The US must deter Iran, for the sake of its own interest - opinion

• Published date: 17 April 2024
• Author: DANIEL SONNENFELD
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Iran's attack on Israel is unprecedented in two regards: the number of projectiles hurled at Israeli targets, numbering in the hundreds, and the fact that this attack was perpetrated by Iranian forces, from Iranian territory. The Islamic Republic has made sure until now to attack the Jewish state using its proxies, supposedly leaving its hands clean in the current preposterous global system in which appearances are everything. Israeli sources claimed that "99% of the Iranian response was intercepted."

While this cannot be confirmed, it is clear that the Iranians have failed to do significant damage to Israeli targets, military or civilian. A seven-year-old girl, a Muslim Arab citizen of Israel, was severely injured in the attack – tragically revealing, once again, that the first victims of Islamist politics are Muslims themselves.

Following the largely successful interception of Iranian projectiles, US President Joe Biden reportedly told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "You got a win. Take the win." Indeed, it appears that Israel has successfully delivered a blow to the IRGC and its threat on Israeli interests, while suffering relatively minor blowback.

Biden's statement, however, is a misreading of Iranian strategy and tactics, one which leads to dangerously bad policy decisions. In the same conversation, Biden reportedly said that the US would not support or assist Israel in any attacks against Iran. This despite the fact that missiles were intercepted in the skies of Israel's capital and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of its citizens found themselves running for shelter.

BIDEN'S MISTAKE rises from Western insistence on analyzing Iranian policy as that of a "normal" state actor, acting within a system of accepted international semantics, even when breaking the rules of the current world order. While perhaps understandable – Iran is, after all, a modern state – this approach leads to a mistaken interpretation of Iranian strategy, tactics used and policy success and failure.

Instead, I believe that to better comprehend Iranian strategy and tactics, we should understand the Islamic Republic's conduct as one would a terrorist organization's behavior. Naturally, several avenues of analysis can be employed beneficially to understand Iranian policy. However, the perspective presented here is not only neglected, but of particular relevance at present.

What characterizes a terrorist organization's strategy and tactics? In general terms, as the name...