All roads for Israel lead to Tehran. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Popular Mobilization Units of Iraq and Syria would be shadows of themselves if not for Iran’s financial and military support and tactical training. After Israel’s minimal response to an overwhelming cruise and ballistic missile attack, well defended by the US, Israel, and allies, the perception of the mullahs is that Israel is under the thumb of the US, which wants stability more than long-term deterrence against the Islamic Republic. That is a green light for the advancement of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
As Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on a June visit to Washington, “The eyes of both our enemies and our friends are on the relationship between the US and Israel. We must resolve the differences between us quickly and stand together – that is how we will achieve our goals and weaken our enemies.”
Each Iranian proxy arm, Shi’ite or Sunni, is part of the ambitious Iranian jihadist plan to weaken and demoralize Israel and distract it from focusing on the Iranian path to a nuclear weapon. The goal is to end the Jewish state’s existence. Sunni and Arab proxies share their goal of delegitimizing, demonizing, and finally destroying Israel.
As the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, said from the beginning, “Israel must be wiped out,” and the ubiquitous calls of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” are featured prominently at almost every pre-staged Iranian regime public rally against the Jewish state and its patron America. The absurd Holocaust denial writing and art contests exemplify the pervasive preoccupation with Jews. When I travel to the Middle East, even among friends, Israelis are called “Jews.”
Denying, ignoring, minimizing, or worse, appeasing, Iran’s clearly stated goals have been the policy of multiple US administrations, especially after the American people lost their appetite for meddling in the region with two mismanaged wars. In 2003, I was asked on ABC radio if the US should go into Iraq, and I answered, “Not unless they have a plan for the more significant threat to our interests, Iran.”
Iran approaches weapons-grade nuclear enrichment
Fast forward 21 years to 2024, and Iran has mastered the uranium enrichment cycle and possesses long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel, as evidenced by its recent attack against Israel from Iranian territory. Iran’s missiles can reach all of Europe and possibly America. All that is left is the final step – weaponizing and testing an atomic device, which would intimidate America’s moderate Sunni allies and precipitate a nuclear arms race with its Sunni Arab rivals, with the risk of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood or one of its offshoots.
Perhaps if the Iranians had thought there was a credible US-Israel military threat, we wouldn’t be in this position today. Make no mistake, unlike the American isolationists or Iranian apologists from the Right and Left, a nuclear Iran is a threat to American prestige, credibility, and security interests, which are wrapped tightly together.
So, when you read that diplomats are calling for a credible military threat to enhance the American negotiating position with Iran, you know something is up. Dennis Ross, the longtime Middle East negotiator, wrote an op-ed for Foreign Policy magazine, “The Threat of War Is the Only Way to Achieve Peace with Iran. Tehran no longer takes Washington seriously. To revive the nuclear deal, the threat of military escalation needs to be on the table.”
Reviving a fatally flawed nuclear deal with sunset provisions already expiring is another mistake unless profoundly improved upon; but the salient argument is that diplomacy only works when the adversarial party believes you will enforce your own words. In this case, we will not let Iran get a nuclear weapon, even if it means a preemptive kinetic action. And the American definition of an Iranian atomic bomb cannot be one where the IRGC has every component for a functioning weapon but has not turned the last screw, claiming they are not a nuclear weapons power.
President Joe Biden’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been defined by trying to stabilize conflict zones from the Lebanese border to Gaza, to Yemen and Iran, sweeping problems under the table. Lowering the flame is an admirable goal in a region that has to be carefully managed because there are no solutions in the near future. Unfortunately, Western tactical and strategic logic falls on deaf Shiite revolutionary ears when they believe you are a paper tiger. When I traveled in the Arab Sunni world after the American Afghanistan withdrawal of troops, the message I heard was that America is an unreliable ally, so they have to make other plans and even accommodate adversaries like the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Mark Toth, writing in the New York Post, said, “The mullahs are using their proxies to buy time for Iran’s nuclear weapons program — and ultimately to wage a wider war against the West. Playing Biden for time and ransom has become an art form for Iran. Khamenei knows Biden fears regional escalation above all.”
The hoped-for stabilization with Iran is enabled in unconstructive ways. They hope for reciprocity but receive stridency and obfuscation, as they believe America is all talk. By offering lots of carrots and few sticks, most perilously not enforcing sanctions, the lesson that should have been learned years back is that there is little chance of motivating Iran to be negotiable without a credible military threat.
Let’s be clear: Iran has absolutely no peaceful reason to enrich uranium beyond 3%. It already has enriched uranium to 60%, a short step away from nuclear weapons-grade nuclear fuel. Yet, instead of enforcing sanctions, the [Biden] administration ignores most of them, thinking this is the best alternative for stability, or at least until the elections. Kicking the can down the road is not a strategy. Presidents are elected to deal with the situation as it is, not as they hope it could be. This is a grave military threat to world order and American foreign policy interests, and the Iranians, Chinese, and Russians are laughing at the US’s impotence. Taiwan is watching closely as American inaction in the Middle East is an ominous harbinger, as they worry about a Chinese invasion.
The administration is good at rhetoric, claiming Iran is a threat and even creating new sanctions but barely enforcing them. America appears to the world as a hollow vessel, as it is well known that Iran is selling an unlimited amount of oil to China and India with little fear of consequences.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense Democracies (FDD), told Fox News, “While Washington has promised to ‘respond accordingly,’ it’s been the delayed response, missteps, and absorption of Tehran’s previous nuclear moves that got us to this point…Washington must aggressively enforce oil and petrochemical sanctions, and militarily threaten that which Tehran holds dear in the region to reset the otherwise sticky impression in the minds of the Islamic Republic’s decision-makers about US and Western resolve.”
A primary mechanism to hurt Iran is the strict enforcement of sanctions on oil sales, which fund not only its proxies but also its nuclear portfolio. This must include secondary sanctions against those who buy Iranian oil. The Biden administration’s choice since January 2021 has been to enrich the regime to the tune of tens of billions of dollars while it destabilized the Middle East, the exact opposite of the Biden administration’s stated goal. Iran correctly concluded there was no chance for a military strike on its nuclear facilities or any strategic asset on Iranian territory, even as its proxies killed American soldiers.
It says a lot that in the latest Iranian nuclear transgression, installing even more advanced centrifuges in Fordo and Natanz, the Europeans wanted to criticize Iran, but the Biden administration had to be persuaded to agree.
A credible military threat is the answer. Even targeted attacks, like the assassination of terror mastermind Soleimani, stabilized the region.
A feeble Biden under the sway of the anti-Israel Left that does not consider Iran an American problem or a new administration that leans isolationist is music to the ears of the Ayatollah and his IRGC henchmen, who will replace the ailing Supreme Leader with one who is even more antagonistic to America and destabilizing to the region.
But like all authoritarian regimes, they want to survive, and fully enforced sanctions and a credible military threat on Iran itself are the best way forward, forcing Iran’s hand. It is against the logic of this administration, but action is the best way to decrease the chance of regional wars and constrain the desire of Iran’s neighbors to get a bomb of their own.
As Jonathan Panikoff, writing in Time, said, “Iran needs to know the US will destroy its nuclear program. Iran remains committed to developing a working nuclear weapon. The US needs to be equally committed to preventing one.”
Deterrence requires Tehran to believe that America and Israel are actual military threats. It is not so much worried by America. Still, it fears a preemptive strike by Israel, which knows that once Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, preemptive military attacks risk an atomic Armageddon. The strategy is to distract Israel and the world with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, buying precious time to inch closer to weaponization.
A former Iranian president who was considered a moderate said Israel is a one-bomb nation, and it is worth the sacrifice of 20% of its citizens for the destruction of the hated Jews. Radicals, whether Sunni, Hamas, or Shiite in Iran, see the deaths of their citizens as a necessary price if their ultimate aim is accomplished. In the case of Iran, the aim is the destruction of Israel, the diminution of America, and a path to dominate first the region, then the world.
This is how revolutionary religious zealots think, and it is high time that America wakes up to it.■
The writer is the director of MEPIN (Middle East Political Information Network) and Mandel Strategies, a consulting firm for business and government officials in the Middle East, and regularly briefs members of the US Congress and their foreign policy aides.