World Seeks “Stability,” Israel Seeks Survival How long can a nuclear-threshold Iran be tolerated? P.David Hornik
“[Israel’s] leaders and people are forever being entreated to avoid escalation and to act proportionately. They are hectored, lectured and told to act responsibly. No other country in the world is required to behave in this way when it is attacked by states that want to wipe it off the face of the earth.”
So said a Telegraph editorial on April 14, the morning after Iran’s massive missile and drone attack on Israel. The Telegraph’s retort was aimed at an instantaneous US and European reaction to the events of the early morning hours of the 14th—“Israel, it’s terrible that you should be attacked this way. Now, don’t do anything!”
An Israeli military retaliation to the attack would be seen, of course, as a threat to “stability”—than which, unfortunately, a worn-out, dissolute West sees no higher value. “Stability” means allowing Iran to continue spreading its tentacles throughout the Middle East, creating a ring of fire around Israel, arming, training, funding, and inciting its terror proxies, and marching along almost untrammeled toward nuclearization.
That approach is evident in the US–British very limited, ineffectual warfare on the Houthis’ assault on global shipping in the Red Sea. The unspoken rule is that Houthi targets alone get hit—but no targets on the soil of the Houthis’ sponsor, Iran. Even the Iranian spy ship in the Red Sea that helps guide the Houthis’ attacks is out of bounds. (Update: the ship is now reported to be heading back to Iran for fear of an Israeli strike.)
Worried European leaders indeed trooped to Israel this week to hector and lecture its leaders not to do anything in response to an unprecedented Iranian onslaught of hundreds of projectiles, including a swarm of 120 enormous ballistic missiles some of which were intended to destroy Israel’s Nevatim airbase.
German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock
[said] she made clear during talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others that the Middle East must not be allowed to slide into a situation whose outcome is completely unpredictable.
“Everyone must now act prudently and responsibly,” Baerbock [said] before departing Israel….
Here in Israel it appears that we’ve already slid into a situation where we’ve been attacked from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and now from the puppetmaster itself, Iran, which is obsessed with destroying Israel, closer than ever to the bomb, and gets away with barring IAEA inspectors from its territory.
UK foreign secretary David Cameron, also in Israel on Wednesday, said that “it’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act. We hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible”—which leaves open the question: when, if ever, will it be the right time to “escalate this,” when Iran has already “escalated” to the point that the Middle East is in a state of violent chaos that only keeps getting worse?
An EU decision to augment sanctions on Iran’s missile and drone producers is welcome, but as the course of recent events starkly demonstrates—inadequate, especially as Iran keeps reaping billions from its oil sales to China and clearly can overcome such measures.
Meanwhile the Jerusalem Post cites “multiple sources” saying that, while Israel may delay a counterstrike on Iran until after the Passover holiday (which runs this year from sundown on April 22 to April 30), “speculated options” for an attack
range from going big—striking Iranian nuclear facilities—to the middle of the road—striking drone or ballistic missile facilities that were directly involved in Iran’s strike —to more limited options—assassinating specific individuals or punishing IRGC officials abroad along with their accomplices; or, a mix of some of the above with a large cyber attack.
Still, some signals indicated that the Air Force would be involved in an unusually significant target.
As a resident of southern Israel—where there are potential high-value targets for, under such a scenario, a possible Iranian counter-counterstrike—I find those words . . . encouraging. The hour is late, and the greatest danger is to keep doing what the West does and wants Israel to do—essentially nothing.
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