A Before-and-After Moment in the Middle East
A conversation with Graeme Wood about where Netanyahu could go from here
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Israel’s response to Iran’s attack this past weekend signals an “astonishing win,” my colleague Graeme Wood wrote yesterday. With help from several allies, Israel managed to fend off what could have been a mass-casualty event (though one 7-year-old girl sustained life-threatening injuries). But the attack was also “a gift to the hapless Benjamin Netanyahu,” Graeme argues. I called Graeme in Tel Aviv yesterday to talk about how the prime minister could use this moment as an opportunity to revitalize Gaza negotiations—and why he’s not likely to do so.
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A Realignment
Isabel Fattal: You wrote yesterday that Israel’s response to Iran’s attack signals an operational and strategic win. How so?
Graeme Wood: For the past two weeks, since it struck Iran’s consulate in Damascus, killing multiple officers and senior officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Israel has been on anxious footing waiting to figure out how Iran was going to attack. There was some doubt, I think, in ordinary people’s minds about how Israel would handle whatever Iran was going to do next. What Iran eventually decided to do was to send more than 300 drones and missiles toward Israel. And Israel not only survived that, but by dawn the next day, the country was up and running as if nothing had happened. The ability for Israel to weather the attack was beyond anyone’s expectations—both as a matter of technical ability and also as a kind of moral ability, to have life go on after what Iran promised was going to be a serious challenge.
Isabel: You write that this could be the moment for Netanyahu to tell his more militaristic right flank to stand down.
Graeme: The way that a lot of people naturally understand these types of attacks is as a matter of tit for tat. Of course there are many in Israel who think, We need to respond in kind. That is the view from Netanyahu’s right. But it is not the most productive way that the aftermath of this attack can be used.
Whenever something big like this happens, it’s almost impossible to put oneself into the mindset of 24 hours ago. But 24 hours ago, many of us would have said, Israel’s in a horrible muddle because it has waged an absolutely brutal war in Gaza. It has not succeeded in dislodging Hamas. It has not gotten its hostages back. There is a humanitarian catastrophe. And there is no negotiation that’s anywhere near happening that could redeem Israel from this pickle that it’s partially put itself in.
Now there is this kind of realignment of the security paradigm. Could a creative, thoughtful, competent government use that realignment to move forward from what seemed like an intractable position in Gaza? Yes. There are angles that a government could take so that tomorrow is not like yesterday. Part of that includes just acknowledging, where did this success come from? The success came in part because Israel, over the past several years, has created what turns out to be a pretty durable and effective alliance with the governments of Arab states in the region. We’re talking about Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Without those states, the prospects for having only one casualty in Israel from the Iranian attack would have been nil. That means that there’s gratitude to be doled out to those states, and there are compromises that can be made as part of that expression of gratitude.
Isabel: So you think that now there could be an opening for negotiation that didn’t exist before the attacks?
Graeme: Yes, exactly. The reason that opening didn’t exist previously is that Netanyahu has consistently tried to mollify those to his right who have maximalist views of the post-Gaza situation—maximalist views meaning that, at the end of the day, there’s not just no Hamas, but no Palestinian government or security force whatsoever in Gaza, and no Arab security force whatsoever. That’s not a reasonable hope for the future, and it has prevented Netanyahu and his government from considering any reasonable future at all.
Among the things that they could have considered are creative solutions that would have involved these Arab allies who have populations, as well as governments, who are not thrilled by what they’re seeing in Gaza. And in the past 24 hours, Israel’s need for those countries has been demonstrated. It’s a moment where a trusted, courageous leader could step in and perhaps create some kind of change in policy that would allow the Gaza war to, if not conclude, then come closer to its conclusion.
Isabel: What’s Netanyahu’s window to do something like this?
Graeme: If you see what’s being spoken about in Israel, it’s Netanyahu being pressured to retaliate. This is not an incomprehensible command. If there were 300 drones sent toward any country, the population of that country would say, We have to do something material to cause those who sent them to regret having done so. It’s unclear whether Netanyahu is going to take that bait, or do what a great politician has to do sometimes, which is to say to people, You’re not going to get what you want; you’re going to get what you need. And what we need as a country is something other than this. That’s what the situation really calls for, and it’s a call that would probably have to be answered in, I would say, the next week.
Isabel: What else should readers keep in mind as they’re following this story?
Graeme: One thing that I think will be a nagging question for a lot of people is, What did the Iranians want to happen? Even if they didn’t want massive death and destruction, what they did was an unambiguous act of aggression. But another possibility, which is reasonable to consider, is that they didn’t expect most of those drones and missiles to get through. They needed to retaliate, and as soon as they did so they said, Okay, we’re done here. Even before the missiles and drones would’ve reached their targets, they said that. So we have to consider the possibility that this was a half-hearted attack.
Isabel: This attack is also unprecedented in a few ways, isn’t it?
Graeme: They’re attacking from Iranian territory. And if you attack from Iranian territory, you invite retaliation on Iranian territory, which is a huge change from the status quo ante. This really is a before-and-after moment. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander said this publicly, which means it’s probably an official statement of doctrine now: From now on, if Israel attacks Iranian interests, figures, and citizens anywhere, we will retaliate from Iran. If that’s what they’re going to do, that’s a new disposition.
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Today’s News
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Dispatches
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Evening Read
The Man Who Died for the Liberal Arts
By David M. Shribman
Philip Alvan Shribman, a recent graduate of Dartmouth and just a month away from his 22nd birthday, was not worldly but understood that he had been thrust into a world conflict that was more than a contest of arms. At stake were the life, customs, and values that he knew. He was a quiet young man, taciturn in the old New England way, but he had much to say in this letter, written from the precipice of battle to a brother on the precipice of adulthood …
He acknowledged from the start that “this letter won’t do much good”—a letter that, in the eight decades since it was written, has been read by three generations of my family. In it, Phil Shribman set out the virtues and values of the liberal arts at a time when universities from coast to coast were transitioning into training grounds for America’s armed forces.
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Culture Break
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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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