Initial thoughts on Israel’s strike

1. This is unlikely to be the last word. It appears more of a first down payment.
2. The impression that Israel would not respond was too dangerous to allow to develop since it carries a self-generating negative dynamic. So an early attack, if even symbolic, was essential.
3. ⁠Nasrallah on Friday a week ago said Israel is defeated. It is entirely dependent on the U.S. and cannot act without it, while the U.S. is abandoning Israel. So Israel acted to show it both can and will act alone despite the U.S. by this.
4. ⁠Israel needed to signal Arab allies across the region; do not believe Israel is constrained by Washington, limited in its power, or failing in its will — it can and will strike the common Iranian enemy alone when the time will come.
5. ⁠Israel showed Iran and the region they have the capability to strike Iran at will without obstruction; indeed without Iran’s knowing it is being hit until it is done. Iran had no warning, no defense and no means to stop it.
6. ⁠There is an internal Iranian dimension which needed to be encouraged. Israel is signaling to the Iranian people that Israel has joined the fight and they are no longer alone.
7. ⁠This is essentially an Israeli declaration that it now understands it is in a unified regional war — the first full-up Israeli-Iranian war — and not any more fighting separate wars on separated fronts. They are all just various fronts in one war.
8. ⁠Striking Isfahan — the geographic heart of the Iran nuclear program — warns Iran not to lurch forward on the nuclear program; it is vulnerable and can be taken out by Israel at will.
9. ⁠All that said, Israel prefers first to start decisively finishing the unresolved wars fought by the tentacles of the Octopus. The war may pass through Gaza and Beirut and Sanaa and Baghdad, but as the Doolittle raid signaled to Americans in April 1942 that the war which began in Hawaii will end in Tokyo, Israel has laid down the marker that it can and will in the end visit upon Tehran, but it will fight this war on its terms. And its terms are to slice off the tentacles first and then circle back to address the issue of the surviving head.
10. ⁠Yet, it is also a signal that Israel can and will strike anywhere, even Iran, if there is an important operational reason to do so and it — unlike Washington — is neither blind to Iran’s orchestrating it all nor afraid of potential Iranian retaliatory escalation. I would expect Israel there to strike Iraqi militias, Hizballah, Houthis or wandering Iranian ships at any time and anywhere based on opportunity or need.

As Caroline Glick has noted, the raid also demystifies Iran as a target for Israelis, which is critical.  Israel has serious battles ahead. But the taboo has been broken, and Iran looks less terrifying and impossible now.

One must be sober and also list any potential downsides here.

1. While Israeli showed it will act independently, the minimalist size of the strike can be understood by those who want to see it that way to show the level to which Israel fears crossing America that it felt it could only marginally “save face” and not actually act with fortitude.
2. Answering 350 missiles that terrified an entire nation with a handful of small missiles that the Iranian people cannot see or feel — although the result was mirroring (one airfield damaged) — deflates the hopes of the opponents of the Iranian regime that Israel has either the means or will to strike in a robust way.
3. ⁠Israeli statements — leaked or peddled by the chattering class rather than the government itself — that this now is a warning to the international community to get serious shows that Israel still believes that bartering the power and autonomous action of the IDF for international support still governs Israeli strategic thinking, even after Oct 7, even after the rapid deterioration of support for Israel in the course of events from Oct to April, and even after the strong obstruction the international community tried to place in front of Israel to respond to the April attack.
4. ⁠Regional allies (Abraham Accord countries) and the Iranian people can read 1 through 3 and conclude Israel is not a strong horse.
5. ⁠Iran’s regime can read 1 through 3 and conclude that Israel still defines its reliance on the “international community” in ways that validate its investment in a strategy that causes tensions between Israel and the western leaders, and will thus continue to play on the threat of chaos and escalation to force the West to break further with Israel.

Overall, the negative side of the ledger all boils down in general — which many in the region will conclude — that Israeli calculations have tied Israel into knots, Jerusalem still is intoxicated with ideas that are “too clever by half” and that the Israeli leadership still reflects the sort of refinement that shows it is still thinking dangerously much in its strategy in ineffectual Western terms and not effective Middle Eastern terms (or in Hebrew “מערבית במקום ערבית״) and thus has failed to internalize properly the lesson of its catastrophic conceptual failures that led to October 7.

Final thoughts.  It will all depend eventually on the context — something we will not be able to definitively divine until months later as the conflict plays out much further.  The issue is the Doolittle raid analogy. Let me explain:

1. The Doolittle raid on Tokyo in April 1942 by the U.S. against Imperial Japan was by any standard interpretation a failure. Few bombs were dropped. All the planes were lost, and a large part of the crew captured or killed. Japan’s wartime industrial capacity was scratched almost without notice.  In many ways, it exposed the weakness of America at that moment more than its strength.
2. ⁠Despite that — and it was not largely appreciated at the time — the raid cracked Japan’s total and absolute control over events. The humiliation in a Japanese sense had to be answered, and quickly, so that its effects do not become tumorous and eat away at Japanese imperial mystique. So the Japanese advanced their invasion plans of Hawaii and set the stage for the Battle of Midway. The Japanese imperial navy was not fully prepared and suffered a devastating loss. The crack of a slight loss of absolute control suddenly collapsed into a complete loss of control — and essentially the war never changed direction after that; it was a straight line down to imperial defeat.
3. ⁠the American people understood from the raid — small and inconsequential tactically as it might have been — the nature of the war; it will eventually end in Tokyo, not in “stabilization” of the pacific or fighting to a draw and ceasefire.

Thus, the meaning and effectiveness of what Israel did early in the morning of April 18 will be judged only within the context of what follows over the next months.  That will determine its place in history as either Israel’s Doolittle raid or yet another reflection that Israel cannot transcend the failed strategic imagery of October 6.