We are at the one year anniversary of the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. Israel’s response has been to effectively destroy the Gaza strip and make it uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. Just recently it has carried out high-intensity attacks in the north against Hizbollah, including killing Hassan Nazrallah, Hizbollah’s charismatic and influential commander. Israel is also bulldozing large chunks of the West Bank and has given a green light to settlers to intimidate and displace Palestinians.
So far Hizbollah and Iran, Hizbollah’s patron, have not responded effectively. Iran has (twice now) attacked Israel with missiles, but these have mostly been shot down, with US help. Hizbollah is reeling from the loss of its communication system (Israel detonated thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in a devastating intelligence operation), intense strikes on Hizbollah missile complexes near the border, and the loss of Nazrallah and other top leaders.
Where does this leave us? Israel has for a long time, since it annexed the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 war, had three basic strategic choices.
1. Accommodation. Reach some kind of accommodation with Palestinians, either a 2-state solution or even a one-state solution, that gives Palestinians enough autonomy that most give up demands to return or to destroy Israel, and outside supporters, especially Iran, lose influence.
2. Apartheid. Expel or subjugate Palestinians, and make the West Bank and Gaza de facto if not de jure part of Israel; in effect, an apartheid state.
3. Mow the Lawn. Do neither, but depend on tactical, military superiority to ‘mow the lawn’ and keep Palestinians, including Hamas; and Hizbollah and other Iranian proxies, weak and unable to seriously threaten Israel.
The necessary condition for all these strategies is continued unconditional support from the United States. While the official US position has been to support Accommodation, US support has been essential for Mow the Lawn, which Israel has largely followed for several decades. While Apartheid is strongly opposed by Washington, it is unlikely that the US would act to prevent it, provided Israel can cast this as unavoidable, and can pursue it without major repercussions from regional powers.
In the 30 years since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 Benjamin Netanyahu has been Prime Minister for over 16 years. During his tenure Israel has paid lip service to Accommodation, while in practice moving slowly but firmly to implement Apartheid. This is partly because of Netanyahu’s own convictions, and partly his need to build governing coalitions that rely more and more on extremist parties. Netanyahu’s worldview is largely adopted from his father, a close associate of Jakob Jabotinsky, the militant founder of Likud who advocated for a powerful Jewish state and defense force able to coerce Arabs into submission.
Israel is frequently described as ‘tactically proficient, but strategically deficient’. It pulls off spectacular intelligence and strike operations, assassinating enemy leaders and destroying militant and Iranian bases and facilities. With less success, it also conducts occasional longer-term invasions and occupations, as in Lebanon in 2006 and now in Gaza. These are all part of Mow the Lawn, at least in public discourse; that is, designed to keep Israel’s enemies at bay and eliminate their capability to attack Israel. Israel’s tactical superiority allows it to avoid choosing clearly one strategy over another.
During the ‘Netanyahu era’ Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank has expanded, to the point that an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank is now hard to imagine. The response to 10/7 has made Gaza a moonscape with no prospect that Palestinians, even if fighting stops, would be able to restore even the inadequate infrastructure and services they enjoyed before. Netanyahu’s ruling coalitions have become progressively more extreme and more dominated by religious nationalists determined to achieve the goal of “Greater Israel”.
Netanyahu himself is preoccupied with political and personal survival and sees continued war as staving off any reckoning for the October 7 catastrophe. He is also obsessed with the Iranian nuclear threat and sees his legacy, and his chance for redemption, tied to successful strikes that eliminate Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Killing Nasrallah has already improved his image; a successful strike on Iran would make him a hero at home and divert any criticism about Gaza and the hostages. It would also make it easier to ramp up pressure on Palestinians and satisfy the demands of his right-wing coalition partners.
Israel’s high-profile attacks on Hizbollah are designed to force Iran to respond, giving Israel an excuse to carry out a direct attack on Iran. US participation is part of the plan, since Israel’s own capabilities are probably insufficient to cripple Iran’s hardened nuclear sites. Israeli military leaders have publicly claimed they have unilateral means, but Iran has been moving key facilities deeper underground and Israel lacks the really heavy bombs, and the long-range bombers to carry them, that only the US Air Force owns.
Netanyahu’s strategy is therefore to use escalation with Iran to box the US in, so Washington is forced to participate in a direct attack on Iran which Israel can claim is legitimate self-defense to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. (Iran is now judged to be able to enrich to weapons-grade uranium within a few weeks, and construct a working nuclear device within a few months to a year; Netanyahu was a fervent opponent of the nuclear agreement negotiated under the Obama Administration, which would have slowed Iran’s nuclear development, and which President Trump abrogated soon after he took office).
Crippling Hizbollah is the necessary condition for this strategy. Iran has built up Hizbollah for years largely to deter Israel. Just as North Korea successfully prevented the US and South Korea from attacking the North’s nuclear facilities by threatening to use artillery and rockets to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire”, Tehran wants to use Hizbollah’s thousands of missiles near Israel’s border to keep Israel and the US at bay.
It is not clear how much firepower Hizbollah has left, but Israel has already destroyed a lot on the ground, badly hurt its ability to communicate, and killed many top leaders. Israel may now feel that it has reduced the threat from Hizbollah to a tolerable level, and that the time to attack Iran is now, before Hizbollah can recover.
The US is now the wildcard. Participating in attacks on Iran’s nuclear program would be a huge escalation with unpredictable outcomes. Every major country in the region could be affected, and while most would be happy to see a weakened Iran, there would be deep unease at the prospects for a regional war. Iran would likely attack or threaten oil facilities in the Gulf as well as tanker traffic, causing oil prices to skyrocket, an unwelcome development just before US elections (though perhaps welcome to Netanyahu, an unabashed Trump supporter). US personnel and facilities in Iraq and the Gulf would be at risk. Iran’s allies, Russia and China, would assail the US as a warmonger.
However, a number of US strategists and military experts are calling for the US to take part in an attack on Iran. President Biden has said he is against Israeli retaliation on Iran’s nuclear sites, but it is unclear what recourse the US has if Israel decides to act. The unknown is whether Israel has the capability, or thinks it has the capability, to be successful on its own. Netanyahu may ultimately decide to settle, for now, for a more limited retaliation. But Netanyahu’s political survival now coincides, in his own eyes, with destroying what he has consistently said is the greatest threat to Israel’s survival, an Iranian bomb. And Hizbollah’s weakness won’t last forever. I think it is certain that if Trump is re-elected, Netanyahu will lobby relentlessly for an American green light to attack Iran, sooner and not later.
Attacking Iran would be Mowing the Lawn on steroids, a tactical move that, if successful, might make Israel safer in the short term but would be likely to worsen its longterm security. Under a different leadership, a triumphant Israel might feel willing to accommodate Palestinian interests. But this is not how Netanyahu and his partners would respond—they would feel free to put their weight on the Palestinian neck.
Netanyahu hopes an Iranian defeat might lead to the overthrow of the ayatollahs, and he recently appealed to Iran’s people to throw off their rule. But it is more likely that Iranians would rally behind the regime, which would continue its support of surrogates and seek new ways to attack and undermine Israel. Israel’s horrific punishment of Palestinians is giving Iran’s anti-Israel stance new traction in the region. Israel’s diplomatic isolation would increase. And the US would become more deeply identified with the most aggressive and violent Israeli actions.