How to Prevent All-Out War in the Middle East: A Guide
How to Prevent All-Out War in the Middle East: A Guide
By preemptively attacking Hezbollah today, Israel likely prevented a far more devastating Hezbollah attack and thus an all-out war. Now it is time to apply the same working logic to Iran.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Democratic peace theory — one of three major international liberalism theories today — suggests that democratic countries are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Several factors are responsible for motivating peace between democratic states, including:
“Monadic” forms – Democracies are in general more peaceful in their international relations.
“Dyadic” forms – Democracies do not go to war with other democracies.
“Systemic” forms – More democratic states in the international system makes the international system more peaceful.
Of course, there is only one democracy in the Middle East — you guessed it: Israel — so democratic peace theory is plainly irrelevant in this region (even though many Western countries try to force Israel to abide by it as if its self-professed enemies are not Jihadist, Jew-hating, genocidal regimes).
Fortunately Israel does not always listen to them, opting instead to do what it needs to do to defend itself. As Moshe Dayan, the famed former Israeli Minister of Defense, used to say: “Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.”
By declining this advice, Israel oftentimes prevents what none of us want: an all-out war.
Such was the case when Israelis woke up this Sunday morning to a declared emergency situation across our country for at least the next 48 hours. The IDF had just launched a major preemptive strike before 5 a.m. Israel time, in which it used some 100 aircrafts to take out thousands of Hezbollah rocket launchers in Lebanon, including some believed to be aimed at the Mossad headquarters in central Israel.
Hezbollah still managed to launch more than 200 rockets and drones from Lebanon at northern and central Israel in the early hours of Sunday. Some of the projectiles were intercepted, while others impacted, causing damage to homes and lightly injuring at least one person. One IDF soldier was also killed.
But the real headline is this: By preemptively taking the fight to Hezbollah this morning, Israel likely prevented a far more devastating Hezbollah attack and thus an all-out war.
The same cannot be said about the Yom Kippur War in 1973, which was unequivically considered Israel’s biggest f*ck-up prior to October 7th.
That year, Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, and IDF Chief of Staff David Elazar met on the morning of Yom Kippur (Judaism’s holiest day) just six hours before the war began. Elazar argued in favor of a preemptive attack against Syrian airfields at noon, Syrian missiles at 3:00 pm, and Syrian ground forces two hours later.1
Prior to the war, U.S. President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, consistently warned Meir that she must not be responsible for initiating a war in the Middle East. At the time Israel was totally dependent on the U.S. for military resupply and sensitive to anything that might endanger this relationship. According to Kissinger, had Israel struck first it would not have received “so much as a nail.”
The result was Egyptian and Syrian attacks that devastated the IDF in the first couple days of the war, so much so that Meir and her top brass were considering the use of tactical nukes. Eventually the U.S. came to Israel’s aid and the Jewish state emerged victorious in the Yom Kippur War, leading to peace with Egypt in 1979.
Hence why many Israelis (myself included) believe that peace in the Middle East is made with the strong, not with the weak.
Of course, Hezbollah is not a country like Egypt, so the same “rules of the game” do not apply. There is neither peace nor compromise to be made with a Jihadist, Jew-hating, genocidal terrorist organization. But behind Hezbollah there is a country, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Iranian regime considers Hezbollah its “golden child” which is there on Israel’s northern borders to inflict serious, perhaps unprecedented damage onto Israel in the event of an Israeli preemptive attack on Iran and its threshold nuclear program. The liberal West thinks it can negotiate the Iranians out of developing nuclear weapons, while the realist West (including Israel) knows that there is no negotiating with Iran’s Jihadist, Jew-hating, genocidal regime.
In other words, democratic peace theory is laughably irrelevant here. The only way to deal with the Iranians is through military means, and Israel knows that it will have to do (or at least spearhead) this dirty work sooner or later. Undoubtedly, Israel has been working on these battle plans for quite some time now, and there are probably multiple options at the Jewish state’s disposal.
Turns out, this would not be the first time that Israel preemptively attacks a nuclear threshold country.
In 1981, Operation Opera was a surprise airstrike conducted by the Israeli Air Force which destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor located 17 kilometers (11 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. Operation Opera, and related Israeli government statements following it, established the “Begin Doctrine” (named after then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin) which explicitly stated the strike was not an anomaly, but instead “a precedent for every future government in Israel.”2
Following this operation, the Israelis claimed that their attack impeded Iraq’s nuclear ambitions by at least 10 years. In an interview in 2005, former U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed support for the attack, saying: “Everybody talks about what the Israelis did at Osiraq, in 1981, which, I think, in retrospect, was a really good thing. You know, it kept Saddam from developing nuclear power.”
Political science and international law professor Louis René Beres wrote that, “had it not been for the brilliant raid at Osiraq, Saddam’s forces might have been equipped with atomic warheads in 1991” (the year of the Gulf War between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States).3
And yet, Iraq back then was not nearly as dangerous and menacing as Iran is today. This means that, while Israel will continue to be creative about relentlessly hindering Iran’s nuclear program through cyber warfare, assassinations, and other covert operations, an airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities will probably not get the job done. Indeed, much of Iran’s nuclear assets are located well below ground — perhaps hidden under civilian infrastructure in true Islamist terrorism fashion.
But fortunately for Israel and the Western world, Iran cannot hide its biggest assets underground. I am talking about its oil and gas fields, of which some 30 percent could be decimated in a single day’s work. The result would be an already-feeble Iranian economy brought to its begging knees, which could lead to another political revolution in Iran.
At the same time, the Iranian regime would not go down without a fight. They could quickly activate their non-state-actor proxies in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian Territories to wage war against Israel and all other Western interests in the region, which in turn could easily result in all-out war that engulfs the Middle East and jeopardizes its tremendous assets (i.e. natural resources), ultimately producing dire worldwide effects.
The other option is to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons as part of its hegemonic masterplan to overtake the Middle East, at which point much of the region would be forced to bow to the Iranians’ authoritarian, theological demands. In this scenario, Israel might have no choice but to use at least a portion of its rumored 400 nukes just to defend its tiny self, and the world would have nuclear warfare on its plate.
Thus, by preemptively attacking Iran sooner than later — hopefully with the help and support of Western powers and regional partners like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — Israel could very well prevent a far more ruinous all-out war that could plunge the world into disaster.
“The Yom Kippur War.” Schocken Books.
Nuclear Threat Initiative
“Reconsidering Israel’s Destruction of Iraq’s Osiraq Nuclear Reactor.” Temple International and Comparative Law Journal 9(2), 1995.
Joshua, I have always believed what you are advocating! The answer is in Israel’s strength and awareness! You can’t depend on the appeasement policies of the US and the West. It would lead to self destruction. Last night you acted on your own intelligence and instinct. Thank goodness you did! Don’t accept these piecemeal strategies.
What I find unbelievable, is the reversion to appeasement. We would NEVER have won the last WWAR had we done this. You are in my thoughts and prayers always.
I hope that Obama loses this upcoming election, and then you might have USA support for taking out Iran's nuclear capability.