Iran’s strike on Israel yesterday is, simultaneously, a moment for alarm and calm. Alarm because, by unleashing more than 300 drones, cruise and ballistic missiles in response to Israel’s attack on its Damascus consulate at the start of the month, Iran is basically saying: we can do this every time Israel or its allies cross a line. Calm because not only did Israel repel the attack, it did so thanks to collaboration from its Western allies and friendly Arab states, with both Saudi Arabia and Jordan opening their skies to US combat aircraft.
Israel has the right to defend itself, and will doubtless respond militarily. But its allies have a right also to urge restraint and de-escalation. This is because what Iran wants is for Israel to ‘die of your rage’. These were the exact words Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used in a speech made four days before the 7 October atrocity. They were unfortunately prophetic.
De-escalation is not appeasement: it is smart geopolitics
In the past six months the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sacrificed huge amounts of diplomatic goodwill through its conduct of the Gaza war. The reckless comments of its ministers caused the International Court of Justice to rule there is a risk of genocide in Israel’s Gaza operation. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s refusal to formulate any clear ‘day after’ plan for the Palestinians has triggered a major humanitarian crisis.
With goodwill replenished, Israel should not squander it lightly. By acting swiftly and firmly to warn Iran in advance to desist, and by scrambling air, maritime and space assets to repel the strike, Joe Biden has bought diplomatic space for de-escalation.
Those urging Israel and the wider West to hit Iran with a salutary counter-strike should consider the negative consequences. Iran, like its ally Russia, no longer acts like a rational calculator in the game of deterrence. Both understand that their long-term objectives are best advanced through chaos. The more states that fail, the more tit-for-tat force replaces the language of diplomacy, the weaker the rules-based order becomes.
There is a valid critique of Biden’s response – both to Russia and Iran – that says he’s done too little, too late, and relied too heavily on diplomacy rather than force. But since war is simply politics by other means, armed force has to have a clear political objective. No level of combat power available to the West, short of the unthinkable resort to nuclear weapons, would bring about the political objective of removing the Ayatollahs from power. That will be done by the Iranian people, many of whom evidently had no enthusiasm for last night’s attack.
After Biden laid down the law to Netanyahu on 4 April over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza it had begun to look like the start of a de-escalation phase. Hezbollah, in Lebanon, does not look like it wants all-out war. And with Iranian generals now claiming their operation is ‘concluded’ and won’t be repeated, it’s clear Iran believes it has done enough signalling.
Instead of a kneejerk escalation, what the West needs is a strategy. That strategy must begin from the acceptance that Russia and Iran are part of the same problem: aggressive, totalitarian states stepping into the breach created by America’s retreat into isolationism and democratic decay.
Deterring Iran has to start by deterring Russia. If the West wants to send combat aircraft anywhere in response to what just happened, it should send them into the skies over Ukraine, alongside the delivery of multiple Patriot missile batteries, declaring a defensive no-fly zone to end Putin’s attacks on civilians and civil infrastructure.
Last night’s operations show that a mixture of ground-based air defence and modern combat aircraft could neutralise most of what’s in Putin’s arsenal. And since Iran is containable, while Russia’s offensive against Ukraine in full throttle, the West’s priority has to be the defence of Ukraine. From now on, the point of Western action in defence of the rules-based international order should be to create jeopardy for the aggressor, not to create the kind of chaos in which the aggressor’s goals are achieved. For this we have the right to demand smart allies, not reckless ones.
Iran and Russia, by perfecting the art of lobbing cheap drones into expensive air defence systems, are waging asymmetric economic warfare. We didn’t choose this, but we can’t ignore it, and it’s going to cost money to rearm to deal with it. De-escalation is not appeasement: it is smart geopolitics. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer’s decisions to respond to last night’s events with the same measured call for calm was the right thing to do. As was Biden’s signal that he will not support a major Israeli counter-strike. It’s time the West got wise to how deal with this problem once and for all.
Israel now has a chance to de-escalate
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14.04.2024
Iran’s strike on Israel yesterday is, simultaneously, a moment for alarm and calm. Alarm because, by unleashing more than 300 drones, cruise and ballistic missiles in response to Israel’s attack on its Damascus consulate at the start of the month, Iran is basically saying: we can do this every time Israel or its allies cross a line. Calm because not only did Israel repel the attack, it did so thanks to collaboration from its Western allies and friendly Arab states, with both Saudi Arabia and Jordan opening their skies to US combat aircraft.
Israel has the right to defend itself, and will doubtless respond militarily. But its allies have a right also to urge restraint and de-escalation. This is because what Iran wants is for Israel to ‘die of your rage’. These were the exact words Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used in a speech made four days before the 7 October atrocity. They were unfortunately prophetic.
De-escalation is not appeasement: it is smart geopolitics
In the past six months the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sacrificed huge amounts of diplomatic goodwill through its conduct of the Gaza war. The reckless comments of its ministers caused the International Court of Justice to........
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