This is a reductionist perspective, rooted in a bigoted worldview that overlooks Iran’s history and the role strategic thinking plays in its policymaking, despite being an authoritarian theocracy.
My interlocutor is not unique. His brand of ignorance is clear in American planning for this war, which was based on the assumption that if Iran’s Supreme Leader and senior officials were assassinated, the government would either collapse or become willing to accept US diktats.
These wildly inaccurate presumptions are based on the theocratic nature of the Iranian state. It is a country led by clerical leaders, grounded in Islamic principles, in which religious and secular policymaking overlap.
Unfortunately, secular government is not immune to religious influences, let alone the millennialism ascribed to Iran’s clerical regime. For example, both Israel and the United States claim to be democracies founded on religious beliefs.
Millennialist policymakers are perfectly at home in both governments, many of whom find evidence of Iran and Islam being an existential threat in the pages of the Bible.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee recently said out loud what Christian Zionists in government are not supposed to admit: that Israel is entitled to the entire Middle East, from the Nile to the Euphrates rivers.
Huckabee’s interviewer, Tucker Carlson (a notorious Antisemite and Islamophobe), got the ambassador to the point of admitting that Jesus would return to earth, killing most of the Jews except for those few who accept his divinity.
It’s an appalling, albeit expected, racist admission. But Muslims don’t get that chance in Huckabee’s Christianity.
In Israel, extremists who pine for a war against Islam, from which the Third Temple will emerge with the coming of the Messiah, are regarded as marginal. However, their influence on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is disproportionate.
Still, despite the considerable power that extremist cabinet ministers like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir have, it would be a stretch to say that this religious fanaticism is the sole explanation for Israel’s war.
It bears noting that there is a millennial concept that is particularly important in Shi’a Islam called Mahdism, and it certainly has influence, particularly among the more conservative elements in Iran’s religious and, therefore, political hierarchy.
Yet, given Iran’s defensive posture in both of its recent wars with Israel, as well as its longstanding religious prohibition against weapons of mass destruction, there is scant evidence that Mahdism is the sole reason for Iran’s massive military industrial complex.
Built on the back of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, and in response to Western sanctions, Iran’s armed forces, and its homegrown missiles and drones, are more a testimony to the Islamic Republic’s continuous conflicts with the outside world than religion.
However, in Israel, there is a very real end-times ideology that is playing out before our eyes. Secular in appearance, it goes well beyond the worst kippa-wearing radicals like Ben Gvir and the autocratic aspirations of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Take, for example, Yair Lapid, a leader of the opposition, arguably the closest to the Democratic Party in the United States, and a former prime minister.
On Saturday night, Lapid tweeted, “Israel must destroy all the Iranian oil fields and energy industry on Kharg Island, that’s what will crush the Iranian economy and overthrow the regime.”
Kharg Island is the most important source of Iran’s oil exports. Destroying it would send the already crippled Iranian economy into a tailspin; it would take decades to recover.
Wiping Kharg out would also be a major blow to the world’s oil supply, with all the attendant economic implications. Like Netanyahu, Lapid doesn’t care.
Hours later, Israel struck oil refineries in Tehran, filling the air with toxins for dozens of miles. This wasn’t coincidental. Israel was testing the retaliation it would provoke.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham broadcast the US response. The South Carolina lawmaker admonished Israel, tweeting, “Please be cautious about what targets you select. Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavour.”
It’s easy to dismiss the idea that Graham, who has backed sanctions and bombing Iran for years, cares about Iran’s civilian population.
However, he is obviously concerned about the effect destroying the country’s petroleum industry will have on both the global and Iranian economies after the war.
Graham is speaking for the Trump Administration here, as he wouldn’t dare do anything else, especially at this moment.
This is a key point of divergence between Jerusalem and Washington. It’s why Israel is extremely concerned that the United States will end the war, an outcome which would force Israel to relent as well, as it cannot sustain its offensive without American support.
The US blundered into this war with little thought about the consequences. Donald Trump believed that Iran would quickly collapse, or at least give in to his demands, once the Supreme Leader and some of his top aides were assassinated.
When that didn’t happen, Trump switched to nonstop bombing.
As much as the US president pursues suicidal policies, he does so out of ignorance, hubris, megalomania, and short-sightedness. This was no different.
When Donald Trump kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, he was content to replace him with someone who would “do business” with him.
Netanyahu made it clear that it was not an option in Iran. Following the targeted assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Defence Minister Israel Katz followed up by announcing that it didn’t matter who succeeded him. Israel would kill them next.
Trump and Bibi have different goals. The president wants to reduce Iran’s influence to the point where it cannot oppose America in the Middle East, either with its military capabilities, its ideological leadership, or its network of allies.
Netanyahu wants more. He wants an atomised Iran, one that no longer functions as a state at all. He understands fully that, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya before it, a decimated Iran would be a breeding ground of instability and radicalism.
It is the inevitable result of a state’s collapse caused by warfare. Neither Trump nor his Arab Gulf allies want any part of that future. But that is what Israel seeks.
This isn’t sadism on Netanyahu’s part. It’s simply a calculation of interest. The Israeli government’s very existence depends on the Jewish population’s insecurity.
Israel’s international support, likewise, depends on the fear for its safety that its supporters throughout the world, Jewish and otherwise, feel.
It’s worth noting that, although the war is very popular in Israel, many Israelis do not embrace Bibi’s entropic vision.
In the Washington Post on Monday, speaking off the record, Israeli officials were quoted as expressing their dismay at fighting in Iran until regime change came about, a goal they see as unattainable.
The article’s author specifically noted that this view represented a sharp disagreement with Netanyahu. As we saw, it’s a disagreement with the opposition in Israel as well.
It is Israel, not Iran, that wants to sow chaos in the region.
Benjamin Netanyahu knew from the start that this war would not conclude quickly. But he desires an atomised Iran, and the consequences only matter to him insofar as they impact the government and ruling structure of Israel.
Bibi is now putting all his efforts into convincing Trump to stay the course. This is an end-times strategy.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
