Weakness Breeds Aggression

Should Israel respond to Iran? Should America back Israel's response to Iran?

Rather than giving their money to proxies to attack Israel, over the weekend, Iran decided to shed all semblance of plausible deniability and send rockets from their own land into Israel. Since then, many bombshell reports have been coming out, and at this point, we don't know for sure what we should or should not believe. One of these insane reports comes from the Jerusalem Post.

Shortly after the attacks on Saturday night, the Jerusalem Post reported that an anonymous Turkish source claimed that Iran used backchannels to learn how U.S. President Joe Biden would respond to an Iranian attack on Israel. According to the reports, instead of threatening Iran with a U.S.-supported counterattack from Israel, Biden told them that any attack had to be "within certain limits." And now we have Iran, Turkey, and Jordan claiming that Iran gave a 72-hour notice to all countries in the region, plus the United States.

Now, of course, the Biden administration denies this. And I hope that the administration is telling the truth. I am partial to believe the United States in this situation. Mostly because I can't trust terrorist regimes and terrorist sympathizers, which is what Iran and Turkey are. Jordan is a bit more believable, but they understandably don't want to come out in support of Israel while they are surrounded by Iranian proxy groups.

I also want to believe the United States here simply because of what the opposite would mean. It would mean our sitting president greenlit a direct attack on our strongest ally in the region. Biden has already shown that he is captured by his Dearborn voters by becoming weak in his support of Israel. He has already done everything he can to prevent Israel from finishing this war by going into Rafah, the last city in Gaza held by Hamas. But to greenlight an attack on Israel by Iran, the primary funding source for Hamas? That is an entirely new level of weakness that we have never known.

Whether or not that story is true, the obvious question turns to what Israel should do in response. Some, including Biden, are saying that Israel should let the attacks go. They stopped nearly all the missiles, and only one person was injured in the attacks. As Biden said, that's a "win" for Israel.

While stopping the attacks might have been a "win" for Israel on Saturday night, that "win" won't get them very far in the future. While some say that this is a one-off attack that was merely meant to send a message to the Iranian people (it was in response to Israel killing an Iranian official at the Iranian embassy in Syria), I'm not so confident it's in the best interest of Israel or the United States to let this attack go.

Foreign policy should always be viewed in the light of the United States' best interests, and decisions should be made based on those interests. It's easy to say that the United States' best interests are to avoid escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. In the short term, that might be true. But foreign policy must also be considered a long-term investment.

The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles, who I am admittedly a big supporter of, came out on Monday in support of Joe Biden's decision to tell Israel not to launch a counterattack against Iran. His reasoning was that this attack was a response to Israel's attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria and that there wasn't enough damage done to warrant a response. Iran had to do something to signal their citizens that they are strong. There is evidence that this is the case. Iran showed their citizens videos of fires in Chile, claiming that there were fires in Israel resulting from the attacks. Plus, they didn't enlist Hezbollah in Lebanon to also attack Israel. This could easily be seen as a purposefully weak attack, not meant to cause any real damage. However, even if that is the case, Israel needs to respond.

Knowles went on to show a clip from Rudy Giuliani, who said that if Reagan were in office, he would have destroyed Iran before the missiles ever made it to Israel. Knowles pushed back on Giuliani's argument, saying that in response to the 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombings on the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon that killed 241 US servicemembers, Reagan withdrew all United States troops. I wasn't alive then and am no historian, so take this statement with a grain of salt. That may have seemed like it was in the United States' interests at the time, but it was later used by Osama bin Laden as evidence that America was weak. Y'know, the Osama bin Laden that orchestrated 9/11.

To be fair, the 9/11 attacks indeed came nearly twenty years after the Beirut Barracks Bombings. It's not totally fair to Reagan or the United States to say that one singular moment in 1983 helped lead to 9/11. And I'm not trying to say that. The point I'm making is that terrorists will latch on to perceived moments of weakness and then escalate when the opportunity arises.

Iran has the power to escalate immediately. They have the military arsenal to launch more powerful attacks against Israel. They are building a nuclear arsenal. They have Israel nearly surrounded by proxy terrorist states. If Israel doesn't respond, Iran and her proxies will become emboldened. If Israel doesn't respond, Israel will be seen as weak. If Israel doesn't respond, the United States will be seen as weak. If the United States tells Israel not to respond, but Israel does respond, only the United States is seen as weak. In this situation, the only way the United States isn't seen as weak is if they work with Israel on a response to Iran.

That is why it is in America's best interests to follow Israel's lead on this. Or at least work with Israel and come up with a plan that sends a message to Iran. We are seen as Israel's biggest ally. We are their funding source. If we don't side with Israel after a direct attack in their skies, we are weak. And the terrorists know that.

So what should Israel do? I'm partial to the idea thrown out by British Army Commander Colonel Richard Kemp, who urged Israel to deliver a "disproportionate" response to Iran's attack. Now, what he means is an attack that is disproportional to the damage that Iran inflicted on Israel. That is different from the international humanitarian law idea of a proportional war. A proportional war means that the war should be proportional to your military objectives. It does not mean an eye for an eye. A proportional war implies that if your military objective is to take out a limb, you take out a limb, not a limb and an eye. Israel's military objectives right now should be to destroy Iran to the extent that Iran is unable to launch any further attack against Israel. Israel should send a message that Iran should never mess with Israel again because Israel has what it takes to destroy Iran if Israel wants to.

The reason Israel must do this, and why the United States should be backing Israel, is that Iran is increasingly becoming a threat to the United States and the Western world. Iran is growing increasingly closer to Russia and China, and according to the Washington Post, top Iranian officials recently attended a tour of Russia's most advanced military systems. Iran is reportedly attempting to purchase Russia's S-400 missile system, which experts claim can shoot down stealth fighter jets. Combine that with Iran's increased production of enriched uranium to the point where they could build a nuclear weapon if they choose to do so, plus Iran's development of an underground nuclear facility that could be deep enough that no conventional weapons the U.S. owns could reach it, and you have a genuine threat to the western world. Iran is clearly willing to attack, and they are building the resources to be able to attack anyone, anywhere.

Israel needs to destroy all of it. Send missiles to military sites, attack the nuclear facilities, and destroy Iran's ability to build nuclear weapons. Set them back at least a decade. Send a message that if they try anything ever again, Israel and the United States will be there to tear them down.

As Trump's former national security advisor, John Bolton, said, "The way you establish deterrence is by telling your adversary, if you ever try that again, the price you pay will be so much higher than any gain you think you can get, you shouldn't even think about it." Make Iran pay. Whatever gain they think they are getting by launching an attack on Israel, make their government realize that it's not worth it. If Israel doesn't respond, it will only encourage Iran and all of Iran's proxies. It sends the message that they can get away with attacking Israel. Not just Israel, but the Western world. And the United States is the leader of the Western world.

This is for another article, but FISA is set to expire in the next few days. In a nutshell, FISA allows the government to collect digital communications of foreigners located outside the country when they communicate with someone inside the United States. If FISA expires, the government's ability to surveil foreign adversaries working within the United States becomes much more challenging. It's unlikely that Iran would try a direct attack on U.S. soil, but when we appear weak and the government loses its ability to surveil Iran in the United States… watch out.

Weakness breeds aggression; right now, our weakness abroad and struggles here at home may breed foreign aggression that hits our own soil. The only way to combat this is to appear strong. Let the terrorists know that they can't get away with a direct attack on our allies. Make them fear the thought of ever making an attack on the United States.