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Iran attacks Israel
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take on a Sunday, which usually means something is not going well, and that is certainly the case in the Middle East, where you had unprecedented strikes by Iran and its proxies against Israel.
Now, on the one hand, clearly a very dangerous thing to do, on the other hand, could have been a hell of a lot worse. What do I mean by that? Well, it is not World War III. Americans warned Iran not to hit the United States, and the Iranians gave a heads-up, days in advance, through a number of actors, most importantly through Iraq. This reminds me very much of after the American servicemen and women, three were killed in Jordan, by an Iranian proxy. The Americans did not want a war to break out with the Iranians directly, waited about a week, gave a heads up through Iraq, of the kind of attack that the Americans were planning, waited four days, gave the Iranians a chance to basically prepare and get their own forces out, and warned them that if this were to happen again, there would be direct consequences, a direct strike on Iran itself.
In this case, you had the Iranian heads-up that gave the Americans and allies time to pre-position, to provide diplomatic support, both publicly and privately, to the Israelis. Send the head of CENTCOM to Israel, say that American support for Israel was ironclad, help ensure that the Israelis would be able to most effectively defend itself against the coming Iranian attack. That was, on the one hand, a really big deal by the Iranians that was meant to be a maximal display of force and a minimum likelihood of casualties. But still, there was a significant possibility of accident, that you could have a risk that would lead to a war directly between Iran and Israel. Something that the Americans desperately wanted to avoid because it would bring the US in. It would spike oil prices. It would probably mean the end of Biden's, potential of a second presidency. And it, of course, would also mean that Iran was going to get hit massively by the United States and Israel, something they wanted to avoid.
We saw hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles, many from proxies, but many from Iran itself, over 99% of which were taken down. And they were aimed solely at military targets in Israel. So again, lots of effort to try to reduce the risk but the potential that you would have had a number get through, accidentally hitting civilians or having significant military hit, that was a risk that the Iranians were prepared to take. So, it's a big deal, it’s a clear escalation, and it is certainly an effort by the Iranians to say, that if this is to happen again, that the likelihood that there will be a major war between Iran and Israel come what may, is very real. And the Iranians also said, and they said this before the missiles even hit their targets, or in the case of the vast majority of them were intercepted, said through the United Nations mission that this was directly in retaliation for the Israeli strike against an Iranian leader in Damascus, and that the matter, from Iran's perspective, should be considered closed.
In other words, no further attacks were coming. So, trying to in a sense, you know, reduce the likelihood of further escalation, in advance. And clearly, all of that kept the United States from responding directly. So, the US strategy here is do everything possible to show that you will get massive support for Israeli defense and national security in the event of an attack, any attack, but also to try to put maximum constraint on the Israeli government against a response directly against Iran, and that the Americans don't want to support Israel if they were to engage in offensive attacks against Iran at this point.
What are the Israelis going to do? I mean, the hope for the United States is that while Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to do more and suck the United States into a broader war against Iran, that he is going to be constrained from doing so. In part because he was so successful, they now have a major victory on their belt under his watch, being able to defend the Israeli people completely in response to an unprecedented Iranian attack. And there's also going to be a big distraction away from the war in Gaza. Doesn't mean that Israel suddenly loses its isolation or wins the PR war globally, I think that's certainly not going to happen, but, there's less pressure on the Israelis, on the prime minister, in terms of Gaza right now as a consequence of what Iran has done. And there's also less pressure for Netanyahu to be forced out domestically in the near, in the immediate future.
Further, if he were to try to go considerably farther than Benny Gantz wants to, and the war cabinet wants to, in a response against Iran, then Netanyahu risks that they would bolt from the war cabinet and that his government would then fall apart. That's certainly a proximate risk that contains what the Israelis are likely to do. I don't think they'll sit on their hands and do nothing. At the very least, I think there'll be more significant strikes against Iranian proxies in the coming days. And the Israelis will also continue to engage in strikes against Iranian targets as they see them, as is opportune, in proxy states going forward. This is the problem, of course, is that, even though you have averted major escalation in a very dangerous period over the weekend, the Israelis and the Iranians haven't accomplished anything to stabilize their relationship longer-term.
Israel has shown that they are capable of taking out Iranian leaders in Syria, and Iran can't defend them. Iran has no intention of suddenly leaving those proxies to fend for themselves. And further, the likelihood that Israel now gets a breakthrough agreement on hostage release by Hamas, and that leads to a ceasefire, has gone down, at least in the near-term. The other side of that is the likelihood that the Israelis proceed with at least some form of ground attack into Rafah, which the Americans have warned them not to, also has gone up.
So the Hamas war with Israel is nowhere close to ending, the likelihood of continued Palestinian civilian casualties continues to grow, and the potential for further military engagement, both vis-a-vis proxies, including the Houthis in the Red Sea, the fact that the Iranians have also boarded an Israeli linked vessel in the Red Sea and that there is no effective deterrent in place right now between Israel and Iran, despite all sorts of other actors not wanting this to expand into a broader war, that all makes the Middle East right now, more dangerous.
So, I mean, none of us know, what the next shoe is going to be to drop. But if you are looking ahead over the next, let's say, six months, a couple things I think you can say. First, it is more likely that the present Israeli government is going to be in place for longer, and that the war in Gaza is going to continue without a serious effort at stabilization, or at least not one that's consequential.
That's problematic for Biden as you look ahead to the election in November. The potential that this war expands and eventually does drag in the United States and Iran more directly, is also going up. It's not imminent but it is certainly reasonably plausible, and the guardrails on that war are becoming, they are eroding as both sides are taking shots against each other.
So, a dangerous environment. A second war that is not going the way the Americans or anyone else in the world would like it to. And that's how we're kicking off our week.
That's it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Should Israel have waited before invading Gaza?
Could Israel have waited longer to start its war in Gaza?
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer asked former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak if Israel had fallen into a trap in the way it’s fighting the war against Hamas. In the last month, there’s been a shift away from sympathy for Israel in the wake of October 7th and a growing criticism of its tactics in Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes, hundreds of thousands more have fled their homes, and Israel’s total blockade has prevented desperately needed humanitarian aid from reaching civilians.
Barak believes that Israel could have gotten more aid in sooner but also says that it’s determined to destroy Hamas, arguing that waiting longer would have put them at a disadvantage militarily. But the former prime minister does concede that Israel’s current government needs to be realistic about what they can achieve in Gaza.
“I have a question mark about our own tactics,” Barak says, “I think there is a gap between what the military armed forces understand and the objectives at the political level.”
Watch the episode: Is an Israel-Palestine two-state solution possible?
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
Hamas attacks in Israel ignite war
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
War, as I think you all know, is back in the Middle East, massive attacks by Hamas leadership into Israel. So far, over 100 deaths and 1,000 casualties among Israeli civilians that we know of, this in a country of less than 10 million. So, think of that in the context of a United States with several hundred million. This is no less than Israel's 9/11.
Now, big changes have been afoot for a long time in the Middle East. Israel actually is in its strongest geopolitical position that we've seen in decades, and that is relevant here. The Abraham Accords, for example, under the Trump administration, opening diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE, and Bahrain, and Morocco. In the Obama administration, you had people, including the secretary of state saying, "that you could never get peace in the Middle East unless you first solved the Palestinian issue," gave them a two-state solution. That didn't happen. The Palestinians were marginalized, and Israel was able to develop and open and engage in stronger relations across the Middle East and North Africa.
A Saudi deal with Israel about to happen, also diplomatic engagement, which has been at the high level, informally very close to being announced publicly. And if you are the leadership of Hamas, refusing to accept Israel's right to exist, and not changing anything about your political positions, your corrupt governance on the ground and the rest, while watching the politics of the region turn against you, while watching your conflict, your priorities becoming irrelevant, while watching in Israel, nobody really pushing for engagement anymore, settlements expanding, well, certainly that is part of the reason why Hamas would've decided to engage in this level of unprecedented strikes against Israel, against the Israeli civilian population today.
But also, Israel has been in crisis domestically. The judicial reform, as it's called, that Netanyahu has been pushing, leading to unprecedented demonstrations across Israel, peaceful demonstrations, but involving much of the country for months and months now, and that has clearly distracted Israeli intelligence. It's also distracted the Israeli military, many of whom have said that they weren't willing to serve in the military if the judicial reform proceeded. Also, the fact that Netanyahu was focusing on expanding with his far-right coalition, Israeli settlements on the ground in the West Bank, and there was a lot of violent backlash from Palestinians as a consequence and from Israeli settlers against Palestinians, well, that meant that a lot of Israeli's defense forces were focused on the West Bank, were focused on the occupied territories and border security there, and they took away a lot of the troops in the focus from the Israeli South and from Gaza. So, clearly the Israelis took their eye off the ball.
This is a massive intelligence and defense failure for Israel and specifically for Netanyahu. They were seen as the gold standard on surveillance, on human intelligence collection, on border security, especially when we talk about the Palestinian populations. And now this, watching armed Palestinians gunning down civilians in Israeli cities and taking hostages back into Gaza, taking Israeli defense force soldiers, and even a leader, it seems, hostage overrunning a couple of military bases, small, but still, this is unimaginable for an Israeli citizen.
What happens next? A few things. First of all, war, war in the region. Netanyahu has declared that Israel is now at war with Hamas in Gaza, and Netanyahu has to take them out. This action was suicidal for Hamas leadership. It feels to me like what happened when Prigozhin and his Wagner leadership decided to go against Putin. They can say whatever they want for the first few weeks, but they will be gone. They are now dead-enders. They will be removed; they will be killed. There are already airstrikes beginning across Gaza in that direction. There will be ground warfare. There will probably be long-term occupation from Israel, an effort to disarm Hamas militias, a desire from the Israelis to paralyze and root out the threat against Israel.
We will see, of course, massive civilian casualties, more from Israel, but far more from the Palestinians in the response, the retaliation to these attacks. Now, right now around the world, what we have is mostly support for Israel and sympathy, in part because the Palestinian issue has become more marginalized, in part because of the nature of the terrorism, the extent the atrocities that have been committed in the past hours against the Israelis. Over time, that will of course shift as we see the massive human rights and failings and deprivation that occurs for Palestinian citizens getting caught in the crossfire. As always, the Palestinians on the ground are going to suffer the most, they're the most powerless.
Other consequences, the Israeli-Saudi deal, which was close to getting done, is now over. If anything was accomplished that Hamas wanted, that would be the single biggest thing. The Saudi government immediately came out, they did not support the attacks, but they said that Israel was responsible for them because of the deprivation against the Palestinians. There's no capacity to support the Palestinians from Israel in this environment that would facilitate a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, no capacity for Netanyahu to make nice after that statement.
The big ongoing question is does the war expand? Certainly, if it is found that Iran helped to plan these attacks by Hamas, that would be a game changer and would probably lead to Israeli strikes against Iranian military, Islamic defense forces, revolutionary guard forces, this sort of thing. But the broader question is whether or not we see ongoing military cooperation, collaboration for Hamas, from Iran, from Syria, beyond just statements of support and solidarity, that could of course lead to an expansion of the war.
Also, I do want to say that I've seen online, and I've seen on television over the last few hours, a lot of people saying that Netanyahu benefits from this, that it's good for him, even some saying that are relatively respected forces, "Well, maybe this was planned in some way by the Israelis." That's insane, and I want everyone to just put this in the context of saying that about President Bush in the hours after 9/11, when I was in New York and watched our two towers go down and the thousands of people die in the horror that the civilians in the country faced. Yes, Bush's political stature went up, but it was a disaster for the country, and I have no doubt in my mind that President Bush would trade his presidency if he could have 9/11 never have happened.
And also, we need to recognize that the response from the United States, the war on terror was intemperate and did massive damage, massive damage to America's standing around the world, massive damage to the lives of millions and millions of people around the world, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, that we are still feeling in 2023. And I hope that if anything possible good can come from this human tragedy, it's that Bibi Netanyahu and the world has learned a little something about America's failures after 9/11.
This is something that is intolerable and needs to be responded against in the harshest possible manner against those that are responsible for it, but 8 billion people on this planet have to find a way to learn to live together, and today we're a little farther from that than we were yesterday.
That's it for me. I'm sure I'll be covering this quite a bit going forward. I hope you're all doing well, and I'll talk to you soon.
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- Biden on Hamas attacks: “This was an act of sheer evil” - GZERO Media ›
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Are Russian tanks on the move?
What We’re Watching: Ukraine latest, Israel blocks arms to Kyiv
Israel blocks sale of Iron Dome to Ukraine. To help bolster Ukrainian defense, Washington has been trying to transfer advanced Iron Dome missile defense systems to Kyiv. But Israel, a staunch US ally, has reportedly blocked the sale, wary of drawing Russia’s ire. (Israel and the US both need to agree to sell the jointly developed technology to a third party.) Israel is one of few countries that maintains constructive diplomatic ties with both Russia and Ukraine, but for Israel, the stakes with the Kremlin are particularly high: President Vladimir Putin, a powerbroker in the Syrian civil war, has long been willing to turn a blind eye to Israeli airstrikes in Syria targeting Iranian weapons headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon. But Israel also maintains warm trade and diplomatic ties with Ukraine. Israel has been trying to tread carefully, but if Russia invades Ukraine in the weeks ahead, Israel won’t be able to stay on the fence, particularly if the US calls on Western allies to impose harsh sanctions against Russia.
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, as seen from Ashkelon.
What We're Watching: American missile defense, Chilean impeachment scandal
The US ups its missile defense game. Israel has used for years a precise missile defense system — known as the Iron Dome — as a bulwark against short-range rocket attacks from terror groups. In recent weeks, the US has been using the same technology — jointly developed by Israeli and American defense contractors — in the US Pacific territory of Guam to test its own defense capabilities against Chinese weapons, according to the Wall Street Journal. This comes after Beijing, as part of a military drill, recently sent sophisticated hypersonic missiles into space that could reach Guam, about 1,800 miles from mainland China. The Pentagon is not messing around in anticipating potential threats from Beijing right now as bilateral tensions continue to rise. However, the DOD says this tech isn't a long-term fix because Iron Dome isn't meant to be used to thwart cruise missiles, which are capable of transporting a nuclear warhead long distances. Meanwhile, the US military has requested more than $200 million to develop a new missile defense system for Guam, but Congress has yet to deliver.
Chilean impeachment. Chile's outgoing President Sebastián Piñera was impeached on Tuesday by the lower house of parliament, with 78 out of 155 votes in favor, the minimum needed to approve the measure. The reason? He was one of 14 current world leaders named in the so-called Pandora Papers, which recently exposed global tax-dodging among the world's most powerful. According to the report, one of Piñera's sons used an offshore company to avoid paying taxes on the 2011 sale of a mining project co-owned by the family. What's more, the buyer demanded that the Chilean government — headed at the time by Piñera — not classify the area as a nature reserve in order to keep it open for mining. (The president, one of Chile's richest men, has denied any wrongdoing.) Piñera will likely survive impeachment because his allies have a majority in the Senate. Still, he'll leave office with a 79 percent disapproval rating, and the impeachment probe will probably hurt his center-right party ahead of presidential elections on November 21. Right now the frontrunner is far-right Pinochet enthusiast José Antonio Kast, widely expected to win the first round but then lose the runoff in December to far-left former student leader Gabriel Boric.