, saying that the real question is the age of one’s ideas, and thereby painting Mr. Trump and the Republicans as wanting to drag the country back into darker times, especially on abortion, contraception and reproductive rights.

He warned the assembled Supreme Court justices, quoting their recent ruling that eliminated the fifty-year-old constitutional right to an early-term abortion, that “you’re about to realize just how much you were right about” the “electoral or political power” of women.

Most Americans didn’t watch this prototype of his campaign stump speech. But the 32.2 million who did were reminded that Mr. Biden remains sharp and combative, despite the memory lapses he shares with the 77-year-old Mr. Trump, and that he’s an adept and polished politician who especially relishes the give-and-take in Congress.

When confronted by an irate Marjorie Taylor Greene – the Republican rabble-rouser from Georgia who was bedecked head to toe in garish red Trump/Maga paraphernalia – Mr. Biden reacted with evident and even indulgent amusement.

His decades of congressional experience help explain how Mr. Biden has been so successful, particularly on domestic legislation, in his first term. At last, he didn’t hesitate to blow his own trumpet.

While most Democrats were left ecstatic, some Republicans were reduced to complaining that “Jacked-Up Joe” was so energetic and forceful that he must have been given amphetamines, or at least that his speech was overly partisan and disturbingly confrontational.

The President’s efficacy was verified by their evident frustration, which was surely exacerbated by an overwrought official response from Alabama Senator Katie Britt who appeared to instantaneously oscillate between near-fits of histrionic laughter and distraught weeping. It was almost unanimously hailed as the worst-ever State of the Union rebuttal, comma and she’s been removed from most shortlists of potential Trump vice-presidential running mates.

The presidential campaign is barely under way, but the key themes are already clear. Mr. Biden has energized and delighted his base, and gone a long way towards dispelling doubts about his age and fitness.

Neither he nor Mr. Trump has yet solidified a winning 2024 coalition. But Mr. Biden has unquestionably increased his already robust re-election chances.

Biden and Trump are showing their age – but only one of them is in a legal mess

This op-ed was published by The National on March 6, 2024

As he and his predecessor, Donald Trump, effectively secured their parties’ nominations on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden continues to struggle in polls. And that’s despite persistent economic good news and Americans increasingly recognising that their economy is thriving. The most recent results among registered voters show Mr Biden trailing Mr Trump by five percentage points.

Although voters say that Mr Trump’s policies were better for them, it is likely that many have tuned out of politics since the mayhem of January 6, 2021, and have developed a predictable amnesia details of Mr Trump’s record, particularly in the first year of the pandemic. Few have probably registered yet how extreme and unstable Mr Trump appears to have become in the years since.

Undoubtedly, they’ll be reminded and informed of all that soon enough.

It’s far too early for Democrats to start the handwringing to which they seem uncommonly addicted. Still, Mr Biden must steadfastly claim credit for the remarkable US economic comeback and promote his new initiatives to tackle inflation, while also pressing forward with unilateral action on the border and continuing to publicly implore Republican lawmakers to take “yes” for an answer on immigration legislation. In the coming months, he would then have every opportunity to deny Mr Trump access to what should be his two most effective issues: inflation and immigration.

Nonetheless, in addition to recent polling, Republicans are feeling buoyed by two apparently encouraging rulings from the Supreme Court. Many Democrats conversely bemoan the decisions, yet again condemning the Court as hopelessly biased in favour of the former president who appointed three of the six-vote right-wing majority.

Despite this apparent bipartisan consensus, Mr Trump may not actually benefit from either case.

Last week, the Court declined to simply uphold a watertight ruling by the DC circuit appellate court denying Mr Trump’s novel claims of absolute presidential immunity from prosecution, including after leaving office.

The idea is patently absurd: how can the national chief magistrate, the one person sworn to “take care to see that the laws are faithfully executed”, simultaneously be the sole individual empowered to ignore all such laws with complete impunity and unaccountability? What would then compel the president to leave office at all, or abstain from committing crimes, or doing anything whatsoever that he or she finds convenient, useful or even amusing – no matter how outrageous or unlawful?

Many liberals hoped that the Supreme Court wouldn’t entertain such propositions and simply let the unassailable DC court ruling stand, not least because the outcome is inevitable. Many reacted with apoplexy when, instead, the Court announced that it would hear arguments in April, and rule by the end of its term on June 20. The typical Trump delaying tactic worked again, they cried.

Perhaps. But the Court has set itself a clear timetable. If it rules in late June that presidents may not break the law with permanent impunity, as it surely will, that should free Judge Tanya Chutkan and prosecutor Jack Smith to move expeditiously to put Mr Trump on trial for attempting to remain in power unlawfully by overturning a valid election and launching a failed coup against the US Constitution.

It’s not obvious why either would want to do Mr Trump any special favours by suspending legal processes simply because he’s running for re-election in a system for which he has evident contempt.

Unless Mr Trump comes up with some plausible new objections, the trial is unlikely to be delayed until after the election (and, if he wins, ordered abandoned). Instead, there seems to be every possibility that he will stand trial for election subversion in the weeks immediately before voting.

That’s unlikely to bolster his campaign or win many votes among the suburban and swing voters in the six or seven competitive “purple” states that will decide the outcome in November. The Court probably did indeed provide Mr Trump a delay, but not necessarily one that’s going to end up helping him get re-elected.

The second decision, on Monday, was – also probably incorrectly – again greeted on both sides as a big win for Mr Trump. The Supreme Court held that courts in Colorado misread the 14th amendment when they held that, as an insurrectionist, he is ineligible to regain federal office and should be removed from the state’s ballots. The unanimous, though strikingly inconsistent Court opinions weren’t just incompatible. They were often incomprehensible and unintelligible.

The conservative justices, as I predicted in these pages, made no effort whatsoever to uphold their supposed principles and tie their rulings to the amendment’s plain text or history. They merely identified their preferred outcome – a practice they abhor as intolerable when practised by liberals – and declared that only Congress, and not states, can enforce the amendment. There’s nothing whatsoever in the amendment’s language or the historical record supporting that conclusion.

Most glaringly, the two-paragraph concurrence from Judge Amy Coney Barrett appears self-contradictory and garbled, while openly admitting that the Court sought to avoid any politically “divisive” judgment. This is thinly veiled code for deliberately avoiding any ruling on the primary substantive factual finding of the Colorado district court and the Supreme Court: that Mr Trump is an insurrectionist, irrespective of whether the 14th amendment can be applied by states, or is self-executing, or anything else.

That’s hardly a great look or much of a win. Not only did the Supreme Court duck the key holding that Mr Trump is an insurrectionist, so did his own attorneys. No one challenged this adjudication, thereby leaving it standing unopposed.

Mr Trump will therefore enter the general election campaign as a legally adjudicated insurrectionist as well as having been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E Jean Carroll. Another recently decided New York case establishes him as a legally adjudicated serial fraudster and tax cheat. Among 91 pending felony charges, he faces a looming trial involving hush-money payments to an adult actress.

Mr Biden is old and clearly showing his age. So is Mr Trump, who keeps confusing the current president with Barack Obama, among other glaring mistakes. But only one of the two elderly men with memory lapses is also a legally adjudicated wrongdoer in numerous disturbing cases, and may well be a convicted felon before the election.

Let that sink in. With the American public, it hasn’t yet. But it will.

Trump has consistently defeated Haley, but she has every reason to persist

This op-ed was published by The National on February 26, 2024

The Republican primaries appear to be already over. On Saturday, Donald Trump defeated Nikki Haley by about 20 points in South Carolina, where she had been a popular governor. Ms Haley has vowed to press on into Michigan and the primary bonanza on “Super Tuesday”, on March 5. But her practical chances of winning the nomination seemed done, and the billionaire Koch network has suspended its support.

On paper, her performance is underwhelming. She came in third in Iowa, lost in New Hampshire and now South Carolina, and in a Nevada primary that lacked Mr Trump’s participation “none of the above” beat her by more than 30 points.

Focus group research suggests that Mr. Trump’s voters are angry she’s challenging him and, increasingly, questioning his conduct. Many appear to equate criticism of him with disloyalty to the party and even country. Yet it’s precisely Ms. Haley’s rejection of this personality cult that gives her real significance for the country and party.

Republicans, she insists, “have the right to a real choice, not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate”. Except, they seem to want only one candidate, and are outraged when he’s seriously interrogated. Her mere presence problematises and complicates the widespread impulse to fall into lockstep.

Her policies don’t differ much from his, except on US international leadership and support for Ukraine. She agrees with President Joe Biden and most Democrats on the imperative of supporting Kyiv’s struggle against Russia’s war. That puts her at odds with the effectively pro-Russia policies of Mr Trump and, following his lead, many Republicans in Congress. This extends to Nato, which she strongly supports but he treats like a gangland protection racket rather than one of the most successful military and strategic alliances in history.

Her more forthright criticism of him has been late in coming, and didn’t begin in earnest until her chances of winning the nomination became scant. As long as she had plausible hope, she wasn’t prepared to alienate his followers. Principles, as ever, waited upon ambition.

So, her perseverance has increasingly become less about policies or even winning the nomination, and more about providing a political address for Republican voters highly uncomfortable with Mr Trump. She correctly observed that the 40 per cent of votes she received in South Carolina last Saturday isn’t “a tiny group”, and that “huge numbers” of Republicans don’t support the former president.

Her campaign is exposing and, to some extent even creating, serious divisions in a party that must be united and disciplined if Mr Trump is to dislodge Mr Biden in November. Mr Trump – who cannot abide being boldly challenged, particularly by a non-white woman – has been highly antagonistic to Ms Haley and vows to excommunicate her supporters. It’s not exactly a welcoming “big tent” appeal.

Yet her campaign indeed demonstrates that, to prevail in November, he must win over traditional and moderate conservatives, even if they cannot stop or slow his march towards the Republican nomination.

She’s clearly trying to position herself as the leader of a post-Trump Republican party if he goes down to defeat again in November. Apart from his victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, as Ms. Haley frequently notes, Mr. Trump and his faction have had an unbroken losing streak at the polls, including in 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. It just happened again, in a special election in a normally Republican-held seat in Long Island formerly occupied by disgraced Republican congressman and conman George Santos.

Ms Haley is asking Republicans if they are finally “sick of all this winning”, as Mr Trump assured them they would become under his leadership. Without invoking Mr Trump’s alleged criminality, or his legally established responsibility for huge fraud and the sexual abuse and repeated defamation of writer E Jean Carroll, both in New York, she’s asking Republicans to recognise that no matter how much they may love the former president, he really isn’t likely to be an appealing candidate for the suburban and swing voters in a handful of competitive states that decide presidential elections.

Mr Trump has angrily vented his frustration with her, but she insists there’s “no need to kiss the ring” or fear his “retribution”. Still, many prominent Republicans are increasingly pressuring her to drop out and endorse him so Mr Trump can lead an apparently united party into its convention. Her point, though, is that there is a significant subset of Republicans that truly do not like Mr Trump and may or may not reconcile themselves to voting for him in the fall.

She’s positioning herself to take over should anything dramatic happen to Mr Trump before November or if he loses to Mr Biden, so it’s wise to offer herself as an alternative as loudly and long as possible. Since her very presence and perseverance provoke Mr Trump to lash out at her and her supporters as irrelevant, undeserving and non-Republican, he is consistently making her points.

When the primary is technically over, to protect her chances of future party leadership, she’ll likely offer him a pro forma endorsement. Her ambitions may not survive Mr Trump’s re-election. But the case she’s making now will echo resoundingly if he loses again in November.

Mr Trump’s legal woes are rapidly intensifying. Regarding his 91 criminal charges, his strategy appears to be delaying trials and securing re-election more than securing acquittals. He’s counting on the electorate as an ultimate de facto jury, and then claiming that everything has been adjudicated by his re-election which supersedes mere trials.

Yet he now owes New York over $454 million, plus $112,000 daily extra that’s accumulating in interest. He must pay another $83.3 million to the writer he sexually abused and repeatedly defamed. Securing enough cash to cover a bond for these debts will badly stretch his liquid finances (most of his wealth being tied up in real estate).

Meanwhile, Mr. Biden has $132 million already raised for the election, with Mr. Trump at just $36.6 million. He recently installed his daughter-in-law, Lara, as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, and she’s already insisting that voters want the party to divert campaign funds pay his legal bills. Ms. Haley might want to comment on that, repeatedly, before she’s through.

Ms. Haley has every reason to persist despite her consistent defeats, since she’s gambling that Mr. Trump won’t win in November. And Mr. Biden must be delighted that he’ll be facing Mr. Trump rather than her.

What Iran wants — and fears

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/13/opinions/how-about-iran-us-middle-east-wider-war-ibish/index.html

The crises wracking the Middle East are simultaneously independent flashpoints and also a relatively integrated regionwide offensive by Iranian-backed armed gangs.

It’s sometimes unclear how much control Iran has over these militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and elsewhere.

Although Iran’s influence operates just beneath the earthquakes and tremors shaking the region, much like the Biden administration, Iran is serious about wanting to avoid a broader war.

Both are like Goldilocks, needing just enough but not too much. 

But there are key differences. The United States is a status quo power — upholding security and stability is its regional brand. The 2003 invasion of Iraq devastated US credibility partly because it was such an irrational deviation from a traditional commitment to order. 

Iran, conversely, is a quintessential revisionist actor, opposing the regional and global balance of power.

The United States and Saudi Arabia, also a regional status quo power, are strongly drawn together, while Iran consistently partners with other revisionist powers such as Russia and China.

This puts Washington at a tactical disadvantage since its partners have to behave with relative caution or put US interests at risk — as with the Saudi-led Arab intervention in Yemen that began in 2015 and Israel’s ongoing war of vengeance in Gaza. 

That’s why the Biden administration is trying to quietly contain and restrain Israel in Gaza and prevent it from acting on its threats against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Conversely, Iran typically isn’t threatened when its clients sow chaos. For Iran, even the Hamas-led killing spree on October 7 has been useful by bleeding Israel in a battle against its on-again, off-again Hamas allies.

Yet Iran must be careful about what its proxies do. When one of Iran’s collection of Iraqi Shiite militias, Kataib Hezbollah, earlier this year launched a drone attack on a US logistics center in Jordan, killing three US soldiers, it had gone too far. Iranian leaders rushed to insist they don’t want a broader war, especially with the United States. Kataib Hezbollah announced that it was suspending all military operations while complaining Iran ”does not know the nature of our jihad,” meaning it was standing down on Iranian orders.

Iran has backed Hezbollah’s efforts to avoid an all-out war with Israel despite consistent Israeli escalation and threats. When Israel assassinated a key Hamas leader, Saleh Al-Arouri, this year with a drone strike in Hezbollah’s primary area of Beirut, Hezbollah responded with a largely symbolic rocket attack on an Israeli radar station that caused no injuries and little damage.

Israel responded by assassinating the deputy commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, Wissam Tawil, which has essentially gone unavenged, though intense skirmishing near the border persists.

Israel is now demanding Hezbollah remove its forces 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the border or face an all-out attack, with some 80,000 Israelis and 70,000 Lebanese evacuated on either side. Hezbollah refuses, and Washington’s negotiator, Amos Hochstein, has proposed a 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) Hezbollah pullback. Hezbollah doesn’t want a war with Israel and Iran agrees.

Tehran is loath to waste a trump card — Hezbollah’s 150,000, often precision-guided, missile and rocket arsenal on Gaza or Hamas. Hezbollah, arguably the most powerful nonstate military in history, is meant to deter Israeli or American attacks against Iran, especially its nuclear facilities.

The potential for such US or Israeli airstrikes is among the most significant reasons Iran wants to avoid a broader conflict. As global attention is focused on the immediate crises spawned by the October 7 attack, Tehran has been making stealthy but significant progress toward nuclear weapons power status by enriching ever-more near-weapons grade uranium. 

The last thing Iran needs is anything that could reverse this progress and threaten other core national interests.

The wild card for Iran is the Yemeni Houthi militants and their Red Sea piracy. This piracy has reiterated and emphasized two long-standing Iranian diplomatic points: that Iran and its “axis of resistance” network must be included in any de facto maritime security arrangement, and that if Iran cannot freely ship its oil due to sanctions, no one can be assured of unmolested maritime commerce either.

Since three of the eight major global maritime chokepoints — the Suez Canal, Strait of Hormuz and Bab Al-Mandab Strait — encircle the Arabian Peninsula and are vulnerable to attacks from Iran and the “axis,” this global economic vulnerability provides Iran compelling international leverage.

Yet the Houthis may well prove the most troublesome “axis” member for Iran. Like Hamas, but unlike almost all other axis groups, neither are creations of Iran but clients. Both have shown a capability and willingness to act alone, as Hamas almost certainly did on October 7. 

So, Iran has a great deal at stake in a set of conflicts that have to be carefully contained and controlled if it is going to avoid paying a significant, and possibly huge, price.

Tehran has already restrained its Iraqi proxies, and is working to help Hezbollah climb down and avoid a devastating Israeli attack. They may even both, either formally or informally, accept the American proposal for a more modest pullback from the border with Israel. And Iran is probably urging the Houthis to take great care not to kill Americans or otherwise go too far.

It’s not just Washington that must play a careful balancing game in the Middle East morass. Despite Iran’s hostility to the status quo and gains from the current conflict at virtually no cost to itself, it clearly recognizes intensifying significant potential risks. 

Tehran surely realizes it must get better control of its Arab proxies or they could end up dragging it into a conflict that’s disastrous for Iranian national interests — and possibly even the future of the regime.