From Coercion to New Order: Israel’s “Carpe Diem”

(To Philip of the Mount)
09/10/24

Lenin said that "there are decades in which nothing happens and weeks in which decades happen". This is the case of what is happening in the Middle East, with Israel having swept away the entire leadership of Hezbollah in a few days and having entered Lebanon in force, also provoking the reaction of Iran, which launched ballistic missiles against the cities of the Jewish state.

There is a significant segment of people in Israeli political and military circles who believe this is the most suitable moment not only to blunt the ambitions of the various formations that make up the so-called "axis of resistance" (Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, Shiite guerrillas in Iraq and Syria), but to deliver a mortal blow. This increases the possibility that Israel will also want to strike directly at Iran, which is now weakened.

The military option against Iran is now a viable path, although it does not have the full support of the United States, which is Jerusalem's main ally. But it is precisely from what are considered errors in the policy of "containment" of Iran implemented by the USA, mainly through economic sanctions, that the idea of ​​striking is being fueled. militarily the regime of the ayatollahs.

It was published in the American periodical "The National Interest" an article which states that "A common justification for maintaining economic warfare against Iran is that even if such pressure does not induce Iranian leaders to change their policies, it does reduce the resources Iran has to act on those policies. However, as the comparison of Iranian conduct before and after the onset of maximum pressure has shown, such resource constraints do not prevent Iran from doing many of the things we might wish it would not do.", such as investing in nuclear power to try to build its own atomic bomb or financing and supporting its proxy militias in the Middle East.

What Cecilia Sala defined in “Il Foglio” as a “life insurance” for Iran, that is, the threatening presence of Hezbollah on the northern Israeli border, with its militias and its missile arsenal, was annihilated by the operations of the security services and the bombs of the Israeli Air Force. But over the years, Hezbollah had been the clear example of how Tehran managed to fuel, from a financial, logistical and military point of view, significant threats to Israel, determining the gradation of the reactions of the IDF and the Tel Aviv government precisely in function of the dangerousness of the Lebanese Party of God.

The ineffectiveness of pure and simple economic sanctions in influencing Tehran's foreign policy choices is one of the main criticisms leveled at the supporters of "containment" by those of military intervention. Although many realist analysts argue that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - pulled by the coattails of the religious and messianic right - is not following a clear strategy, but that Tel Aviv is proceeding blindly, it should be emphasized that the Jewish state after October 7, 2023 had no alternatives other than invading the Gaza Strip to defeat Hamas.

The extension of military operations from Gaza to Lebanon, instead, represents the shift from a strategy of “coercion” – where it was difficult to see how Israel could manage not only Gaza but the Palestinian question more generally – to a project of geostrategic rebalancing in the Middle East, trying to exploit the advantage offered by the deployment of the “highest level of violence”. In this respect, the invasion of Gaza and Lebanon, as well as the bombings in Yemen and Syria, constitute part of a measured escalation against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which continues to represent the main objective for Tel Aviv.

This is a logic close to that of Zionist “neo-revisionism”, which has influenced the foreign policy of the Likud for much of its history, which has drawn lifeblood for its doctrine of unattainable stability from the constant emergency situation in which the State of Israel has lived since its foundation.

However, the new course of Israeli strategy distances itself from the "neo-revisionism", which had been Netanyahu's political paradigm, for the idea that regional stability can actually be achieved, after having deprived Iran of its allies and greatly reduced the influence of the ayatollahs, building it on the pillars of the states that are part of the Abraham Accords and with an evident primacy of Israel.

Photo: IDF