Three Big Lessons of Iran’s Attack on Israel. And What Comes Next?

Plus, Blankfein on Biden

Jerusalem in spring.

What to make of Iran’s attack on Israel?

I see at least three significant takeaways:

First, missile defense works. A senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Rebeccah Heinrichs, tweeted out last night: “There is great great value in layered Missile Defense. What a night to drive that point home.” Recall that many scientific experts and some media outlets had spent decades mocking the idea as a technically difficult “fantasy.” I excavated some of that history in a 2021 column for the Algemeiner:

William J. Broad, a New York Times science writer, covered Iron Dome in 2013 under the headline “Weapons Experts Raise Doubts About Israel’s Antimissile System.” Broad’s article made reference to what he asserted had been “a half-century of global antimissile failures.”

A similarly derisive tone characterizes the previous half-century of Times news and editorial coverage. “After Many Misses, Pentagon Still Pursues Missile Defense” was the headline over a 1999 Broad news article that began with a reference to “decades of flops” and proceeded to describe the task as “diabolically hard.”

As with so many contemporary controversies, the missile defense fight has its origins in the Cold War, and in the administration of President Reagan, whose championing of the Strategic Defense Initiative helped to defeat the Soviet Union. “Soviet Scientists Call Missile Defense Plan by US an Illusion,” was a headline over a wire story in the Times in 1983. “Missile Shield Illusion” was the headline over a Times editorial in 2000 describing it as “technologically unworkable,” a “fantasy.” In 2018, the Times editorialists were flogging the same “illusion” terminology coined by the Soviets back in the 1980s: “The Dangerous Illusion of Missile Defense,” was the headline of that editorial, which eventually grudgingly did concede, almost in passing, that “Missile defense needs to be part of the United States’ strategy.”

The rest of the left-leaning press has been similarly hostile to the technology. “$40 billion missile defense system proves unreliable,” was the headline over a 2014 Los Angeles Times investigation.

What’s really proved “unreliable” has been not the concept of missile defense, but the press coverage and the so-called scientific experts on which it relied.

Iran’s attack included not just missiles but also drones. The defense against it included not only “layered” missile defense systems such as Iron Dome, Arrow, David’s Sling, the Aegis ballistic missile defense system, and even a balloon, but also air force fighter jets and a civil defense system that includes shelters, sirens, and app-based alerts that warn Israelis of the oncoming attacks. No one can expect 100 percent effectiveness against a massive launch, but at this point, the investment in missile defense that was a key intellectual contribution of President Reagan seems to have proven its worth beyond any reasonable doubt.

Second, American weakness has a cost: Here is President Biden on April 12, 2024, in question and answers after remarks to the National Action Network Convention:

Q    Mr. President, what is your message to Iran in this moment?
 
THE PRESIDENT:  “Don’t.”

As Senator Lindsey Graham put it in a post on X, “Every time he says ‘don’t,’ they do.”

That applies to Russia going into Ukraine, to Syria using chemical weapons during the Obama-Biden administration. If you are sitting in Moscow and see the fall of Kabul, you invade Ukraine. If you are sitting in Gaza City and see the invasion of Ukraine, you invade Israel. If you are sitting in Tehran and see Biden move from standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel to denouncing Netanyahu and calling for an immediate ceasefire, you launch a barrage of drones and missiles at Israel. As Bernard Lewis used to say, America risks earning the reputation as “an unreliable ally and a harmless enemy.”

I’m not a member of the blame-America-first crowd; the main culpability for Ukraine lies with Putin, for Afghanistan lies with the Taliban, and for the attacks on Israel lies with Iran and its proxy Hamas. But the blame-Netanyahu-first crowd also has to reckon with the pattern of Afghanistan and Ukraine and Syria. No one seems exactly to be quaking in their boots these days at a warning from Joe Biden.

President Trump was widely mocked and denounced in 2017 when he threatened to meet North Korea “with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” In foreign policy, Trump was conflict-averse, but he also was enough of a risk-taker that when he talked recklessly, there was at least some fear by our enemies that he actually meant it.

Third, people seem to like Jews more when we are targets then when we are taking action to prevent ourselves from being targets. There were strong statements of support for Israel in the immediate aftermath of the attack from voices in the U.S. and Europe that had either fallen largely silent or had turned to criticism of Israel for the war in Gaza. I’m not quite sure if that phenomenon is something special about Jews, along the lines of a definition of antisemitism as discomfort with Jewish power, or some more universally applicable phenomenon. Sympathy when missiles and drones are headed toward Israel is great. As important, but apparently more difficult, is sympathy that extends to actions and policies Israel pursues to diminish the threat of incoming attacks.

Where will it go next?

Many voices in Israel and the U.S. are urging Israel to respond to the Iranian attacks rapidly with a round of attacks on Iranian targets. The Hudson Institute’s Michael Pregent writes, “Israel has to respond in Iran” against Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps targets. Antonin Scalia Law School Professor Eugene Kontorovich writes, “Israel cannot allow missile attacks from Iran — even when intercepted safely — to become background noise. If it doesn’t respond strongly now, diplomatic pressure to not do so will be even greater next time, and there will be a next time.” Israel-based venture capitalist Michael Granoff writes, “it is imperative that Israel not let last night’s attack go unanswered.” Brigadier General (reserve) Amir Avivi of Israel’s Defense and Security Forum, who meets frequently with Netanyahu, sent a note calling for mobilizing an international coalition “with the objectives of targeting strategic sites in Iran which will keep the Iranian nuclear threat and the missile threat at bay.”

I have no crystal ball, but I’ve been watching and writing about Netanyahu and Biden for a quarter century. Biden wants an end to the Gaza war and a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel before the November election, and as quickly as possible. Netanyahu, with considerable public support in Israel, wants victory over Hamas in Rafah, return of the hostages, and a peace deal with Saudi Arabia. He’d also like to push back Iran’s nuclear timetable. I doubt he wants a big war with Iran.

One scenario is Netanyahu tries to sell Biden on a U.S. greenlight for Israel going into Rafah in exchange for relative Israeli restraint in overt military retaliation against Iran. Another scenario is Biden tries to sell Netanyahu on not going into Rafah in exchange for American assistance in mobilizing an international coalition against Iran, trying to make the case that the Iranian A-bomb poses a larger threat to Israel than some Hamasniks in Southern Gaza.

Neither Biden nor most of the Israeli security establishment appears to see the opportunity for a “Don’t Just ‘Deter’ Iran. Help Free It” approach of the sort I outlined a month ago. In my view, that remains the most promising and peaceful approach for the aim, widely shared in the region both by Israel and Sunni Arab states, of eliminating the menace posed by Iran’s regime.

Blankfein on Biden: As quoted in the New York Times magazine, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein offers this judgment on the Biden administration:

“Nobody there is wired into the business world, even in seats where you would normally find them, like Treasury or commerce,” says Lloyd Blankfein, the former chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs. “And they don’t seem to want any.”

Welcome and thank you!: Welcome to the many new subscribers who arrived here as a result of the Drudge Report link to the article about declining church attendance and the mental health crisis. If you are enjoying the content and learning from it, please support our independent journalism and purchase full ongoing access to it by becoming a paying subscriber. Without paying readers this work is impossible. With paying readers, it is a pleasure. Thanks to those of you who have already signed up as customers.

And please consider also helping us grow by forwarding this newsletter to a friend along with a recommendation that they sign up.