The road to Gaza runs through Tehran

The first thing that must be said about the Hamas attack on Israel is to affirm the justice of Israel’s cause and the imperative of supporting her during this hour of grave peril. Hamas has made its goals clear: It seeks the destruction of Israel and the death of as many Jews as possible. The United States must stand with Israel in doing everything necessary to protect itself and punish the Gaza gangsters that have launched this murderous assault.

The second thing to be said about the new Gaza War is that it is about much more than Gaza.

Since the dawn of the 21st century, the nation-states of the Middle East have been undergoing a realignment that is favorable to Israel and the United States. Beginning with the demise of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in 2003, the Sunni Arab states that had previously been hostile to Israel—including Iraq, Morocco, Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and most recently Saudi Arabia—have instead been setting aside their enmity toward Jerusalem in favor of more neutral or even friendly postures. In this respect, these Sunni Arab nations have been following the precedent set earlier by Egypt and Jordan when they established peace treaties with Israel in 1978 and 1994, respectively.

More recently, the Abraham Accords, in which a series of Sunni states extended diplomatic recognition to Israel, has accelerated this realignment. It is a trend that the United States has actively encouraged and often brokered as part of America’s broader interests in supporting Israel’s security, stabilizing the Middle East, marginalizing violent jihadist groups and regimes such as Iran, and containing Russia and China’s growing regional influence.

Hamas now seeks to arrest the trend. The terrorists of Hamas fear being further isolated in the region as one of the last outposts of Sunni Arab hostility to Israel.

In this, Hamas has potent partners in Syria and especially Iran, the only remaining Middle East nation-states that remain avowed enemies of Israel. Syria is ruled by the Assad tyranny of Alawites (a Shia derivative), and Iran is a militant Shia regime, but both Damascus and Tehran have set aside their Shia sectarianism to sponsor Hamas out of a shared enmity with Israel and the Jewish people worldwide. Hamas depends on Iran in particular for money, weapons, and intelligence support, and almost certainly did not launch its war without a green light from Ayatollah Khameini. Some new reports indicate that Iran helped plan the attacks, which in their air, land, and sea dimensions displayed a combined arms sophistication that had previously been beyond Hamas’s capacity.

These regional dynamics reveal the perverse shrewdness of the timing of Hamas’ assault. Tehran has been competing with Riyadh for decades over regional influence, and to that end, Iran and Hamas share a goal of blocking what had been the impending Saudi recognition of Israel. Hamas’ war will freeze that Saudi-Israeli partnership, at least for now. Hamas and Iran appear to be feeling the confidence that comes from being flush with the promise of $6 billion in unfrozen assets granted by the Biden administration to Tehran in exchange for the release of five American prisoners. It was a bad deal cut by the Biden White House, and even worse was its timing.

Hamas’ attack also takes advantage of internal divisions in both Israel and the United States. Israel, for months, has been fractured and convulsed by protests over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial judicial reforms, which have further eroded his domestic support. The United States is also divided, particularly as the House of Representatives is bereft of a speaker and unable to function due to the petulant fratricide by a rump cabal of Republican malcontents. This paralysis will render it difficult for Congress to pass any emergency aid legislation for Israel.

The most significant reason for the timing of Hamas’ assault is, of course, the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, when in 1973, Egypt and Syria staged a surprise attack that nearly destroyed Israel. Other parallels to 1973 have been less noted. Then as now, the United States faced political dysfunction as President Richard Nixon’s distraction by the Watergate investigation hindered the White House’s ability to come to Israel’s aid. Then as now, the United States was demoralized over the recent withdrawal in defeat from our nation’s longest war, Vietnam in 1973 and Afghanistan in 2021. Then as now, the Kremlin sought to take advantage of a Middle Eastern war by bolstering Israel’s enemies, such as Egypt and Syria then and now Iran.

Yet, bleak as it was at first, the story in 1973 ultimately turned favorable for Israel and the United States. As New York Times columnist Bret Stephens points out, American support enabled Israel to prevail, and over the next several years led to the erosion of Soviet influence in the region and Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt.

The most urgent task now is to ensure Israel’s survival. Then, creative and determined statecraft might even lead to a better regional order for the United States, Israel, and the troubled Middle East. But first, Israel must win this struggle.