Israels verschwendeter Sieg: Gewinne gegen den Iran werden nicht in regionalen Frieden führen
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-squandered-victory
Israels verschwendeter Sieg: Gewinne gegen den Iran werden nicht in regionalen Frieden führen
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-squandered-victory
6 Kommentare
[SS from essay by Dalia Dassa Kaye, Senior Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and the author of the forthcoming book Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy.]
During the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel achieved stunning military success against what seemed to be formidable adversaries. Yet Israel didn’t translate its military success into active diplomacy; if it had, the region and Israel’s position in it might look very different today. Israel may not have thought it had a choice to make back then: it didn’t believe it had viable Arab partners for peace, and its military dominance was far from assured, as demonstrated just six years later when Egypt launched a surprise attack and started the Yom Kippur War.
The situation is different today. After its 12-day war with Iran in June, [Israel](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/regions/israel) is in a far superior military and regional position than it was in 1967. It has neutered its most serious regional threats, and it has been decades since an Arab state fought a war with Israel. It has steadily degraded its nonstate adversaries, scoring surprising military and intelligence wins against Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer and continuing its decapitation of Hamas’s leadership in Gaza. Its attack against Iran achieved undeniable military success in damaging Iran’s nuclear and missile facilities, and it demonstrated deep intelligence penetration through its brazen killing of Iran’s top military leadership and nuclear scientists. U.S. President Donald Trump’s subsequent decision to join the attack boosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu domestically.
If Israel was so commited to eliminate Iran‘s threat, why didn’t it go further and killed Khamenei? It had already killed high ranking officials, getting rid of the head honcho would have been possible.
If anything, the recent strikes revealed Iran to be military utterly incompetent. I can see them seeking revenge down the line for that alone.
My read on this is that the author is still holding onto flawed Obama era progressive ideas about the Middle East and a refusal to accept that they were wrong.
All the evidence suggests that Saudi Arabia and Israel *were* close to a normalization deal without serious concessions to the Palestinians before October 7–that’s arguably why it happened when it did. Similarly, it’s generally understood that Arab leaders have been ecstatic to see Iran and its proxies weakened—heck, MBS has warned that they would have to get nukes themselves if Iran were to finally acquire them, if that doesn’t suggest he viewed Iran as the major threat I don’t know what does.
The Palestinian plight might be at the hearts of the Arab world, but in all other ways the Arab leaders have moved on and distanced themselves.
Similarly, the comparison to 1967 is deeply flawed. Yes, the 1967 war led to a feeling of invincibility among Israelis and led to another war, but at the end of the day it improved their position and it just wasn’t the right time for diplomacy because the Arab states doubled down and dug their feet in.
The end game isn’t to ‘mow the grass’, it’s to broaden the alliance with the Arab states, dismantle Iran’s proxies, and cripple Irans ability to support them in the future. It is not “destabilizing” to weaken terrorist networks and prevent them from carrying out atrocities like in Syria, quite the opposite.
The real long game here is persuading the Palestinians that they cannot win or increase their leverage through violent resistance, and that’s going to require the whole region to move on without them until they come to the table. And when they do, the Israelis will be content freezing the situation on the ground wherever it is and respecting Palestinian autonomy in their enclaves.
Barely month and a half passed, and somehow people are already jumping to conclusions about regional peace, which people have been trying to achieve for almost a century.
Iran is in ruins and dealing with a ton of problems, besides being basically wrecked by Israel, so thinking they’re suddenly going to launch some sophisticated retaliation strikes seems kind of delusional.
Regional peace (especially in the Middle East which is probably the hardest place on Earth for it), takes time.
Once the war in Gaza will come to an end, a lot of countries will likely line up to join the Abraham Accords.
The academic position always seems to be that Israel needs/refuses to make „tough concessions“ that if made would increase stability or yield peace.
I would like to see this fleshed out into a relationship life scenario.
Im Israeli. I disagree with the aid policy and I think more help to gazan civilians should be made.
But geopolitically… I don’t see what concessions Israel could make that do anything useful. If Israel had ended the war a year ago, or ends it now… Hamas returns to power in Gaza and soon restarts rocket fire.
PNA is even less likely to „do state building“ than Hamas.
> Gains Against Iran Won’t Translate Into Regional Peace
No s–t, Sherlock. They are mostly orthogonal things. The damage to Iran from Israel falls into two broad categories; defanging proxies, and setting back Iran’s nuclear ambitions. For the most part, those things are tangential to Israel establishing peaceful, normalized relations with neighboring countries – but it does dramatically reduce the chances of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. If Iran gets nukes, you can expect other ME nations to immediately start their own programs.