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A damaged building near the border of Gaza and Israel on October 22, 2023, in the aftermath of the Hamas terror attack on October 7. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust. Since then, Iran and its proxies have ramped up their attacks against Israel. But the Biden administration continues to constrain Jerusalem’s response as part of a failed strategy of de-escalation with Tehran.
Michael Doran sat down with Zineb Riboua to evaluate Israel’s position in its existential fight against the Islamic Republic and explain why defeating Iran matters for the United States’ competition against a rising axis of aggressors. His key points are below.
Key Insights
1. America’s wavering support for Israel has eroded deterrence by constraining Jerusalem and empowering Tehran.
“Iran can attack anyone it wants. Israel cannot attack Iran. That is the basic Biden doctrine, the Obama doctrine. They define this conflict from day one as a Palestinian-Israeli conflict. . . . I actually believe it's an Iranian-American conflict. But the Biden administration refuses to see that. . . . By restricting the Israelis in this way, they have actually enhanced the advantages that Iran has in the conflict. And its advantages are these disruptive military capabilities that we’re talking about, the drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles. . . . As a result of this . . . Israeli deterrence has been eroded and diminished by its great supporter, the United States.”
2. As the US seeks to prevent Israel from defending itself, the Israelis have worked to reestablish escalation dominance.
“The Biden administration’s policy, if we were to turn this into legalese, is as if they’re saying to the Israelis, there’s no such thing as attempted murder. There’s no such thing as assault with a deadly weapon. . . . If you get murdered, then you can come to me, and we’ll talk and we'll talk about doing something about the guy who’s trying to murder you. . . . The Israelis want to send this message to the entire world that, no, this is not acceptable. So what they have to do is they have to establish deterrence. They have to establish escalation dominance. And that’s what they’ve been doing over the last month.”
3. In America’s great power competition with the Russia-China-Iran axis, Israel is the solution to America’s challenges in the Middle East.
“Israel is the answer to our problem in the Middle East, not the problem. So we’re living through an era right now when the American public does not support large-scale military missions abroad, and especially in the Middle East. . . . So the antisemites and the anti-Zionists—who are not always the same thing, often they are—they are saying that Israel is dragging us into a needless war. That view misrepresents the real threat in the region, which is Iran backed by Russia and China. They want to take over the whole Middle East and throw the United States out. The answer to that, if we want to block Iran without having to deploy large numbers of American troops, the answer is to support Israel. . . . We have to keep Russia, China, and Iran from dominating the Middle East, because they’ll have a stranglehold on the oil supplies to our allies in Europe, but also to our allies in East Asia.”
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Go Deeper
Mike Gallagher explained on Fox News that, rather than trying to resuscitate the corpse of the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, the US needs to restore deterrence by taking away the things that Tehran finds valuable.
America becomes weaker when its allies cannot rely on Washington’s promises, explained Nikki Haley. On Fox News, she argued that the US needs to support Israel as Jerusalem seeks to neutralize threats to the Jewish state and US-led international order alike.
Can Kasapoğlu explains the military strategy behind Iran’s October 1 strike against Israel and analyzes its tactical and strategic implications—including the consequences if Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon.
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