"Take the Win"

Now that it might have discovered that its one-word deterrence has yet again failed, the Biden foreign policy team has lit on a new slogan, this time three words-- “Take the win.” At least they are sticking with monosyllabic words. 

You have to wonder how it could happen that these seasoned foreign policy hands to confuse infantile inanities with policy.

The Biden team was addressing itself to the Israeli war cabinet, working now on how best to respond to the Iranian drone and missile attack of last weekend. It was telling them to do nothing in response to the Iranian attack. It was counseling restraint. 

In reality, Israel had succeeded in shooting down the incoming missiles, with some help from its friends, but that does not constitute a victory. 

“Take the win” reminds one of the Vietnam War, when some anti-warriors recommended that we declare victory and go home. Strangely, they seemed incapable of differentiating between saying you win and actually winning.

For Israel, and perhaps even for us, the question is deterrence. To deter an adversary, you have to make them pay a price for their first attack and you have to show them that the price is very high indeed.

Surely, you do not want to assert that your defenses will always succeed.

Consider this. The Iranians attacked Israel in order to save face. They had seen their Syrian consulate incinerated and had lost some of their most important commanding officers. 

They ignored the simple fact that the Israeli attack on Syria officers was retaliation for October 7. Unfortunately, it was not sufficiently costly for Iran. They were undeterred.

Iran financed and approved of the October 7 attack on Israel. And yet, when Israel attacked Gaza, Iran could do nothing to defend its proxy forces. Iran had not counted on an Israeli counterattack that would cripple Hamas and turn Gaza into rubble.

Perhaps that will be sufficient deterrence. If not, the solution, as the Israelis have suggested, lies in destroying Hamas-- which is beyond deterrence.

Last Saturday Iranian subjects were cheering the attack on Israel, for a simple reason. For once their country seemed to be asserting itself. It was saving face, so to speak.

And yet, even if the attack had succeeded, it would have provided a false sense of price. You do not gain pride from destroying what others have built. You only gain pride from building something yourself.

That is the overarching lesson from the experience of Israel. That is the point that sticks in the terrorist craw.

As you know, Iran has hegemonic ambitions. It supports proxy forces throughout the region and seeks to damage its opponents, first Israel, second America, third certain Arab states. 

While the Trump administration, with the Abraham Accords, began establishing a counterforce to Iran, the feckless Biden administration decided that it wanted to return to the Iranian nuclear deal. It took the proxy Houthis off the terrorist list and chose to absorb countless attacks by other pixies on American outposts in the region. 

Over a hundred unanswered attacks on Americans in the region sends a message-- and that message is not: take the win.

And yet, if Israel fails to react to the Iranian aggression, why would Iran not consider that a sign of its own victory? It would have shown Israel to be a paper tiger. The Jewish nation needs now to make Iran pay a price for its bluster and its flagrant attack. It needs to expose Iran as a weak regional bully.

Walter Russell Mead explains this aspect:

What the president appears not yet to understand is that Iran has become so powerful, and America’s reputation as a source of sound policy and reliable support so weak, that only resolute American backing of our allies can turn the tide.

In many ways the worst impression Israel could give would be to appear to be tools of the feckless Biden foreign policy team. If it did so, it would lose face.

Israel needs also to show itself to be a stalwart ally of the Arab nations with whom it signed the Abraham Accords. 

From an Arab point of view, there are two things that make Israel valuable at a time of diminished confidence in the U.S. First, Israel sees the common fight against Iran as part of its own fight for survival. It will be a reliable ally because it has no choice. Second, Israel offers the mix of strength and relentlessness without which Iran cannot be stopped. At a time when liberal opinion in the U.S. was elegantly wringing its hands about Israeli ruthlessness in Gaza destroying any possibility of Arab-Israeli cooperation, Jordan and Saudi Arabia leapt to Israel’s defense against the Iranian attacks. The fastest way for Israel to lose friends in the Middle East would be to start thinking like American liberal foreign-policy hands.

To be more precise, the fastest way for Israel to lose friends in the Middle East would be to appear to be taking orders from the Biden administration. Thus, it is honor bound to reject the counsel of restraint and to make Iran pay a severe price for attacking it.

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