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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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Israel-Hamas war: Who is responsible for Gaza's enormous civilian death toll?
Now Jose Andres is, he's obviously very angry. He's very upset. Who wouldn't be in that environment? He's blaming Israel, says that this was intentionally targeting his workers. I have a hard time believing that the Israeli Defense Forces would have wanted to kill his workers intentionally in the sense that they understand the blowback that would come and the idea of just going after aid workers, if the West were to find out about that, would clearly be damaging for Israel across the board. Having said that, I do believe that they targeted these convoys. In other words, they knew that they were going to hit aid workers, but they believed that one of the people in this convoy was a militant, a Hamas militant, and the willingness to take civilian casualties, known civilian casualties in order to get a target that has some value, Hamas target is not only considered acceptable, but is sort of standard practice in the war in Gaza.
So yes, they hit one of the cars in the convoy, the truck, then the second and then a third. Those targets were assessed and evaluated. These are not dumb missiles. These are guided missiles, and they know exactly what they are hitting and what they are trying to take out. The question of course is, is this acceptable? And this is not new. It is not a one-off. I mean, they apologize this time because of the high level of attention, because it's Jose Andres and because an American and Westerners were killed.
But others have brought this up in previous aid worker strikes. We saw Cindy McCain on behalf of the World Food Program connected to the United Nations, has said that this has been going on for months now, and she's brought it up and Congress members have brought it up directly with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He's promised he's going to do something about it. That hasn't been the case. Hasn't gotten much attention because there you're talking about Palestinians that are getting targeted and getting killed, and that doesn't get anywhere near the attention that Jose Andres and an American and a bunch of white people.
But nonetheless, it is a consistent level of focus of if you're trying to ensure that you are getting every high, mid and low value Hamas militant target, and there's tens of thousands of them, you are willing to accept that large numbers of civilians are going to get caught up in this. Now, who's to blame for all of this? Anyone that's saying the Israelis are only to blame for this, I strongly disagree because Hamas, as an organization is operating in civilian areas, densely populated civilian areas, in hospitals, under hospitals, in schools, under schools with human shields. They're doing so intentionally both to try to protect their fighters, but also to ensure maximum PR information war damage on the Israelis when they target Hamas so that they have to be responsible for killing civilians.
And the fact that Hamas is actively doing that, putting their civilians in maximum danger, maximum danger, to help ensure that they can achieve their own ideological and political goals, it means that they are responsible for deaths of Palestinian civilians. But anyone that says that Hamas is solely responsible and Israel has no responsibility, clearly isn't paying attention. I mean, if Israel is apologizing for these aid workers because they happen to be Westerners, that means that they are targeting people that is excessive, that that's not okay even if they believe that there is one militant in that group. And that would be equally true if those people that were killed were all Palestinians. It's not just because they are Australians or Americans, that their lives have value after all. And we are talking about over 30,000 people that have been killed. Two thirds of which according to the IDF are civilians.
That's an enormous number. It's a higher rate of civilian casualties per day than we have seen in any war in modern times. More than Syria, more than Iraq, more than Afghanistan, or Ukraine, or Sudan, or Yemen. That's what we're seeing in Gaza right now. And that is why the United States government has said that they will not continue to support Israel the way they have if there is not a change in protection of civilians and ensuring that humanitarian aid gets through. This is new for the Biden administration. President Biden has been very, very reluctant to have any direct consequences to the Israelis. And now you are talking about conditioning a level of military support for Israel on an active change, not just no longer attacking Rafah, which is something that Netanyahu has said he's going to do. The war cabinet has said they're going to do, and they have not yet done a ground offensive on the ground in Rafah.
But now they're saying, unless you change the rules for how you are protecting civilians and how you are allowing humanitarian aid, then American aid for Israel is going to be withdrawn, American military support. It's a hard thing for Biden to do. He's going to get a lot of opposition both from Republicans and from some Democrats and Bibi Netanyahu is going to increasingly, I suspect publicly, try to use that against him. Now, the pressure is on the Israeli Prime Minister at home. It is growing because, well, for a number of reasons. One is because they're having a hard time with whether or not there will be exemptions for Orthodox, for the Haredim, Jews that are given exemptions from military service. Benny Gantz has said, if that exemption continues, that he's not going to stay in the government. On the other hand, the far right, the religious right have said that they will no longer support Netanyahu and his coalition if he backs away from that.
Now you've seen that Gantz has said that he is no longer going to support the government going forward. He's calling for elections, though if he pulls out of the war cabinet, then they still have a coalition in the Knesset. So it's not an immediate push away from Netanyahu, but the pressure is growing. Clearly Bibi is more willing both to continue and escalate the war, but also to take the fight directly and politically to Biden and the United States to do what he can to stay in power. So that pressure's growing. That certainly is part of it. It informs why we're seeing more talk of growing strikes into Lebanon, deeper into Lebanon that could bring Hezbollah into the war. This also informs the decision to attack right next to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, taking out a high-level IRGC leader that is providing support in the proxy war in Syria against the United States, against Israel makes it more likely, whether by accident or through direct escalation that the United States and Israel are eventually in a war with Iran.
And the one part of the conversation between the Israeli Prime Minister and Biden that was clearly aligned was when Biden told the Israelis that they are very aware of the expanded threats from Iran against Israel. And the US will do everything they can to support Israel in that fight. So this is a really, really sticky situation politically. It is a very dangerous military situation in the region. It is one that is clearly hurting Biden at home. It's likely to get worse before it gets better. That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon. Be good.
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