#WTH: Why protect Iran?

Elliott Abrams joins the pod

Elliott Abrams has always been a voice of clarity in Washington. This week, we ask him … well, a lot. But the three questions we really want an answer to are:

1. Why is the White House fronting for Iran?

2. How the hell did this attack happen?

3. What should we do next?

Some of our good friends are going to look at that question #1 and sign off. “Fronting for Iran”?? Surely, a bridge too far. Well, here’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan speaking right after the President:

Now, as to the question of whether Iran knew about this attack in advance or helped plan or direct this attack, we do not — as of the moment I’m standing here at the podium — have confirmation of that.

Dude. Hamas said Iran helped. Farsi speakers were heard among the Hamas terrorists. The Wall Street Journal reported Iran had a hand in the attack. What parsing is required to claim we don’t know whether Iran had a hand in it? That we didn’t see the Supreme Leader give the order?

Then there’s that $6 billion the Biden administration forked over to Iran in the weeks before the attack. Maybe Sullivan is straining to exculpate Iran because he’s embarrassed about his team subsidizing Iran’s terrorism. Too harsh? What exactly do people think Iran does with its money?

How did this attack happen? With one of the world’s most serious intel screw-ups in history, that’s how. Elliott tells us that he also believes Hamas worked hard to make Israel believe it was focused on the West Bank. That’s true, but it’s the job of Israel’s multiple intelligence services to see through that. While there is no bottom line right now, there should be little doubt that Israel’s reliance on technical means, its robust fence, and a history of tactical exchanges lulled Jerusalem into complacency. We also need to know how it took three hours for security forces to get to the rave where Hamas killers first arrived. And so much more.

What next? First, the worm will turn. All those blue and white stars of David around the world will fade out and the reality of an all-out war on Hamas will become clear. A lot of people will die. Chin stroking antisemites and Israel haters will mourn that Israel has lost its moral authority and is committing war crimes. And the answer is, that’s right, war is hell. The worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust must result in the annihilation of the perpetrator. We knew this in World War II. That’s the way it will be.

What should America do? End all secret dialogue. End the Biden concessions to Iran. Reimpose all sanctions. Impose new sanctions. Cut off at the knees all of Iran’s oil customers in China and elsewhere. End Iran’s ability to move on the world stage — no more planes, no more trips, no more nothing. Inform Iran that the next American death will be met with retaliation. And being able to conceive of supporting an Iranian opposition that can be supported with serious aid from the United States with a view to ending this regime.

HIGHLIGHTS

So, with or without Iran?

EA: It is inconceivable to me that they could have done an attack like this without lots of help from Iran, whether there were IRGC people actually participating remains to be seen. It strikes me as perfectly plausible, but when you see things like Hamas jamming signals from the small Israeli military base there on the border so that they couldn't call for help, this is Iran.

What should we do?

EA: We're in a situation where Iran's been killing Americans for about five decades with impunity. They've just killed 11 more Americans. This administration should wake up and realize that its policy toward Iran, which was restoring the JCPOA or replacing it with a new nuclear deal, letting them export much more oil to China so that their reserves, financial reserves have grown and grown.

This policy should be dumped, jettisoned, reversed. And a policy, if I can borrow a term from the Trump administration of maximum pressure, should be imposed to try to squeeze Iran as much as we can diplomatically and economically. Secondly, to help the people of Iran who loathe this regime. And thirdly, the hotter question, since they've just killed 11 Americans and the number may rise, is there a military option here? Should the United States be punishing Iran for the killing of these Americans? I know that there are some members of Congress who take that view, and I think you'll be hearing it. I think this administration won't consider it, but part of the reversal of our policy, I think should be an end to the impunity with which Iran, directly and indirectly through proxies, murders Americans.

Is there a non-military option to deal with Iran?

EA: You can try of course to limit the harm that Iran does. We've tried in Lebanon, we failed completely, and Iran and Hezbollah are in more control of Lebanon than they have ever been. We and the Israelis have tried it with respect to Hamas, and we saw the failure on Saturday. We've tried it with the Iranian nuclear program, particularly under President Obama, and they creep closer and closer, and sometimes they gallop closer and closer to having a usable nuclear weapon. People debate exactly how far away they are from having the warhead and having the weapon. It's all failed.

And the answer is the end of this regime

How has Team Biden been encouraging Iran?

EA: First I remind you that when Trump left office, their reachable, usable financial reserves were $4 billion. And I looked, actually... I tried to discover this morning what they are now. They've risen by a factor of 10. They're about $40 billion. It may be higher than that. That's real money. Add to that, the roughly 10 billion, maybe nine billion that they're getting out of the hostage ransom.

That's first, squeeze them financially. There are many ways to squeeze them. For example, what if we say to airlines, if you serve Tehran, you can't land in the United States. That means you Air France. That means you Lufthansa. That means all of you. It's the same thing we did with banks, a real full pressure economic campaign. You could start with what Trump did and then you can build on it.

We need to make it clear to them that the notion that they're immune from punishment if they simply use a proxy to kill Americans is wrong. It's over. You take American lives, you pay a price. And look, we're not talking about World War III here. We're not talking about a 100 000 Marines landing and Tehran. There are many, many, many Iranian targets. Soleimani was one if you talk about individuals, but there are also targets along the shore of the Persian Gulf. You wouldn't have to do this, I would argue more than once or twice before the Iranians realized, okay, American policy has really changed. They're not crazy enough to think they're going to win a conflict with the United States, so it will change their behavior. All of this will change the resources available to them and their sense of impunity because basically they get away with it. They keep getting away with it.

How did this happen?

EA: It's the question that of course Israelis are asking, and unquestionably they will have a commission of inquiry that will come up with more answers in roughly nine months. But I give you two answers. The first is this, everybody's using the word now it's the right word, conception in question. That is, why didn't we connect the dots on 9/11? Why didn't the Israelis see what was coming in 1973? They thought, "Well, look at 1967, we smashed the Arabs." Surely it's impossible that just these few years later in '73 Arab states would attack

That is, I think, the place to start that for the Israelis, they believed, so did I, this is not Bibi Netanyahu, this is the whole Israeli security structure and a lot of Americans, they had figured out a modus vivendi with Hamas.

Hamas wanted murder, violence, and terror in the West Bank, and they were increasing it this year. But in Gaza, where they govern, they want calm, they want stability. They have to worry about getting kids to school and jobs and the economy. That was very, very, very widely believed. And it's clear now, I think already, that a large part of that was deliberate on the part of Hamas. That is, it wasn't an accident that we came to this conclusion. They worked at it. And here again, I come back to Iran and its role in helping them do this

How could Israel have such a massive intel failure?

EA: Why didn't people do what we would call a red team? Why didn't they sit back and say, what if? It's interesting also that these tactics, and now I come back to Iran again, these tactics have been talked about by Hezbollah. Hezbollah has threatened, "We're going to come across the border. We're going to go into kibbutzim. We're going to kill people and capture other people." Hezbollah has said that in public. We see here again, the network, Hezbollah, Hamas, both proxies of Iran. Why didn't the IDF respond more quickly? That's one I really have no answer to at all. Why was it not possible to get people to those bordered communities faster?

Is there something in the Netanyahu government that could have been behind the fail?

EA: I have heard Israelis who are in the political opposition to Bibi Netanyahu who have been protesting in the past year say it's this right-wing coalition, it's the right-wing members like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich who have no military experience; I think that's wrong and unfair. Because these deeper problems like trusting the border fence or not being able to get IDF people down there, this is not the product of a nine-month-old government. These are deeper problems that go back years. Now, Bibi's still prime minister, but the inquiry is going to have to look at the last three or four Mossad directors and the last three or four Shin Bet directors and the last three or four commanders of the IDF and particularly of the southern front for the IDF, which has Gaza. And it should make us think, it's going to make the Israelis think about Hezbollah coming in from the north, it should make us think about our own misconceptions, whether it comes to an Iranian nuclear weapon or it comes to Taiwan or it comes to other things the Russians or Chinese may do because we all have deep conceptions that we may or may not realize are not truths, they're just views of reality.

How could Hamas build an army of terrorists this large?

EA: The population of Gaza is 2 million. So the notion, I think that they could find 1,000 guys and train them up in Gaza or outside of Gaza because I think there's probably some training in Lebanon under Hezbollah and or Iran. But the notion that, and it's more than 1,000, it's probably more like 2,500, I think is not so shocking out of that large population. The sophistication is surprising. And I guess I'd also say the barbaric nature of the attack is shocking. It's not something we saw, for example, from most of the past attacks because most of Israel's wars have been with states, with armies. In the last big war, the '73 war, it was army against army. This is reminiscent of ISIS. This is really astonishing barbarity, which I think helps explain why we saw in the news already that Israel has hit several mosques. Now, why is that? It's well known that Hamas is using those mosques and schools as headquarters, as warehouses, as depots, as arms, storage warehouses, and Israel in previous rounds has not hit them. It's hitting them this time because it has understood now that this has to be no holds barred because they're dealing with, and I know people hate this word and I'll be criticized for it, savages.

What are the next steps on Gaza?

EA: First of all, it can't just be from the air. I mean that's clear. I think Israel's going to do a couple of things. First, I think probably, this has been talked about in the Israeli press, I think they'll try to establish a buffer zone on the Gaza side of the border. A no man's land. There hasn't been one. But say, I don't know, choose a number, I've heard 1,000 feet, quarter of a mile, half a mile, where they will now destroy everything that's there. And by the way, Egypt did this. Egypt at one point said, we want a buffer zone. And people said, "Well, you can't do that because there are Gazans who live along the border. There are apartment houses and all." And the Egyptians simply bulldozed everything. I mean, they told people to get out and then they bulldozed it. That's what the Israelis have to do, and they have to say, "This area," quarter mile, whatever it is, "Is a no man's land and anyone who enters it will be killed."

They are going to have to go into the denser parts, at least in raids, in order to try to get at all the depots, warehouses, tunnels, arm storage, laboratories, headquarters offices and destroy them. Much of that can be done from the air. It raises a very interesting question that I would raise now, which is suppose success, suppose they actually can do that, who governs Gaza? Because the Israelis are not going to do that. They do not want to have 100,000 troops in Gaza permanently.

So who will govern Gaza if Hamas is gone?

EA: In 2005 when they pulled out, the answer was obvious, it was the Palestinian Authority. And it wasn't a crazy answer because remember, Arafat was dead a year, the PA at that point, they had had an election in 2005. President Abbas had won, had he had won handily a four-year term that he's still in. But the notion that the PA could govern was not crazy, and they did for two years and then in 2007, Hamas kicked them out.

But the Palestinians need a government, no?

EA: First of all, we're assuming here that Israel is going to do enormous, enormous damage to Hamas. I think that's right. Which will give a sort of period in the West Bank for the PA to regenerate

What did Bush do after 9/11? He saw, okay, Arafat's a terrorist. We don't hate Palestinians, but Arafat's a terrorist. So what Bush did was to say there can't be a Palestinian state if it's going to be a terrorist state. Palestinians need new leadership. His phrase, new leadership, not compromised by terror and corruption. And what did we do? We pressured and pressured them to make Salam Fayyad first finance minister and then prime minister, and they actually had decent government for several years until Abbas kicked Fayyad out. That's a project. That's a project that we, the United States, could try to do with Arab help, with the help of the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Jordanians. A project to try to bring some kind of decent government to the West Bank. Hard? Yes. Impossible, inconceivable? There are no honest people? No, it's not inconceivable, but it was given up after 2005 or '06 and it's something that people are think about because Abbas again, he's 88, he's going to go in the next few years. What will follow him? What are we doing about it? I think the answer is nothing.

Will Hezbollah join the fight?

EA: My estimate right now is that Iran won't do it because it doesn't want Hezbollah eliminated. I can make the alternative argument that it thinks that at the end of that two-front war, Israel would have faced so much damage and destruction that it will be much weaker and won't be able to attack, even the Iranian nuclear program.

I think they won't do it. But I think that the President and Blinken, Sullivan should be thinking, what do we do if it is a two front war? I do not think that Israel will be asking for American troops. They never have. As in the '73 war, the demands in terms of the resupply will be much, much greater. And I think we should be planning right now how we would meet them.

The President moved that carrier task force closer to Israel and eastern Mediterranean. It's a nice reminder of American power, but what does he plan to do with it? I don't know. And I am reasonably confident he doesn't know.

Could this be the start of a 1930s style collapse of the global order?

EA: I don't think we're on the cusp of another great world war. But I do think that we are going to see what we saw in the '30s when Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini felt unrestricted, and felt they could just go across borders and conquer whatever they wanted to conquer.

So what do we do about it? We strengthen ourselves and our allies and our alliances. And we're doing some of that in Asia with a variety of allies there. But we're not attending to one key part of it. Or let me say, two key parts of it.

One of them is defending the homeland. The homeland is not defended if the southern border is open and it needs to be closed. And we need to spend a lot more money on defense. That's just a simple fact. We need to spend a lot more money on defense. You can talk about the Chinese navy. You can talk about the size of the forces arrayed against us. You can talk about the percentage of GDP we're spending on defense as opposed to the Cold War. But when you look at the threats we face and our allies face, we need a stronger America. And that means a larger military establishment.

Full transcript here.

SHOWNOTES

Elliott Abrams piece: The Hamas Attack Changes Everything (National Review, October 7 2023)

WSJ: Threat to Israel From Hezbollah and Iran Raises Risk of Wider Conflict

Renewed clashes at the border between Israel and Lebanon add to fears of a multi-front battle.

U.S. military presence near Israel is a blunt message to Iran and Hezbollah, officials say 

Former Biden ambassador to Israel: 'The goal of Hamas is to create a regional war against the state of Israel'

CTP x ISW special edition update, October 9 2023

Joint Statement from Germany, France, Italy, UK, and US (October 9 2023)

Four Steps for the US to Help Israel (WSJ, October 9 2023)

Hamas Says Attacks on Israel Were Backed by Iran (Wall Street Journal, October 9 2023)

Iran’s UN mission says Tehran not involved in Hamas attacks (Reuters, October 8 2023)

Iran prisoner swap for $6 billion in spotlight after Hamas attacks Israel (Reuters, October 9 2023)

Blinken rejects claim that $6 billion in Iranian assets helps Hamas (Washington Post, October 9 2023)

McCarthy calls on Biden to refreeze $6B in Iranian funds (The Hill, October 4 2023)

AP News: “Biden administration officials did not address whether Iran, in anticipation of using the money – now held in Qatari banks – for food, medicine, medical supplies and agricultural products, may have diverted other funds to Hamas or other proxies.”

Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant commentary from Jewish Insider Updates October 9 2023:

Israel Was Prepared for a Different War (WSJ, October 9 2023)

What Is Iran’s Role in the Hamas Attack on Israel? (Foreign Policy, October 8 2023)

WTH: The Necessary Objective (WTH Substack, October 9 2023)

It Is Time to Talk Seriously About Iran (AEIdeas, October 8 2023)