Iranian diplomats reacted furiously to Monday’s Israeli airstrike on a building adjacent to Iran’s consulate in Syria. The Biden administration appears almost as peeved. State Department officials hint that Israel gave the United States very little notice of the airstrike. This reticence indicates that senior Israeli military officials no longer trust the White House to keep pending operations secret and may affirm rumors that the Biden administration previously forced Israel to call off an airstrike on a high-value terrorist target in Beirut. Recently retired Central Intelligence Agency official Ralph Goss, likely reflecting the views of his colleagues in Langley, Virginia, called the Israeli strike “reckless” and added, “It will only result in escalation by Iran and its proxies.”
Critics of the strike get responsibility exactly backward.
First, the Iranian regime has the gall to complain about violation of the sanctity of its embassy. No Iranian official has apologized for the 1979 seizure of the United States Embassy in Tehran, nor has the regime paid any price for terrorist attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait in 1981, the U.S. and French embassies in Lebanon two years later, or the Israeli embassies in Argentina, Georgia, India, or Thailand.
Second, U.S. criticism of Israel is hypocritical given the U.S. history of targeted strikes on terrorists, including Al Qaeda leaders Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimani. There is no difference between these terrorists and Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, nor do Israelis have any less right to prevent themselves from being victims of terrorism than Americans have. Jewish lives matter.
To blame Israel for any Iranian retaliation is to draw moral equivalence between a democracy and a terrorism sponsor. It is the equivalent of telling an abused wife that she should put up with beatings lest she provoke her tormentor even more.
Third, the problem is far less Israel’s strike and more the fact that the Biden administration flooded the Iranian regime and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with billions of dollars they would not have had if the White House maintained “Maximum Pressure.” Put another way, any escalation will be national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s war, because of the naiveté of his outreach to Iran and his willingness across more than a decade to strengthen and normalize the Iranian regime.
When Iran’s designated coordinator for terrorism against Israel and the West gets caught red-handed meeting and coordinating with terrorists, there should be no international sympathy nor Western second-guessing. Rather, there should be celebration: Not only did Israel hit its target, but it also so thoroughly penetrated the Qods Force, Islamic Jihad, or Hezbollah that it was able to gather actionable intelligence.
To blame Israel for any Iranian retaliation is to draw moral equivalence between a democracy and a terrorism sponsor. It is the equivalent of telling an abused wife that she should put up with beatings lest she provoke her tormentor even more. To handwring about retaliation is to rationalize terrorism and give Tehran a green light to attack.
The White House should thank Israel for removing Zahedi from the battlefield. He posed as great a threat to Americans as to Israelis. The U.S. government should never condemn a liberal democracy for preempting and preventing terrorist attacks by groups sworn to its annihilation who openly embrace genocide.
It is time for moral clarity.
