Winning This Regional War Is the First Step to Creating Regional Peace

(Los Angeles Times) Yossi Klein Halevi - Following the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, the strategic goal of Israel's counteroffensive was to restore its shattered deterrence. Israelis across the political spectrum agreed that the first step was destroying Hamas's ability to govern, not allowing the regime responsible for Oct. 7 to remain on Israel's border. Destroying the Hamas regime meant denying it immunity. Terrorists would not be allowed to massacre Israeli civilians, cross back into Gaza and hide behind Palestinian civilians. Destroying Hamas's capacity to govern required pursuing terrorists wherever they operated, including inside hospitals and mosques. It meant entering Hamas's vast network of tunnels. But the war that began in Gaza was never about Gaza alone. Defeating Hamas was only the first stage of a regional conflict between Israel and the Iranian-led axis of radical Islamism. Israel's stunning success against Hizbullah has gone a long way to restoring our military credibility. Today, Iran sits at the nuclear threshold. No country, including the U.S., is likely to use force to prevent the Iranian regime from developing a nuclear bomb - except Israel. The Jewish state, founded on the promise of providing a safe refuge for the Jewish people, cannot allow the ayatollahs to attain the means to fulfill Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei's prophesy of the destruction of Israel. Israel's determination to prevent a nuclear Iran is precisely what has attracted Sunni Muslim states to seek normalization with the Jewish state. Arab leaders are terrified not of Israel but of an imperial Iran, which seeks hegemony over the region. The worst-kept secret in the Middle East is that Arab leaders are quietly hoping for an Israeli victory over Hamas and Hizbullah and, most of all, Iran. Winning this regional war is the first step to creating a regional peace. The writer is a senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.


2024-10-10 00:00:00

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