Israel Has No Choice but to Strike Back Against Iran Those urging restraint after Tehran’s attack are following the same failed strategy that produced catastrophe on Oct. 7.Elliot Kaufman
What if the Oct. 7 invasion had been “intercepted”? Imagine the same Hamas attack but better Israeli defense, with more than 90% of the terrorists stopped before the border or shortly thereafter, and only minor Israeli casualties. President Biden would probably have done then what he is doing now, in the aftermath of Iran’s intercepted attack: urge Israel not to respond in any serious way. Let Hamas live to try it again.
To learn the lessons of Oct. 7 is to reject that advice after the long night of April 13. Israel will respond to Iran, it announced Monday. It has learned the hard way that air defenses don’t relieve you of the duty to subdue a determined attacker. Hamas’s intent to slaughter Israelis was hardly a secret, but Israel allowed it to survive and grow stronger because its rockets could be intercepted.
It was no harm, no foul. Israel agreed to “take the win” against Hamas—as Mr. Biden now advises with regard to Iran—all the way to catastrophe.
Rocket fire from an Iranian proxy became normal, not worth a response in most cases, until it was too late. It’s the same story with Hezbollah, whose expanding arsenal and occasional rocket fire became facts of life in northern Israel. Another war would have been costly, and what damage were the rockets really doing in the meantime? As the smart set says about Iran today, Hezbollah’s attacks were merely “symbolic.”
Israel never stopped the trickle, so it became a flood. Hezbollah has fired on Israel more than 3,000 times since Oct. 7, depopulating the country’s north. Yet this, too, has become normal. “Man is a creature who can get used to anything,” writes Dostoevsky, and all the more so if it’s the other guy who has to live with the consequences. Biden administration officials now regularly implore Israel not to “escalate” with Hezbollah—that, they say, would cause a war.
The miracle of Iron Dome air defenses for years led Israel to tolerate what no other nation would. Worse, other nations demanded that Israel tolerate it, because Israel suffered little damage. When Hamas crossed a line and Israel responded, as in 2008 and 2014, the world quickly came to demand a cease-fire, no matter how strong and unbowed Hamas remained. Better to restore calm. Better to have peace and quiet.
Amid unprecedented economic growth, Israelis themselves came to worship calm. Politicians and generals rationalized allowing Qatar to send aid money to Gaza, knowing that much of it was being diverted to Hamas. Why? To maintain stability.
The Biden administration does much the same with Iran by issuing $10 billion sanctions waivers and not enforcing oil sanctions. This is money to grease the peace, even though everyone knows Iran uses it to spread war.
For Israel, it all worked until it didn’t. Hezbollah now diverts Israeli troops from Gaza, holds a region of the country hostage and is strong enough to deter a substantial reply. The Houthis in Yemen, another Iranian proxy, have shut down the Red Sea and barely paid a price. You think this will be the last time they do it?
The war in Gaza is now fought on Hamas’s terms, following Hamas’s greatest success, waged in the tunnels Hamas has spent 16 years preparing. It should have been fought after the very first rocket.
Easy for me to say now, but that’s the point. After Oct. 7, Israelis vowed never again to fall victim to such a conceptzia. Israel, and America, has a chance to learn from experience.
Today many restrainers assure us that Iran’s attack on Israel was a mere demonstration, nothing demanding a reply. Never mind that it was the largest drone attack in history, plus 150 or so ballistic and cruise missiles. When it wanted to put on a show in January, after Israel had killed a different Iranian terror kingpin, Iran fired 11 missiles at an Iraqi businessman’s family home and called it a Mossad base. This wasn’t that.
The Biden view of the attack is convoluted: “Iran’s intent was clearly to cause significant destruction and casualties,” spokesman John Kirby says, but no need for an Israeli reply. Claim victory to mask fear.
Telegraphing its intentions but firing a massive barrage suggests Tehran wanted to do as much damage as it could get away with. Bizarre public negotiations, conducted through leaks to third parties in the lead-up to the strike, helped Iran calibrate what it could shoot while securing Mr. Biden’s pressure on Israel not to respond.
The administration is proud of its back-channel work, but it shouldn’t be. Instead of reassuring Iran that it could attack Israel within parameters, Mr. Biden should have left Ayatollah Ali Khamenei fearing how the U.S. would reply.
In telling Israel to move on, Mr. Biden is asking it to recognize Iran’s right to respond to pinpoint strikes in Syria with war on the Israeli homeland. As the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Sunday: “From now on, if the Zionist regime anywhere attacks our interests, assets, figures and citizens, we will reciprocally attack it from Iran.”
If those are allowed to become the rules of the game, would Israel be deterred from disrupting Iran’s command and supply hub in Syria, from which it arms Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the West Bank? A small Israeli surrender in Syria, coerced by a Biden administration desperate for calm, could seed the next war.
Israel is being told again to let the problem fester and accept a tit-for-tat equation, but on worse terms than ever. “It’s only 100 ballistic missiles” is only the latest gruel to swallow, while Mr. Khamenei releases ravings, such as on April 10, about Israeli normalization with Muslim states: “The Zionists suck the blood of a country for their own benefit when they gain a foothold.” The world brushes off the antisemitism. The media doesn’t even report his statements.
Mr. Biden asks Israel to put its faith in deterrence while its enemies become stronger and Israel is the one deterred. When the president threatens that Israel will be isolated, on its own if it defends itself properly, he is asking it to stick to the strategy that left it fatally exposed on Oct. 7 and that it swore off the same day.
Mr. Kaufman is the Journal’s letters editor.
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