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world war iii
Israel Wants Its War With Iran—But If Netanyahu Not Stopped, They Might Spark World War III
The Israeli prime minister continues to wage war because war keeps him in power. He may burn the Middle East to the ground in the process.
Oct 03, 2024
Israel has assassinated the leader of Hezbollah and killed many of its members by way of booby-trapped pagers and walky-talkies. After a blitzkrieg bombing campaign, Israel once again invaded Lebanon this week to escalate its campaign against the paramilitary-cum-political party. Meanwhile, it continues to wage war against Hamas in Gaza. It has bombed various locations in Syria. And it has even attacked the Houthis in distant Yemen.
The Israeli government has never tried to hide its larger objective: weaken the sponsor of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Israel is really fighting against Iran.
At the United Nations last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a map of the region labelled “The Curse.” It showed a swath of the Middle East in black that encompassed Iran, Syria, and Iraq, with outposts in Lebanon and Yemen.
“It’s a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean,” Netanyahu declared. “Iran’s aggression, if it’s not checked, will endanger every single country in the Middle East, and many, many countries in the rest of the world, because Iran seeks to impose its radicalism well beyond the Middle East.”
Israel has not been content to launch attacks against Iranian proxies. Back in April, Israel struck Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing three senior Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) officials. Over the summer, in a brazen violation of Iranian sovereignty, it detonated a bomb inside a guest house in Tehran to assassinate a top Hamas leader. And in the most recent aerial attack on Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Israel also killed a top Iranian military official, Gen. Abbas Nilforushan of the IRGC.
These last two attacks have come after elections in July elevated a reformer to the presidency in Iran. They have come after Iran has given a number of indications that it is reevaluating its unremittingly hostile policy toward Israel. They have come after the Iranian government has showed signs of willingness to restart nuclear negotiations with the United States.
If Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November, Israel will once again have an ally that is equally committed to confronting Iran, militarily if necessary.
But if Kamala Harris wins, the stage will be set for a potential return to a détente in U.S.-Iranian relations.
Certainly, the Israeli government is interested in weakening both Hamas and Hezbollah. Certainly, it wants to push back against Iran on various fronts.
But perhaps the real motivation for Netanyahu right now in attacking Hezbollah and refusing a ceasefire in the conflict in Gaza is to goad Iran into retaliating and burying all hopes of a reconciliation between Washington and Tehran. This week, with Iran lobbing missiles at Israel, everything is so far going according to plan. What’s not yet clear is whether Netanyahu will reap a side benefit of making the Biden administration look foolish, thus elevating Trump’s electoral chances in November.
Iran’s Restraint
Imagine if Russia had somehow smuggled a bomb into Volodymyr Zelensky’s hotel room in Washington, DC and managed to assassinate him on his recent visit. The United States might very well use such an attack as a casus belli to declare war on Russia. The only thing that could stay Washington’s hand would be Russia’s nuclear arsenal and the potential for planetary annihilation.
Israel’s assassination of a Hamas official inside Iran at the end of July might have triggered an all-out war—if not for Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Of course, Tehran threatened revenge. Its retaliation for the attack on the Iranian compound in Syria, which took place two weeks later in mid-April, might have looked impressive: 300 missiles and drones aimed at Israel. But only a few evaded Israeli defenses, and there were no Israeli casualties.
Israel has an advantage over Iran in terms of intelligence and technology. How on earth did it smuggle a bomb into one of the most secure buildings in Iran and then trigger it at just the right moment to kill its target? And how did it manage to turn hundreds of pagers and walky-talkies into hand-held bombs that killed and injured Hezbollah operatives along with many Lebanese civilians? These were intelligence failures on the part of Iran and its proxies, to be sure, but they also reveal the patience, planning, and technological sophistication of the Israelis.
In other words, it’s not just Israel’s nukes that serve as deterrent.
In effect, Iran is practicing a policy of “strategic patience.” It knows that it’s outmatched in any conventional (or nuclear) conflict. In response to successful Israeli operations, its feckless missile attacks on Israel have been more theater than actual military campaign. In some cases, it has been even more restrained, for instance, after the death of three U.S. soldiers in Jordan in January when it instructed its allies not to escalate their attacks against U.S. targets.
In general, the successes that Iran and its allies have had against Israel have been in guerrilla warfare. “Hezbollah and Iran are conserving military resources and waiting for Israeli ground forces to enter a trap inside Lebanon territory,” former Iranian journalist Mohammad Mazhari concludes.
In its eagerness to “teach Hezbollah a lesson” and draw Iran into a wider war, Israeli forces may just be walking into that trap once again.
Change in Iran?
While Netanyahu beat the drum of the Iran threat at the UN, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian took a different tack in his speech to the General Assembly:
I embarked on my electoral campaign with a platform focused on “reform,” “national empathy,” “constructive engagement with the world,” and “economic development,” and was honored to gain the trust of my fellow citizens at the ballot box. I aim to lay a strong foundation for my country’s entry into a new era, positioning it to play a effective and constructive role in the evolving global order.
Pezeshkian also announced his willingness to work on reviving a nuclear agreement. What he said in private meetings was perhaps even more important. For instance, he promised to accept whatever agreement that Palestinians favored to end the conflict with Israel, which presumably includes the two-state solution that Iran has traditionally opposed because it would mean acknowledging Israel as a state.
Indeed, after replacing Ebrahim Raisi, who died suddenly in a helicopter crash last May, Pezeshkian has quietly charted a different trajectory for Iranian foreign policy. One important indication is the team that he has assembled. Head of the foreign policy team is Abbas Araghchi, who played a key role in orchestrating the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States and other countries. Javad Zarif, the face of Iran’s negotiating team that year, is now vice president for strategic affairs. The cabinet contains plenty of conservatives, but the foreign policy team is both ready and experienced in the politics of détente.
Outside observers ascribe Iran’s “tepid” response to attacks on Iranian territory and against allies like Hezbollah and Hamas to Iran’s relative weakness. “The biggest explanation appears to be simply that Iran is weaker than it wants the world to believe,” writes David Leonhardt in The New York Times. “And its leaders may recognize that they would fare badly in a wider war.”
Another explanation, however, is that the consensus inside Iran is shifting, not simply within the political establishment (which has swung from reformism to conservatism and back again) but within the governing religious bodies as well. This is not a doctrinal transformation so much as a coming to terms with different geopolitical realities, particularly within the Middle East.
Contrary to Netanyahu’s ominous presentation at the UN, Iran is not experiencing a massive expansion of its influence. To be sure, it can count on support from Syria, a significant share of Iraq’s population, and the three Hs: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. But Syria’s still a mess, Iraq is divided, and the three Hs are reeling.
Meanwhile, Sunni powers in the region like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are ascendant. The Abrahamic Accords, pushed by Trump and embraced by Biden, rallied Sunni powers like the United Arab Emirates and Morocco to recognize Israel. Saudi Arabia was next in line when Hamas disrupted the looming rapprochement by attacking Israel on October 7. So concerned was Iran about the prospect of the Abrahamic Accords cutting it out of regional geopolitics that it concluded its own détente with Saudi Arabia in 2023 after seven years of severed relations.
World War III?
The risk of regional escalation is large. This week, Iran fired missiles at Israel, though they have done limited damage. Israel wants an excuse to strike back against Iran, particularly against its nuclear complex. The United States has expanded its military footprint in the region as a visible sign of preparedness. Although Israel has declared that its invasion into Lebanon will be limited, the government has generally pursued maximalist goals—the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah—even in the face of doubts from the Israeli Defense Forces.
The Israeli government aside, nobody wants a regional conflict. The Israeli government aside, everyone after October 7 has practiced a degree of restraint. Iran, in particular, has absorbed the kind of punishment that rarely goes without serious retaliation in today’s world of geopolitics. To a certain degree, it has satisfied demands both internally and externally for retaliation against Israel without inflicting any serious damage—like a short fired into the air in a duel. At some point, however, Iran might feel compelled to abandon its strategic patience and take more lethal aim at Israel.
To prevent a wider war, the Biden administration had best be conducting non-stop quiet discussions with Pezeshkian’s foreign policy team. Even while expressing support for Israel, the United States has to go over Israel’s head to negotiate with Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu is a problem that must be isolated somehow within Israel and somehow within the region.
But how to pry Netanyahu out of his office and put someone in his place with at least an ounce of pragmatism? The prime minister continues to wage war because war keeps him in power. So, too, did Antaeus draw strength from the earth until an opponent lifted him into the air to defeat him. That is the essential question today: figuring out a way to separate Netanyahu from war and thus deprive him of his power.
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Russia's Lavrov Warns US That World War III Wouldn't Be Confined to Europe
"They have a mindset of a master sitting somewhere out there overseas and believing to be totally safe and secure, thinking that not only Ukrainians, but also... Europeans would be willing to do the dirty work and die for them."
Aug 28, 2024
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday warned the United States that if the war in Ukraine escalates into a wider military conflict, a potential World War III would not be limited to battlefields in Europe.
While taking questions from journalists two-and-a-half years after Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion, Lavrov was asked to address recent reporting in The Guardian about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wanting to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles that "threaten Moscow and St. Petersburg" to force Russia to the negotiating table.
As the British newspaper explained: "Storm Shadow missiles were developed primarily by an Anglo-French collaboration and are made by European joint venture MBDA, which also has an Italian partner. But because some of its components are supplied by the U.S., the White House also has to agree to its use inside Russia. It has so far refused to do so, fearing an escalation of the conflict."
Lavrov declared that "this is blackmail, an attempt to pretend that the West seeks to avoid any excessive escalation. In reality, they are full of mischief. Avoiding escalation is not what the West is after. To put it into plain language, they are simply picking a fight."
The longtime Russian minister also pointed to various remarks from John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, along the lines of what he said Friday: "We've been watching escalation risks since the beginning of this conflict, and that ain't gonna change. We're always going to be concerned about the potential for the aggression in Ukraine to lead to escalation on the European continent."
Lavrov said that "for Americans, any talk about the Third World War comes down to something that would affect Europe alone, and God forbid if it ever happened. This is quite telling, since this idea reflects the mindset of the American planners and geostrategy experts who believe that they can simply sit the whole thing out. I think that it is important to understand in this situation that we have our own doctrine, including the one governing the use of nuclear weapons. An effort to update it is underway."
"Moreover, these Americans are well aware of the provisions it sets forth. This fact transpires from the Freudian slips they make when they say that having a Third World War would be a bad thing because they do not want Europe to suffer," he continued. "This is what this American mindset comes down to. They have a mindset of a master sitting somewhere out there overseas and believing to be totally safe and secure, thinking that not only Ukrainians, but also, as it turns out, Europeans would be willing to do the dirty work and die for them."
"We have long been hearing speculation about authorizing Ukraine to use not only the Storm Shadow missiles, but also U.S.-made long-range missiles," the minister noted. "Now, all we can do is confirm once again that playing with fire is a dangerous thing for the men and women in charge of nuclear weapons across the Western world, but they are playing with matches as if they never grew up."
While there are nine nuclear-armed nations, the United States and Russia collectively have roughly 90% of the global arsenal. Since the Kremlin launched its invasion in February 2022, as the U.S. and Europe have armed Ukraine's soldiers, Putin and other Russian officials—along with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg—have stoked fears of nuclear weapons use.
Mikhail Sheremet, who represents Crimea—which Russia invaded and annexed from Ukraine a decade ago—in Russia's State Duma, toldTASS on Tuesday that the U.S. should consider the consequences of giving Ukrainian troops long-range cruise missiles.
"The ball is now in the U.S.' court but it's clearly finding it difficult to play the game because it will have to take reality into consideration and carefully weigh everything before passing the ball to Ukraine, which aims to drag the U.S. and Europe into a potential World War III," Sheremet told the Russian news agency.
"Undoubtedly, the U.S. will try to implement its far-reaching aggressive plans to provide cruise missiles to the Kyiv regime. They will probably try to do that through Europe, which they have under their thumb," he added. "But in any case, the price of this decision will be too high for them to pay, leading to the loss of their own statehood."
Earlier this month, Ukraine attacked Russia's Kursk region and "has carved out a slice of territory in the biggest foreign attack on Russia since World War II," Reutersreported Tuesday. As the outlet detailed:
Russia has said that Western weaponry, including British tanks and U.S. rocket systems, have been used by Ukraine in Kursk. Kyiv has confirmed using U.S. HIMARS missiles to take out bridges in Kursk.
Washington says it was not informed about Ukraine's plans ahead of the surprise incursion into Kursk. The United States has also said it did not take any part in the operation.
Multiple Russian government officials have made clear that they don't believe those U.S. claims.
Still, based on interviews that Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft recently conducted with "members of the Russian establishment, including former diplomats, members of think tanks, academics, and businesspeople, as well as a few members of the wider public," the majority of them want "an early cease-fire roughly along the existing battle lines."
"Most of my conversations took place before the Ukrainian invasion of the Russian province of Kursk. As far as I can make out, however, this Ukrainian success has not changed basic Russian calculations and views," Lieven wrote Tuesday for Foreign Policy.
"In the end, of course, Russia's negotiating position will be decided by Putin—with whom I did not speak," he acknowledged. "Nobody I spoke to in Moscow claimed to know for sure what Putin is thinking. However, the consensus was that while he made terrible mistakes at the start of the war, he is a pragmatist capable of taking military advice and recognizing military reality."
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Why a $1,000,000,000,000 Military Budget Makes Us Less Safe—Not More
We need our tax dollars for healthcare, climate, and education—not war and destruction.
Jun 28, 2024
f you looked at the U.S. military budget without knowing otherwise, you’d probably guess we were in World War III.
Our military spending is now the highest it’s been at any point since World War II — and Congress keeps adding more. The House of Representatives just passed legislation that will take military spending to $895 billion, while the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a bill that would total $923 billion.
Those totals don’t even include the military aid to Ukraine and Israel that was included in the $95 billion war package Congress passed this spring. We’re teetering closer and closer to a $1 trillion military budget.
Adjusting for inflation, the last time the national security budget topped $1 trillion was in 1945, the final year of World War II.
Unlike a world war, there’s nothing happening today that can justify this level of spending. Even the war in Ukraine and the decimation of Gaza (which is being carried out with U.S.-supplied weapons) account for just a small fraction of overall spending.
So what’s all this spending for?
We need members of Congress to do three things: focus on the problems we do have, stop trying to rule the world, and have the spine to say no to military contractors.
It’s to keep the U.S. military machine running as it has since World War II, with the more or less explicit goal of global military domination. That goal is shared by many in Congress. But members of Congress also receive constant encouragement — and campaign funds — from for-profit, corporate military contractors who can expect to receive about half of the total military budget.
But it turns out that global military dominance is pretty expensive. And luckily, it’s not at all necessary to safeguard U.S. security.
After 20 years of disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, too many in Congress and military leadership haven’t learned that having the biggest, strongest military in the history of the world costs a lot — more than $21 trillion in the first 20 years of the millennium — but doesn’t make the world any safer.
Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) called for adding another $55 billion to the already-gargantuan Pentagon budget — supposedly justified by competition with China. But the U.S. military budget is already more than three times higher than China’s.
Many experts agree that the military threat from the Chinese has been oversold. But whatever threats the U.S. faces, it should say something more troubling about the U.S. military if we can’t achieve security by spending more than three times what an adversary spends.
Anyone genuinely concerned with the security of the American people should be more concerned about that $1 trillion military budget. The obsession with China and world dominance is bleeding our public coffers. This is money that can’t be invested in infrastructure, education, health care, or other necessities to keep our own country functioning.
Meanwhile, as another summer starts, we face growing bills for disaster relief from floods and heat waves to storms and wildfires. In a world where climate change is making these disasters more frequent, we have to start budgeting for those expenses and doing more to limit the damage by transitioning to renewable energy.
Even a fraction of the $1 trillion soon to be spent on the military would go a long way to making life safer on each of these fronts.
Luckily, we don’t face the same problems the world did in 1945 — and we don’t need a World-War-III-level military budget. Instead, we need members of Congress to do three things: focus on the problems we do have, stop trying to rule the world, and have the spine to say no to military contractors.
Only then will we have a budget designed for 2024, not 1945.
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