A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
OPINION:
“There are decades,” Vladimir Lenin reportedly said, “where nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.” Recent events in the Middle East prove as much. The long war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel has entered a new phase, and many in the media have chosen sides.
In the early morning hours of Friday, Israel carried out a series of devastating strikes inside Iran in a bid to take out Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. In one simultaneous blow, Israel eliminated no fewer than a dozen top Iranian military commanders and the majority of the regime’s nuclear scientists.
Indeed, Israel’s attack is one for the books. The Jewish state reportedly built a drone base inside Iran and largely eliminated Iran’s air defenses outright. Consequently, Israel now owns Iran’s skies and is capable of striking virtually anywhere at will. Israeli forces also targeted Iran’s ground-to-air capabilities, severely degrading the regime’s drone and ballistic missile capabilities. The Iranian military intelligence headquarters have been blown up, and the majority of Iran’s nuclear sites have been hit, most of them repeatedly. More work remains, but by any standard, the opening hours of the Israeli operation, dubbed Rising Lion, have produced a historic success.
To be sure, the Islamic republic has wantonly lobbed ballistic missiles at Israel, causing death and destruction, but the regime’s supply isn’t finite, nor is its capacity or will. Israel’s precision strikes were aimed at eliminating key Iranian figures by killing them in their luxurious apartments or military bunkers.
By contrast, Iranian missiles have rained down indiscriminately, killing and maiming dozens. Not for the first time, Israel has targeted terrorists while its opponents kill innocents. This is as tragic as it is unsurprising.
Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Before its 1979 Islamic Revolution, the country tilted toward the U.S. and was a key American ally. However, for nearly half a century, the country’s ruling theocrats have called for the destruction of the “Great Satan” and “Little Satan,” the United States and Israel, respectively. Regime founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his acolytes dreamed of ushering in an “Islamic epoch” with their country at its helm. The regime’s actions signal this intent.
Tehran has funded and equipped, even wholesale created, terrorist groups to do its bidding. Proxies have been targeting and killing Americans, Israelis and anyone opposed to Iran’s fever dreams for decades, from hundreds of U.S. Marines in Beirut in the 1980s to American service members in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have plotted murder and mayhem on American soil, including the assassinations of public servants. Iran sought to kill President Trump no fewer than two times. Such brazenness underscores the necessity of countering the Islamic republic’s nuclear ambitions.
The fact that the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism seeks nuclear weapons is a danger to the United States and its allies. Iran’s pursuit of intercontinental ballistic missiles, equipped with nuclear weapons, enables the regime to threaten Americans, Israelis, Europeans and others far from the Middle East. As Mr. Trump recently noted: “You can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon.”
Mr. Trump has been clear on this point. Ditto for Israel, which correctly considers a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat. A nuclear Iran would lead to an era of nuclear proliferation in a part of the world prone to war and instability and riven with ancient hatreds. It would be a disaster, as many would be, at best, forced to live with a sword to their throats, a sword wielded by ideological madmen who openly seek another Holocaust. History tells us that seeking accommodation with such tyrants is often a fool’s errand.
Tehran excels at terrorism, but as the opening salvos of the war indicate, its conventional capabilities are middling at best. Like most other bullies, the regime targets those who can’t defend themselves. Its bluster underlies its inherent weakness.
Iran does have another card to play: information warfare. For years, many in the legacy media have minimized how dangerous the regime is, arguing that any Western attempt to thwart Iran’s nuclear program would “embolden hard-liners.” Yet the regime is solely composed of such people. The true moderates have been exiled, executed or cast into infamous prisons.
As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis noted, the Obama administration’s Ben Rhodes openly bragged about creating a media “echo chamber” that sold the narrative of faux moderates to achieve the so-called Iran deal. The very terms of this “deal” meant that Tehran would eventually have nukes. The present administration, however, deals in reality, not fiction. The same can’t be said for many in the press.
The Washington Post’s Shadi Hamid labeled Israel a “rogue state that constantly undermines both U.S. interests and values.” Mr. Hamid didn’t say how American interests are served by the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. CNN took a conspiratorial tone, with guest Vali Nasr claiming the strikes were “not about the nuclear issue” but about “downgrading Iran.” The Los Angeles Times indulged in false equivalency, with a headline blaring “Israel, Iran keep up bombardment.” The New York Times published an op-ed asserting that Israel is “looking less and less like a true friend,” but nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, Israel has demonstrated its value. No other ally, be it in Europe, Asia or the Middle East, could have pulled off what Israel has managed to accomplish in the opening days of the war.
Some press and policymakers have sought to portray Israel as the aggressor, overlooking the fact that on Oct. 7, 2023, Iranian proxies perpetrated the largest slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust, and that the regime has waged a ceaseless war on the Jewish state for half a century.
It is the ruling mullahs who have chosen terrorism and the pursuit of nuclear weapons, and fittingly, it is they who will pay the price.
• The writer is a senior research analyst for the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.