The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Hamas
The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Hamas
The West has a pristine opportunity to truly confront Iran and send a spirited message to other autocratic regimes.
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As the war between Israel and Hamas, now more than 100 days old, drags on, Hamas appears to be losing the actual battle against Israel, but it has one thing on its side: The longer the war runs, the more it hampers Israel.
For the terror group, it is not so much a war of attrition — the sustained process of wearing down an opponent so as to force their physical collapse — but a war of elongation. Especially as Western governments, namely Israel’s diplomatic friends, face more pressure from loud minorities under the banner of “pro-Palestine.”
As British writer Douglas Murray aptly pointed out, “Israel seems to be the only country in the world never allowed to win a conflict. It is allowed to fight a conflict to a draw, but rarely to a win. Which is one reason why the wars keep occurring.”1
Thus, anything short of a resounding Israeli victory is an accomplishment for Hamas and its chief sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran. But Israel is not just facing the Gaza-based terror group. Hezbollah in Lebanon has been launching cross-border attacks into northern Israel, Yemen’s Houthis are attempting to disrupt international trade routes in the Red Sea, and militias are repeatedly shelling U.S. military bases in Syria and Iraq.
All of these groups have something significant in common: They are financed and supported by Iran. To think that this is anything other than a synchronized effort against Israel, the Iranian regime’s stated arch-nemesis, would be ignorant. And I’m being kind.
Iran is not just rooting for a Hamas “victory” because it heavily subsidizes the terror group. Sure, the Iranians probably do not want to see their investment go down the drain, but there is something more pronounced at play here: A Hamas “victory” would lethally embolden the Iranians in their aims to destabilize the Middle East.
Unlike Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, and other Arab countries which generally desire peace and calm in the Middle East — on their terms, of course — the Iranians have no qualms about continuing to undermine the region in pursuit of regional hegemony.
To do so, Iran’s Islamic regime has become one of the world’s largest state sponsors of terrorism, supporting all kinds of “proxies” in the Middle East, from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Gaza), to Hezbollah (Lebanon) and the Houthis (Yemen), to at least four different militias in Syria and another three in Iraq.
Wherever there is turmoil in the region, you will instantly find Iran. Syria and Yemen have descended into bloody civil wars, ISIS seized vast Iraqi and Syrian territories, and there is one overriding culprit behind much of this chaos: the Iranian autocratic regime.
Perhaps the only thing more dangerous than autocracy is autocracy infused with religious fervor — as is the case with Iran and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Nowadays, however, autocracies are run not by one bad guy pulling strings from the top, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services, surveillance, and professional propagandists.
The members of these networks are connected not only within a single country, but among many countries. The corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The armies and police forces in one country can arm, equip, and train those in another.
The propagandists share resources — the PR machines that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote the propaganda of another — and they also share themes, reiterating similar messages about the imperfections of democracy and the evil West.
Among modern autocrats are people who call themselves communists (China), nationalists (Russia), and theocrats (Iran). No one country leads this group. The West likes to talk about Chinese influence and Russian aggression, but what really bonds the members of this consortium is a common desire to preserve and enhance their personal power and wealth.
Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, the members of this group don’t operate like a bloc, but rather like a conglomerate of companies. Their links are cemented not by ideals but by deals — deals designed to diminish Western economic boycotts and make them personally and extravagantly rich. And these deals go beyond the borders of countries, where quasi-official entities can generate more wiggle room than internationally accepted ones.
The Palestine Liberation Organization, for example, became the largest, wealthiest, and most politically connected terrorist organization in the world. It used drug trafficking, arms smuggling, money laundering, and counterfeiting to amass a fortune estimated to be $10 billion by the early 1990s (nearly $25 billion if adjusted for inflation today) and collaborated with international crime organizations, drug cartels, other terror groups, and rogue states such as Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Sudan.
In recent decades, the capitalism-driven West has increasingly opted for sanctions against autocracies and terror groups, but sanctions do not have the impact they once did. At their most effective, punitive economic measures are the product of multilateral efforts to solve clearly articulated, shared global-security concerns. But the West has overindulged in leveraging sanctions, which have consequently lost their purpose and power.
This does not mean that sanctions do not have any impact. When the U.S. and Europe collaborated on oil sanctions on Iran in 2012, they nearly halved Tehran’s oil exports. These efforts helped decrease Iran’s GDP by nine percent from 2012 to 2014, and ultimately helped bring Tehran to the negotiating table.
But in dealing with the ayatollahs, the West made the same mistake that Israel made regarding Hamas, hoping that Islamic fundamentalist fascists could be bribed into abandoning their theocratic tendencies and hegemonic desires.
If anything, decades of Western sanctions haven’t changed the behavior of the Iranian regime, despite their indisputable economic impact. Too often, sanctions are allowed to deteriorate over time; just as often, autocracies now help one another get around them. The methods that used to work no longer do.
Yet, prior to this Israel-Hamas war, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration was working persistently to renegotiate the Iranian nuclear deal, even appointing an avowedly pro-Iranian mediator in Robert Malley, after Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the deal.
“The Biden administration pledged to restore the Iranian nuclear deal, signaling to the Iranians that they no longer had anything to fear by grossly violating its terms,” wrote Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. “If President Obama pledged to keep all options, including a military option, on the table, President Biden’s table held all possible options except the military.”2
But even Obama’s mere threat of military retaliation, not backed by actual force, did nothing to deter the Iranians from racing after nuclear armament. As professor Bernard Lewis said: “Mutually assured deterrence for the Iranian regime is not deterrence, but an incentive.”
Even now, as Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attack U.S. military bases in Syria and Iraq, the absence of heavy American responses to Iranian assaults guarantees that Tehran will keep upping the ante.
After all, the Iranian regime does not have much to lose. Their theological, jihadist contempt has devolved into what the international democracy activist Srdja Popovic calls the “Maduro model” of governance. Autocrats who adopt it are “willing to pay the price of becoming a totally failed country, to see their country enter the category of failed states,” accepting economic collapse, isolation, and mass poverty if that’s what it takes to remain in power.3
Financial collapse has loomed in Iran; several billion-dollar corruption cases demonstrate the extent of power networks of patronage within the Ayatollah’s regime and its various factions, often linked to high-level clergy; but the Iranian ruling elite do not care.
As one Western official working in the region said, “They assume that any money that the West doesn’t give them will be replaced by China, Pakistan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.”4 And if the money doesn’t come, so be it. The leaders of Iran do not aspire to develop a flourishing, prosperous country, just a country where they reign supreme.
Hence why just about everyone who thinks long and hard about this subject agrees that the old diplomatic toolbox once used in different places around the world is rusty and out-of-date. The leaders of Iran confidently discount the views of Western infidels, perceive Western leadership as weak and fractured, and recognize the West’s absence of strategy, which reflects gross negligence.
If the West continues to behave naively and incompetently, autocracies like Iran will quickly take our place as sources of influence, funding, and ideas — a zero-sum competition that is already taking place. If the West fails to fight autocracies, we will encounter them at home; indeed, their elements are already in France, the UK, and many other places across Europe, as well as in South Africa, Canada, and even the U.S.
If the West does not work endlessly to hold murderous regimes accountable, these regimes will double down on their doings without fearing consequences from an exponentially divided West. And they will continue to rage against the free world — inside their countries, and inside ours.
As the wise saying goes, timing is everything. While I didn’t agree one bit with the American-led Iranian nuclear deal signed in 2015, I understood that the timing of a military option was not right, neither for Obama’s presidency nor for the U.S. as it was trying to end two unpopular wars in the Middle East.
But now, nearly a decade later, the West has a pristine opportunity to truly confront Iran and send a spirited message to other autocratic regimes. After Israel was brutally attacked by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on October 7th, and as Iranian proxies from multiple countries have unabashedly joined the fray, the West has plenty of justification to “fight the good fight.”
It starts with Israel resoundingly defeating Hamas in Gaza, but it doesn’t end there. All roads lead to Tehran.
“The Easy Politics of Criticizing Israel.” Sapir.
“The Iran Delusion.” The Free Press.
“The Bad Guys Are Winning.” The Atlantic.
“How exile changed the Taliban.” Financial Times.
You are spot on in your analysis of Iran and the response of western countries. I see one difference in that these countries don't perceive weakness, it's boldly out in front for them to see. Biden, I see as being the weakest leader. When countries like China, Russia, Iran smell weakness , the door is opened for them to do what they couldn't do with a strong leader. He came out the other day when asked if the Houthis were a terrorist group and he replied he didn't think it was important to call them that. A statement from the president of the US gives strength and the go ahead to keep doing what they're doing. Biden releases billions to Iran, while Kirby makes the ridiculous statement that his department will be looking at every dollar. China, Russia, and Iran are laughing at us. Pro Hamas supporters are allowed to destroy parts of the White House fence, trying to take it down, and nothing happens. This is similar to London, where the police stand back and allow violent rhetoric. Excuse my hyperbole, but let a Pro Israel supporter protest and the world comes to an end. As a younger, very idealistic person who has become an older, cynical one, I now trust no one, and certainly enemies who would want to see us banished from the earth. You are correct, Joshua, all roads lead to Tehran and as soon as Israel's allies understand that, they will continue with their evil plan.
“Here is the lesson: The Iranians’ strategic decision-making is rational. Its leaders understand the threat of violence and its application. It takes will and capability to establish and maintain deterrence. We were able to reset deterrence as a result of this violent couplet. The Iranians have always feared our capabilities, but before January 2020, they doubted our will.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lesson-of-the-soleimani-strike-quds-iran-deterrence-war-gaza-attacks-on-americans-5c9bbfa1