Andres Kudacki/AP Photo
People protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, September 27, 2024.
After a week of bloody moves to disable Hezbollah, shrugging off civilian collateral damage, Prime Minister Netanyahu is in New York, of all places, to address the U.N. General Assembly. Among leaders of democracies, it’s hard to find one who is more hated in more places than Netanyahu; and Israel becomes less of a democracy daily.
But from Netanyahu’s perspective, his strategy is winning. In the short run, Israel’s bravado and technical cleverness (exploding pagers?!) has weakened Hezbollah and decapitated some of its key leaders. Iran, Hezbollah’s patron and supplier, has also been humiliated and its response has been surprisingly restrained. Meanwhile, Israel has also damaged Hamas.
But all of this is short-term. The hatred that Bibi’s actions have incubated will only produce new generations of Arab fighters, with even more determination not to negotiate a settlement but to wipe out Israel. Even Netanyahu can’t kill all of them, and time is not on Israel’s side.
There has been a lot of anxious commentary about Israel’s latest actions destroying any chance of a regional agreement and instead creating a wider war. What exactly does that mean?
Netanyahu has made it pretty clear that he would prefer Donald Trump to Kamala Harris. Rejecting President Biden’s (far too feeble) pressures for a negotiated cease-fire does double duty for Netanyahu. It makes the Democrats look weak and unreliable as keepers of the peace, and sets the stage for Netanyahu’s next, even riskier move, which is to create a regional war that drags in the United States.
How would that occur? At some point, Iran has to react. One of the casualties of Israel’s latest attack on Hezbollah was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, who was severely injured when his pager exploded last week at the embassy in Beirut.
And in late July, Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, by detonating a remote device previoiusly planted in a heavily fortified Iranian government guesthouse for foreign dignitaries, no less. Iran protested, but did nothing. The Iranians look helpless and pitiful.
The last time Iran took military action against Israel, last April, it was in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing 16 people including Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior Quds Force commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But Iran’s response was symbolic and deliberately limited. Iran fired some 300 missiles and drones, most of which were slow-moving and easy for Israel’s Iron Dome defense to shoot down.
But this time, after repeated humiliations, Iran’s response may not be so restrained. Iran has several hundred more advanced missiles. And Russia, Iran’s patron, could easily supply more.
Many Bibi-watchers believe that his cynical plan is to provoke Iran into a much larger-scale attack, even one that would kill many Israeli civilians, in order to drag the U.S. into a regional war. That would be catastrophic for Israel in the long run, but in the short run it would serve Bibi’s purpose of staying in power and making Biden look even weaker.
For now, the entire West is joining the U.S. in urging Netanyahu to back off and agree to a cease-fire. That may well require Biden to finally get serious about cutting off Netanyahu’s supply of offensive weapons.
And where is Kamala Harris in all this? Unfortunately, Joe Biden is the president. She can’t very well second-guess his foreign policy, except privately. A Harris speech signaling a different approach is one she should give after she is elected, not before. That is, unless the combination of Netanyahu’s deliberate ploys and Biden’s weakness help elect Donald Trump.
