Saturday’s rocket strike on a football field in the Golan Heights was precisely the type of large-casualty event that many observers have feared could ignite an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. After nine months of contained clashes, mostly along the Lebanon-Israel border, a rocket landed at dusk on Saturday in the Druze village of Majdel Shams and killed 12 young people.
Last week, former Israeli Minister and retired General Benny Gantz said that Israel could destroy Hezbollah’s military in a matter of days. But if such a thing could be done, Israel would have already done it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu similarly promised “total victory” against Hamas after October 7.
These declarations are dangerous bluster.
Villagers in southern Lebanon have been heading north, fearing all-out war. Most schools are closed. Israel has ordered its citizens to vacate 28 towns along the border with Lebanon. The Israeli army has exchanged fire with Hezbollah—Lebanon’s Shia political and paramilitary group—every day since October 7, resulting in casualties on both sides.
The Hamas attack against Israel is not only a massive Israeli intelligence and military (as well as a U.S. intelligence) failure, but also a dramatic success for Iran’s axis of resistance from Yemen to Gaza. The highly choreographed, multipronged, day-long operation and incursion into Israel itself, involving the use of motorized paragliders and drones and the taking of hostages, required months of planning and training that only Iran and Hezbollah could have provided.
The past few months have brought despair to millions of Arabs as they’ve watched the rapid and seemingly definitive restoration of an old, dictatorial order throughout a region that was not long ago full of promise. The end of the Arab Spring has been forecast many times already. Now the last stubborn buds have been crushed.
It took one of the most powerful earthquakes in a century, but the world’s attention has finally returned to Syria, a country devastated by 12 years of civil war; divided among government, militia, and foreign powers; and home to millions of internally displaced people.So far, most of the images of the devastation have come out of Turkey, where the 7.8-magnitude quake struck early Monday morning, followed by another quake of 7.5 magnitude.
Expressions of support for Iranian protesters have been pouring in from around the world—from leaders such as President Joe Biden, the former first lady Michelle Obama, French President Emmanuel Macron, and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern—as the protests, well into their second month, remain defiant and have even gained in intensity. But aside from some media coverage, those nations closest to Iran, its Gulf neighbors, have remained conspicuously silent.
Since taking office, President Joe Biden has talked repeatedly about competition with China. To fight off Beijing and other autocracies, he has said, democracies must uphold their values. He has talked much less about the Middle East in that time, and although he has never phrased it in so many words, Biden appears to be trying to deprioritize a region that he believes has consumed too much of America’s attention and resources.
“Today Iran, tomorrow Palestine.” Thus cheered the crowd in Tehran in February 1979, during the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s visit to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini just days after the success of the Iranian revolution. Arafat was the first foreign dignitary to visit Iran after the fall of the shah.
Ten years on, it’s easy to view the Arab uprisings only as a failure. Democracy remains elusive in the Middle East, dictators are further entrenched, and wars have devastated entire countries. But amid the despair and fear, a new cohort of protesters and activists has taken to the streets since 2019, in places such as Iraq, Sudan, and Lebanon. This new generation has learned a key lesson from their predecessors: A revolution can help bring down a regime, but it cannot build a state.
When Nancy Pelosi was asked “Why bother?” with Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, given that he was no longer president, the speaker of the House replied: “You cannot go forward until you have justice.”It was a simple but powerful statement that Americans understand in a personal and visceral way after the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill.