By Daled Amos
Of course, we know that Israel won that war. In fact, it beat back both the Egyptian and Syrian forces to the extent that the US had to pressure Israel to stop while its army was on the way to Cairo. Yet, according to scholar and author Raphael Patai, the initial success of the Egyptian military not only allowed Egypt to frame the war as a success for itself, but also as a victory for the Arab people as a whole. The dishonor and shame of Egypt's huge loss in 1967 during the Six-Day War were erased by this "victory" in 1973, and gave the Arabs renewed confidence.
Patai writes that this self-confidence contributed to their risking a confrontation with the West by imposing an oil embargo and quadrupling the price of crude oil. Even more important are the consequences of this new self-consequence vis-à-vis Israel. Patai writes:
A manifestation of this new Arab self-confidence is the willingness to enter into disengagement agreements with Israel. It is, in this connection, characteristic that it is precisely Egypt, the country that won what it considers a victory over Israel, which has embarked on the road of negotiation with her, while those Arab countries that have fought Israel without being able to chalk up a victory over her, or have never even fought her, are opposed to all accommodation with her. [emphasis added] (xxiv - xxv)According to Patai, Egypt's perceived victory in the October War gave Sadat the self-confidence to meet with Menachem Begin and set in motion the events that would result in peace between Egypt and Israel. On the flip side, the Arab countries that have no such face-saving experience or never fought Israel either lacked the necessary confidence to recognize Israel or--having never fought Israel--kept their distance and did not accept Israel's right to exist.
But there is another way to understand what motivates the Arab countries to make peace with the existence of Israel. Last week on the Commentary Magazine podcast, John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary Magazine, made a contrary observation:
Let me let me mention that my father, Norman Podhoretz [former editor-in-chief of Commentary Magazine], said many, many years ago that if you follow the trajectory of the wars, the actual physical wars, that Israel has waged since the beginning of its existence, what you see is that when Israel wins a war, it knocks out enemies.
He goes on to break down the wars as follows:
With the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel knocked out Jordan as a military participant by defeating Jordan, taking the West Bank, and reuniting Jerusalem.
Following Egypt's defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Sadat, four years later, flew to Jerusalem, effectively ending Egypt's participation in the war against Israel.
In 1982, at the end of the Lebanon War, Syria effectively left the battlefield. Israel removes the PLO, and Syria basically no longer plays a role against Israel. When the first and second Intifadas happened inside Israel, there was no effort to open a second front on Israel's borders. Now, there is even talk of some form of normalization with Syria.
According to Podhoretz, there is no perceived victory. Instead, the Arab countries were beaten and they know it, and that defeat is what motivates the Arabs to reach some kind of accommodation with Israel.
A core misconception about Israel’s policy since Oct. 7 is that the country has favored military action at the expense of diplomacy. The truth is that it’s Israel’s decisive battlefield victories that have created diplomatic openings that have been out of reach for decades — and would have remained so if Israel hadn’t won...Wars don’t end because Greta Thunberg gets on a boat.
Where does that leave Iran, Israel's most dangerous remaining enemy?
Khamenei has claimed that Iran defeated Israel in the Twelve-Day War, pointing to the damage wreaked on civilian targets in Israeli cities. This "victory" hardly seems to be an inspiration for the mullahs to make peace with the Little Satan. They have invested too much in an Israeli enemy to suddenly make peace. The conflict is hardwired into their ideology. And as a defeat, it is not deep enough to consider making peace, which again would run into a conflict with their ideology.
Neither framing that war as a victory nor admitting it as a defeat will move peace forward. That may explain why there is so much talk about regime change.
In an interview last week with Iran expert Meir Javedanfar on a FDD [Foundation for Defense of Democracies] podcast, there was a discussion about the deep divisions within the Iranian government between those who want to change the system and listen to the Iranian people and those who want things to stay as they are--and their motivation is not exactly theology. Javedanfar explains:
[T]here are those who want to continue with the same policies as June 12th, which is the same as the status quo, basically to continue with whatever the Islamic Republic was doing before, and they feel very threatened because any change could lead to billions of dollars worth of lost business.In this context, Jonathan Schanzer, executive director at FDD, asked about the apparent fatwa issued by Iranian religious leaders against Trump's life. Javedanfar responded:
I think it is bluster. This fatwa is part of this struggle within the Islamic Republic for the future of the Islamic Republic, which I said, in my previous comments, there are people who want to make it as difficult as possible for the regime to change direction, because they have a lot of money and a lot of positions to lose.
Jonathan Schanzer refers to the Middle East as a "basket case."
These are two reasons why.
These are two reasons why.
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