When Peace Breaks Out

The details of the agreement have not yet been published, but it is already possible to know that the agreement with Iran is bad for Israel because of a chornic cultural asymmetry. There are gaps that place Western societies at a disadvantage in this clash of civilizations and around the negotiating table. One example is the importance Western societies attribute to the written word, to clear objectives, and to agreements. 

The Americans were captive in their own mindset that asserted that  in order to end this war, an agreement was needed that would achieve the war aims as defined in advance. Since the regime in Iran is Islamist-fundamentalist, there was no chance that Iran would be party to an agreement that fulfills Western fantasies such as removing enriched uranium from its territory. It is therefore clear that if there were to be an agreement, it would be a bad one, and even that agreement will not be treated by Iran with the same degree of “Western commitment.”

The manner in which the war ends will create significant challenges for Israel, among them: Israel’s conduct vis-à-vis the United States, Israel’s standing in the world and especially in American public opinion, its room to maneuver in Lebanon, and damage to the momentum of the Abraham Accords - and this, unfortunately, is only a partial list. Yet one issue stands above all the rest: the emergence of a new fixed mindset among the Americans, the Iranians, and the peoples of the region: that there is no real military option against Iran. The permeation of this understanding is what lay at the heart of the Iranian provocation against the United States in the form of the downing of the helicopter this week, and in the Iranian fire on Israel earlier this week. The response, as the Iranians knew, would be tactical at most. This conception will accompany Israel for decades to come.

Did Trump have another option at this stage of the war? We believe he did, had he been able to free himself from several Western fixations and patterns of thought, and to try to think in terms of shaping a non-agreement-based reality. Ultimately, although he presented himself as a disruptor, Trump remains captive to the conceptual frameworks, values, and norms of Western societies, which place them at a disadvantage in the current clash of civilizations.

First, the very elements that made liberal democracies highly successful systems in times of routine ,and we write in the past tense in light of the crisis they are all now experiencing, a subject for another post, are precisely the elements that make long wars so difficult for them: open societies and a free press, periodic elections, and term limits. The Iranians understood this. Armed with a long-range conception of time, and with the midterm elections approaching, oil prices rising, and the World Cup taking place in the United States, it was clear to them that the Americans would only want to end the war.

The United States, and Israel as well, built a powerful military that rests on technology and innovation, making it the strongest military in the world and one with no real competitor — but in short wars. In long wars, it becomes clear that Trump’s “big and beautiful” weapons have diminishing marginal returns when faced with cheap, available weapons in large quantities (Did someone say China?). We wrote in the previous post that had this war been stopped after a strong opening strike, the picture would have looked entirely different.

Back to Reality

The agreement-based reality is likely to create for Israel a corridor of difficult decisions, and it will be constantly challenged by the Axis of Resistance. In a few days, a Hezbollah rocket will once again cross the border (surprise, surprise), Israeli ships will not be allowed to pass through Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz, and Israel will discover that it is alone. Israel’s response then will be shaped along a spectrum between its relations with the American administration, the fear of dragging the region back into war, and the state’s basic obligation to provide security for its citizens.

The war with Iran brings to a head the basic dilemma of Israeli national security, which we laid out in our previous post: on the one hand, the lesson of October 7 is not to rely on early warning, deterrence, and the construction of a defensive wall that allows our enemies to build up their power; on the other hand, Israel is discovering once again that there are limits to the use of force, and that a proactive strategy of constant military friction and shaping regional reality by force condemns it to a prolonged war of attrition, increases its international isolation, and complicates its relations with Washington. Israel’s challenge will be to find the right balance between the two.