Israel faces the Ring of Fire

Almost two decades ago, Henry Kissinger observed of Iran that it needed to decide whether it was “a nation or a cause.” By this Kissinger meant that Iran faced the choice between being a conventional country, at peace with its neighbors and promoting the welfare of its people, or as the vanguard of militant Shi’a Islam, oppressing its citizens and destabilizing the region.

As the revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran brings the Middle East to the precipice of war, its militant leader Ayatollah Khameini has answered Kissinger’s question. Iran sees itself as incarnating the cause of violent Islamism, sworn to the destruction of Israel and the export of terrorism and revolution throughout the Middle East and beyond.

The entire Middle East is a tinderbox, at risk of becoming an inferno. Iran and its terrorist proxies give every sign of preparing an onslaught against Israel. The American Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly has warned his counterparts that Iran’s attack could be imminent.

Though these tensions date back decades to the Islamic revolution that consumed Iran in 1979, the current crisis stems from recent measures Israel took to protect itself. In the last two weeks Israel has assassinated three malefactors responsible for the murders of many Jews and (in the first case) a number of Americans: Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif in Gaza, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. These were evil men who received their just deserts.

Such operations are not without risk, however. The death of Haniyeh humiliated the Iranian regime, since it took place while the Hamas leader was visiting Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian. Nothing shows vulnerability and weakness like the failure to protect a visiting guest from assassination. For good reason the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, is revered—and feared—as the most effective and lethal intelligence service in the region. The death of Haniyeh was both a loss for Hamas and an embarrassment for Iran.

Now Israel waits on full alert for what seems to be a forthcoming retaliation from Iran and its “axis of resistance”—the network of terrorist proxies that Tehran controls throughout the region. Last week I wrote of the region’s risk of war, and invoked Jonathan Schanzer’s apt description of Israel’s adversaries as a “ring of fire” surrounding the country. That ring is getting tighter, and hotter. The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that “Iran rejected U.S. and Arab efforts to temper its response to the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s top political leader.”

While the United States desperately seeks to avoid a war, the Pentagon is wisely moving military assets into forward deployments in the region, including naval forces with potent defensive and offensive capabilities. Often the best way to prevent a war is to prepare for it.

Bolstering Iran’s threats, and looming over the region, is the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons program. Though its precise stage remains murky, most analysts and intelligence agencies agree that Tehran stands on the precipice of nuclear capability. If Ayatollah Khamenei gives the word, Iran could finish assembling a nuclear device in months or even just weeks. Tehran has thus far held off on this final “nuclear dash,” preferring instead to hold the nuclear option as its final trump card in the perilous Persian bazaar of regional security politics. Even being on the nuclear threshold seems to have emboldened Iran’s regional aggression.

A regional war would be catastrophic. Oil prices would spike, billions of dollars of destruction would be visited on multiple countries, and thousands of innocent lives would be lost. Yet as Israel cancels flights, evacuates border towns, prepares bunkers, and stares down Iran’s threats, the Jewish state remains resolved to defend its people—and its very existence.

Is the Biden administration up to this challenge? One of our most perceptive geopolitical thinkers, Walter Russell Mead, summarizes the problem with the Biden White House’s approach thus far: “With only months left in office, the Biden administration remains more focused on blocking what it considers ‘excessive’ Israeli responses to Iranian aggression than on stopping Iran’s reckless behavior across the Middle East.”

Until the United States more firmly aligns with Israel in delivering a clear message of resolve and deterrence to Iran, the Ayatollah and his terrorist network will continue to menace Israel and America.