There Will Never Be a Better Time for Israel to Strike in Iran
Benny Morris
Nov 1, 2023 12:06 am IST
For 20 years Iran has been harming Israel and Western interests in the Middle East – as well as other regions – with absolute impunity. It does this by means of proxies that include Hezbollah members, Houthis and Iraqi Shi’ite Muslims. And if there is an Israeli or Western response, it is the proxies that pay the price, not Iran or the Iranians.
There is an opportunity now to put an end to this.
The last proxy, Hamas, has dealt Israel a devastating blow. Hamas was funded, armed and trained by Iran, and Iranians may even have helped organize and direct the October 7 invasion of Israel. Israel should exact a price from Iran for this, a painful price, and immediately.
For example, it’s possible to destroy Iranian planes that land at the Aleppo and Damascus airports, loaded with weapons (something Israel has refrained from doing, in favor of destroying the arms shipments after they are unloaded from the planes), or to strike Iranian cargo ships carrying arms before they enter the port of Beirut, Latakia or Tartus.
On the Lebanese border, Israel has made do for now with localized strikes on Hezbollah when the organization fires on communities and army positions on the northern border. Hezbollah is clearly using this tactic on the orders, or the advice, of Iran. Israel has for now decided to show restraint while at the same time deploying divisions along the border in the event of an escalation.
Israel must state publicly that if the Shi’ite organization shifts to an all-out war, Israel will bomb Iran itself, first and foremost Tehran and its nuclear installations. Such an announcement may deter Iran and Hezbollah from intervening with full force in Israel’s war with Hamas. But if Iran does choose to join the campaign, either directly or through Hezbollah, Israel must take advantage of the opportunity to destroy, to the best of its ability, the Iranian nuclear enterprise and undermine the Iranian regime and its military units, above all the Revolutionary Guards (which is responsible for attacks on Israel and on Jewish communities around the world in recent decades).
Israel has stores of ballistic missiles that can reach targets in Iran and submarines carrying precision-guided cruise missiles. It also has an air force with mid-air refueling planes (advanced models of which the United States should be pressured to supply to Israel, immediately) capable of operating in the skies of Iran, if Israel receives tacit or official overflight permission from the intervening countries (Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia).
It is possible – there is no certainty about this – that Washington would oppose a future Israeli action against Iran on Iranian territory, fearing that such an attack will drag the United States into the military maelstrom that would result. But for Israel, destroying Iran’s nuclear program is a supreme interest; an American veto must be rejected. (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should have acted back in 2010-12, but he desisted out of fear, just as he was afraid to launch a preemptive attack on Hamas before the organization was able to reach its current capabilities.)
The timing will never be better than it is now; Joe Biden is the most pro-Israel U.S. president since Bill Clinton. It is possible that such an attack, especially if it succeeds, would even please Washington.
As far as is known, Iran does not have advanced missile and aircraft interception capabilities, while Israel does. It is possible that in the near future the Iranians will be able to reach parity in these capabilities, and if Israel does not act in the coming months it will miss the current moment of superiority.
Western diplomacy and the use of economic sanctions in recent decades to stop Iran’s nuclear program have not succeeded, and the only way remaining to stop Tehran’s advance to nuclear bombs is a military strike. If this opportunity is missed, in the not too distant future Israel will have to live with a nuclear Iran, and “may Allah have mercy.”
Yup. Morris has been saying this forever. Of course, Israel cannot and will not do this withough U.S. participation, which is exactly what they're using this crisis to arrange. And Morris is underestimating Iran's capabilites. He still thinks U.S.& Israel can hit Iran and get away with minimal damage. Not so.
Thanks for that recommendation. It's a good article. but I thiink it 1) Too completely accepts the Israeli version of what Hamas actually did on 10/7, "blood-drenched bacchanalia" and all; and 2) thinks what Hamas did (especially assuming the worst "hunting down" of civilians) was as bad for the Palestinian cause as Israel's genocidal reaction.
I disagree. His evocatoin of the Phillipeville uprising in Algeria, and his citation of the guy in Jerusaliem that "the impact of Hamas’s attack was ‘like shrinking the whole last hundred years into a week" (echoing Lenin's famous "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.?) make the point: Hamas's 10/7 action broke the status quo--precisely the designed-to-be-interminable game of all the nice, rational people in the world non-violently figuring out how Palestians and Israelis can live together--as nothing less violent and bloody could have. The colonized people must demonstrate (to themselves first of all), and come to feel, their power to disrupt and take the lives of their colonizers, must make their colonizers know that they will always live in the fear of that power, for the psychological and material chains to be broken and the colonizer to be defeated.
That is always how "de-colonization" works, and, though the more political discipline the better, it always involves--often precisley as game-changing acts that give rise to more effective and politically disciplined actions--undiscilplined, excessively bloody acts. That's a knowledge that cannot be erased from history or Fanon. Hamas on 10/7 broke an intolerable status-quo, demolishing, over the last few weeks, decades of a false ideology that has been inexorably killing Palestine. The Hamas action created an existenial crisis for Zionism, and put the Palestinian question at the center of the world. Nothing less forceful would have done that.
In today’s Haaretz Israeli newspaper.
There Will Never Be a Better Time for Israel to Strike in Iran
Benny Morris
Nov 1, 2023 12:06 am IST
For 20 years Iran has been harming Israel and Western interests in the Middle East – as well as other regions – with absolute impunity. It does this by means of proxies that include Hezbollah members, Houthis and Iraqi Shi’ite Muslims. And if there is an Israeli or Western response, it is the proxies that pay the price, not Iran or the Iranians.
There is an opportunity now to put an end to this.
The last proxy, Hamas, has dealt Israel a devastating blow. Hamas was funded, armed and trained by Iran, and Iranians may even have helped organize and direct the October 7 invasion of Israel. Israel should exact a price from Iran for this, a painful price, and immediately.
For example, it’s possible to destroy Iranian planes that land at the Aleppo and Damascus airports, loaded with weapons (something Israel has refrained from doing, in favor of destroying the arms shipments after they are unloaded from the planes), or to strike Iranian cargo ships carrying arms before they enter the port of Beirut, Latakia or Tartus.
On the Lebanese border, Israel has made do for now with localized strikes on Hezbollah when the organization fires on communities and army positions on the northern border. Hezbollah is clearly using this tactic on the orders, or the advice, of Iran. Israel has for now decided to show restraint while at the same time deploying divisions along the border in the event of an escalation.
Israel must state publicly that if the Shi’ite organization shifts to an all-out war, Israel will bomb Iran itself, first and foremost Tehran and its nuclear installations. Such an announcement may deter Iran and Hezbollah from intervening with full force in Israel’s war with Hamas. But if Iran does choose to join the campaign, either directly or through Hezbollah, Israel must take advantage of the opportunity to destroy, to the best of its ability, the Iranian nuclear enterprise and undermine the Iranian regime and its military units, above all the Revolutionary Guards (which is responsible for attacks on Israel and on Jewish communities around the world in recent decades).
Israel has stores of ballistic missiles that can reach targets in Iran and submarines carrying precision-guided cruise missiles. It also has an air force with mid-air refueling planes (advanced models of which the United States should be pressured to supply to Israel, immediately) capable of operating in the skies of Iran, if Israel receives tacit or official overflight permission from the intervening countries (Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia).
It is possible – there is no certainty about this – that Washington would oppose a future Israeli action against Iran on Iranian territory, fearing that such an attack will drag the United States into the military maelstrom that would result. But for Israel, destroying Iran’s nuclear program is a supreme interest; an American veto must be rejected. (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should have acted back in 2010-12, but he desisted out of fear, just as he was afraid to launch a preemptive attack on Hamas before the organization was able to reach its current capabilities.)
The timing will never be better than it is now; Joe Biden is the most pro-Israel U.S. president since Bill Clinton. It is possible that such an attack, especially if it succeeds, would even please Washington.
As far as is known, Iran does not have advanced missile and aircraft interception capabilities, while Israel does. It is possible that in the near future the Iranians will be able to reach parity in these capabilities, and if Israel does not act in the coming months it will miss the current moment of superiority.
Western diplomacy and the use of economic sanctions in recent decades to stop Iran’s nuclear program have not succeeded, and the only way remaining to stop Tehran’s advance to nuclear bombs is a military strike. If this opportunity is missed, in the not too distant future Israel will have to live with a nuclear Iran, and “may Allah have mercy.”
Prof. Benny Morris is a historian.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-11-01/ty-article-opinion/.premium/there-will-never-be-a-better-time-for-israel-to-strike-in-iran/0000018b-8758-df47-a3df-ff592b2b0000
Yup. Morris has been saying this forever. Of course, Israel cannot and will not do this withough U.S. participation, which is exactly what they're using this crisis to arrange. And Morris is underestimating Iran's capabilites. He still thinks U.S.& Israel can hit Iran and get away with minimal damage. Not so.
It's really dangerous.
Brilliant analysis Jim , thanks.
Thanks, Sean.
It's all so depressing and infuriating.
Jim, you may have seen this article by Adam Shatz, but if you haven’t, here’s the link
Vengeful Pathologies by Adam Shatz on the war in Gaza In the London Review of Books.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n21/adam-shatz/vengeful-pathologies
Thanks for that recommendation. It's a good article. but I thiink it 1) Too completely accepts the Israeli version of what Hamas actually did on 10/7, "blood-drenched bacchanalia" and all; and 2) thinks what Hamas did (especially assuming the worst "hunting down" of civilians) was as bad for the Palestinian cause as Israel's genocidal reaction.
I disagree. His evocatoin of the Phillipeville uprising in Algeria, and his citation of the guy in Jerusaliem that "the impact of Hamas’s attack was ‘like shrinking the whole last hundred years into a week" (echoing Lenin's famous "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.?) make the point: Hamas's 10/7 action broke the status quo--precisely the designed-to-be-interminable game of all the nice, rational people in the world non-violently figuring out how Palestians and Israelis can live together--as nothing less violent and bloody could have. The colonized people must demonstrate (to themselves first of all), and come to feel, their power to disrupt and take the lives of their colonizers, must make their colonizers know that they will always live in the fear of that power, for the psychological and material chains to be broken and the colonizer to be defeated.
That is always how "de-colonization" works, and, though the more political discipline the better, it always involves--often precisley as game-changing acts that give rise to more effective and politically disciplined actions--undiscilplined, excessively bloody acts. That's a knowledge that cannot be erased from history or Fanon. Hamas on 10/7 broke an intolerable status-quo, demolishing, over the last few weeks, decades of a false ideology that has been inexorably killing Palestine. The Hamas action created an existenial crisis for Zionism, and put the Palestinian question at the center of the world. Nothing less forceful would have done that.
Jim, I just finished ready this article by Ron UNZ, and his analysis sounds to me to be right on.
https://www.unz.com/runz/pro-israel-propaganda-lies-vs-reality/
Thanks. I'll take a look at it.