After Missile Attack on Israel, Khamenei Is a Dead Man Walking

Biden, Harris face choice as Netanyahu targets Islamic Republic of Iran for toppling

The late, great, scholar of the Middle East Bernard Lewis often warned that for the Iranian regime, mutual assured destruction was not a deterrent but an inducement.

The wisdom of that insight was on full display today as the Islamic Republic launched a missile attack and terrorist attack on Israel. It will almost certainly send Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to his death, in a pattern similar to what befell other Iranian and Iranian-backed terrorist leaders such as Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Imad Mughniyeh, Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh and Ahmed Yassin, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

With Israeli strength, luck, God’s help, and any semblance of sanity from Washington, the Iranian Islamic Republic will perish along with Khamenei.

What Iran did today is like what Hamas did on October 7, 2023, or what Al Qaeda did to the U.S. on September 11, 2001. After September 11, there was no peaceful resolution or settlement scenario possible that included Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden surviving the war. After October 7, there was no peaceful resolution or settlement scenario possible that included Hamas surviving the war. After today, even though there appear to have been fewer casualties thanks to impressive missile defense (including by the U.S. Navy) and civil defense measures, Israel cannot stop short of total victory against Iran and all of its proxies. Anything less is the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish people secure in their own land.

President Biden and Vice President Harris are now on the spot.

Do they continue their quasi-embargo of arms to Israel while calling for de-escalation and ceasefire and being ignored? Or does the U.S. instead join in meaningful warfighting against Iran and its proxies? It’s a decision with real consequences for U.S. politics and for America’s global stature. Biden and Harris will be tempted to try to split the difference, but Congressional Republicans and even pro-Israel Democrats won’t hesitate to highlight any daylight between Biden and Harris and Israel. 

The missile attack had barely stopped before the Trump campaign released a commercial blaming Harris’s weakness for emboldening Iran. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican leader on national security issues, said, “This is a moment of choosing for the free world regarding Iran. The Ayatollah and Iranian regime are religious Nazis who want to destroy the state of Israel – their words, not mine. They want to purify Islam and attack the United States – again, their words, not mine. This missile attack against Israel should be the breaking point and I would urge the Biden Administration to coordinate an overwhelming response with Israel, starting with Iran’s ability to refine oil. These oil refineries need to be hit and hit hard because that is the source of cash for the regime to perpetrate their terror.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu is also on the spot. He has called for regime change in Iran twice in the past week. On Friday at the U.N., he said, “Nations of the world should support the brave people of Iran who want to rid themselves of this evil regime.” And yesterday, in a video address to the people of Iran, he said, “When Iran is finally free, and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think – everything will be different.”

Iran responded by raining missiles on Israel and initiating a deadly terrorist attack. That underscored the need for a regime change in Tehran but also raised the urgency of accomplishing it speedily before Israelis start blaming Netanyahu for endangering them by overreaching. 

Only this morning Netanyahu had looked like a hero for killing Nasrallah and pulling off the beeper-bomb operation that disabled Hezbollah. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had one of the best weeks in the history of modern politics,” Walter Russell Mead wrote in the Wall Street Journal, praising, “Israel’s greatest string of triumphs since the Six Day War.” Hours after the column was published, ten million Israelis were in bomb shelters under missile attack. That was not an issue in the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for allowing the situation to reach this point—for every American and Israeli and European and Middle Eastern leader and voter who thought that the Iranian regime could be deterred or contained or bought off or balanced or postponed or negotiated with. We’ll devote some future issue to the worst offenders—Ben Rhodes, John Kerry, Robert Malley. Add your own favorite using the reader-comment function. In fairness to them, there is something to be said for viewing war as a last resort, and for attempting to negotiate peace.

There will be plenty of time for blame-casting later. The coming days and weeks will be a time for war-fighting, with methods both conventional and unusual.

The war has the potential to end with a swift Israeli victory on the scale of the Six Day War—with an Israel at peace with Iran, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, with the Houthis and Iran no longer threatening commercial shipping or the Suez Canal. Israel has air dominance and ground troops whose skills have been honed by 11 months of experience in Gaza. It has technical and intelligence advantages of the sort that were on display recently against Hezbollah.

But the outcome is by no means guaranteed. Israel’s chances of success will be improved if it has the unreserved support of the world as it helps to defeat, in Iran, a rogue regime that has supported terrorism, pursued nuclear weapons, destabilized its neighbors, disrupted international commerce, and brutally oppressed its own people. Too many European governments, too many American college professors and newspaper columnists, have already thrown in with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and their Iranian sponsor. Now, though, is the moment for America and the world to stand with Israel in a war of self defense against those who, as Netanyahu put it at the U.N., “seek to destroy our common civilization.”