Israel Has Better Things to Do Than Just Strike Iran Back | Opinion

In the wake of Iran's brazen and unprecedented drone and missile attacks, Israel finds itself at a critical juncture where its response could shape Middle East dynamics and complicate world affairs for years to come. Existing as Israel does in a neighborhood full of thugs, a counterstrike is not only justified but might be important for preserving deterrence. Yet Israel would be much smarter to keep its powder dry.

The most obvious reason, of course, is that to hit back hard would risk regional war. Given America's troops all over in the region, the oil interests in the Gulf, the rivalries between Iran and U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, Iran's terrorist proxies already inflamed by the Gaza war, and Iran's emerging alliance with China and Russia, the potential for a global conflagration that would upend markets and set off new fires is huge.

To this one can add Iran's status as a threshold nuclear state—a catastrophe that is the direct result of the last major instance of Israel doing something that felt right but was stupid. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convinced former President Donald Trump to pull out of the nuclear deal because, while indisputably blocking nukes, it allowed Iran to build rockets and foment terror; now Israel faces both those things, in spades, plus an Iran that can go nuclear in weeks.

There is more, however, than just fearing an escalation. After all, when a bully like Iran senses fear, the it often keeps raising the stakes and upping its demands.

Yet in the odd context that has emerged, it is clear that Iran itself does not wish an escalation—and that fact alone reflects a built-in deterrence. Iran telegraphed its intention to strike quite clearly, such that not only Israel but regional moderate states and Western intelligence agencies all knew what was coming. And it issued a statement via its UN embassy declaring the matter closed even before the first drone reached Israel.

Iran's is a criminal regime that should vanish for the good of its people and the world. But in this case, it was basically insisting that it be allowed to make its point after the killing, apparently by Israel, of several top Revolutionary Guard commanders in Damascus on April 1. They were certainly up to no good there—orchestrating supplies to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, which has been rocketing Israel since the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas—not acceptable behavior.

But Israel must have also known that the people it killed are easily replaceable, and by striking at the Iranian consulate—sovereign Iranian territory—they were inviting retaliation. Indeed, it doesn't take too much of a cynic to suspect Netanyahu sought an escalation to deflect attention from his quagmire in Gaza.

For all that, the actual result is that Israel made a far more effective point than Iran—indeed two of them. First, that despite its cataclysmic failure to stop the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion, it remains a formidable military and technological force, as all of the 300-odd projectiles were essentially zapped out of the sky by planes and air defenses. Second, and most profound, that despite being tarred-and-feathered for its brutal retaliation against Gaza, Israel still has faithful allies—not only the U.S., Britain, and France, but also Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as well as other regional players who opened up their skies and, in some cases, took part.

That alliance is the regional gamechanger, if Israel's foolish and shortsighted prime minister would only allow it to be.

On a basic level, the leader of the alliance, the U.S., is telling him to walk away from this fight at this time, leaving well enough (or, more accurately, acceptably bad) alone. Biting the hand that feeds you is no way to get ahead and ingratitude is a bad look, even if President Joe Biden's patience can seem limitless.

But there is another level.

Israel is seriously stuck in Gaza. Its twin war aims, of removing Hamas from power and saving the remaining 133 hostages, contradict. Hamas is not budging from its position that in exchange for the hostages Israel must withdraw and end the war; if Israel invaded Rafah, the last redoubt of Hamas in the Strip, the hostages would likely be killed. And the idea that Hamas may be moved by military pressure that mostly punishes their population rests on the absurd assumption that these terrorists give a damn about their people.

So, Israel has been stuck for months in a low-grade occupation of most of Gaza, not daring to go into Rafah while rattling its saber, and indeed withdrawing from part of the strip's center only a week ago. Israel does not strenuously deny Hamas' claims that about 20,000 civilians have died—an outcome that suits Hamas, which uses the population as a human fortification while its leaders hide in tunnels. But the world—and the Americans whom Israel needs for munitions and cover at the UN Security Council—have had enough.

There is growing domestic pressure on Netanyahu—from protesters and hostage families and security experts and others—to shift gears, prioritize the hostages, and accept Hamas' terms. It will have killed almost half of Hamas' fighting force (and trashed Gaza), but the group will stay in charge. Israel will then be able to tell itself that after the first false move by Hamas the army will go back in, this time without the complications of the hostages. But it will still feel to the Israelis like defeat—no doubt about it.

There is a way to turn this around.

Right now, Biden is telling Israel not to react. That is something of a stick; he should add the carrot. This means reviving the grand design from some four months back, when Biden was dangling before Israel normalization with Saudi Arabia as part of a strategic Sunni-Western-Israeli alliance against Iran.

In his outrageous lack of vision, Netanyahu rejected that because it would have required him to agree to a return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza. He did this because he and his far-right allies have been demonizing the PA for years, and he needs the far-right for his beleaguered coalition to survive. Indeed, the PA does many things wrong—its hostile school curriculum chiefly—but also some critical things right, like security cooperation in the West Bank. Israel's far-right seems intellectually and temperamentally incapable of comprehending the notion of the lesser of two evils.

The weekend's events illustrate starkly the benefits to Israel of the proffered alliance. All Netanyahu must do is say "yes" to the PA—and indeed, he has zero other alternatives to Hamas. Unlike a few months ago, Israeli society—even if not quite yet its clueless government—is looking for an off-ramp to the Gaza war. And almost nobody wants a regional war.

We don't quite know exactly what caused Hamas to choose to invade Israel on Oct. 7. It might have been the half-century anniversary, almost to the day, of the Yom Kippur war. It might have been Netanyahu's anti-democratic reforms, which had kicked up such a fuss in Israel for the previous nine months that the country's security chiefs were warning that the country was vulnerable to attack. But it also certainly due, in part, to the indications of imminent Saudi-Israeli peace, which is anathema to Iran.

By goading its ally Hamas to attack Israel in a way that might trigger a massive war, Iran scuttled that threat. Everything that followed has predictably amounted to a gift to Iran (indeed, I predicted it on these pages). Cementing an alliance whose contours became visible this weekend would be a wise and helpful course correction.

There is an old Jewish phrase that can be translated roughly as "out of darkness, light." This may be the moment for Biden to make that happen. It wouldn't hurt his reelection prospects either.

Dan Perry is the former chief editor of The Associated Press in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books about Israel. Follow his newsletter "Ask Questions Later" at danperry.substack.com.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.