Israel’s remarkable series of strikes against Iranian military targets — including nuclear sites — early Friday morning elicited simultaneous feelings of awe and anxiety. In what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an initial wave of targeted attacks, his country’s military hit a range of sites in Tehran and Natanz, killing at least nine Iranian generals and nuclear scientists.
The awe that often follows Israeli military actions comes from the intelligence-driven nature of the strikes as well as their boldness. The anxiety shared by governments and populations alike around the globe is driven by the prospect these actions raise of a widening war that, unlike a precision strike, can’t be isolated.
Few seemed to notice last month when India and Pakistan set air-wings the numbers of which have not been seen since World War II against one another — but when nuclear-armed rivals go toe-to-toe it’s pretty serious stuff. A nuclear cloud from the Holy Land would drift our way even quicker than one from South Asia, and while we’re largely blameless in the latter instance, the former is much stickier.
Newton’s Third Law of Physics says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, but is that always true in the inherently violent world of international politics?
Ukraine’s “Operation Spider Web” strikes on Russia’s bomber fleet earlier this month was hailed as brilliant by the mainstream media and the legions of virtue-signalers in our midst who fly Ukrainian flags on New England porches, but for those of us who actually care about Ukraine in a real as opposed to fantasy sense, it was mildly terrifying. Students of Russian history understand how these things go: cute and plucky rarely wins.
More blood is likely to flow down Scythian rivers this summer.
Iran, being an inherently more complex mosaic, is tougher to predict as simply. The latest humiliation could, in the best case scenario, lead to a coup d’etat by the Revolutionary Guards, that would only raise the internal temperature to the point of implosion. But that may also just be wishful thinking — consider instead for a moment taking Tehran at their word: this is an act of war.
A massive Iranian drone attack on Israeli cities like Tel Aviv later on Friday suggests Tehran is serious about retaliation.
The mullahs will rally their base and play up any and all collateral damage into a frothy narrative of martyrdom that goes straight back to the Shi’a’s Imam Ali Hussein (no apparent relation to Barack Hussein Obama), who, in popular depictions, bears a striking resemblance to Jesus Christ. As we learned ourselves on 9/11, grievous national injury is the best possible casus belli.
Despite the global obsession with gaping at things on screens and, when feeling bold, commenting about them, this will not be a war we can sit out entirely, or perhaps at all. Yet Israel’s status as the 51st state is less solid today than it was in the days Saddam hurled SCUD missiles into Tel Aviv: anti-Semitism is on the rise in America, and New York City with the highest concentration of Jews anywhere in America may even elect an anti-Semite as its mayor in several months.
That is why President Donald Trump’s efforts today to play Howard Cosell about the whole thing won’t wash.
Israel’s latest move is merely an extension of President Trump’s own bold dispatch of former IRGC chief Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2019. In for an inch, in for a mile.
If ever there were a moment for a dealmaker cum peacemaker, it is now.
Against the backdrop of this heightening global drama, the temperature’s also rising at home. With Los Angeles in flames and U.S. senators hurling themselves into press conferences, we have a demoralized opposition priming for a fight.
While the architects of the No Kings campaign are clearly less clever than those of faraway military escapades, they nonetheless believe they’ll benefit from turning up the thermostat — even without a strategic plan. After all, a series dumpster fires that ended in the crescendo of a health pandemic helped bring the first Trump administration to its knees.
The key now is not taking the bait, as the Democrats have at home proven all too willing to do up until this point. Their best strategy at the moment is to set traps in returns and see which ones snap.
On three fronts now — two abroad and one at home — events this summer show every possibility of spilling out of control. Putting America First is now about forestalling carnage abroad while securing wins in the homeland. It is a time to be nimble, and play it super cool.
