03/05 Links Pt2: Hamas's Oct. 7 Attack Launched a Historic Reordering in the Middle East; Trump kicks Tucker Carlson out of MAGA movement; Israel’s Unfinished Business in Lebanon

From Ian:

Palestine’s draft constitution is a manifesto for permanent war

In a sane world, human-rights organisations would be incandescent. A constitution that makes Sharia a primary legislative source, sidelines women’s genuine equality, erases gay rights and rewards terrorism ought to trigger every alarm bell. But these NGOs have long ago abandoned moral principles in favour of a hierarchy of oppression. To them, Palestinians are sacred victims and Israel is the eternal villain. They are blind to the authoritarianism and festering anti-Semitism of Palestinian society, reserving their outrage instead for the Jewish State, which dares to defend itself against this. Peace and human dignity come secondary to the goal of seeing the Middle East’s only democracy dismantled.

Put simply, the PA’s constitution is a manifesto for permanent war. By codifying the total rejection of Israeli legitimacy, it has ensured that a peace deal based on mutual recognition is an impossibility. For any future Palestinian leader, recognising Israel would now be, quite literally, a violation of the state’s supreme law.

The silence from the British government following the release of this document is a tacit endorsement of its principles. If Starmer is so determined to recognise Palestine, he should at least have the courage to tell the public what kind of state he is backing. Why is he prepared to endorse a framework that prioritises Sharia over secular rights, canonises martyrdom, erases Jewish history and perpetuates the conflict by legal means? Is this really the ‘better future’ he was hoping for in the Middle East?

If Britain continues to recognise Palestinian statehood without demanding fundamental constitutional change, it can no longer do so under the pretence of advancing peace. The PA does not care about peace. For the UK to endorse it is not diplomacy, but a moral abdication.

Hamas's Oct. 7 Attack Launched a Historic Reordering in the Middle East

In 2023, from a tunnel beneath Gaza, Yahya Sinwar gave an order that sent thousands of Hamas fighters through the fence separating the territory from Israel. That green light has reordered the Middle East on a scale comparable to the Arab Spring or the carving up of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century - but not remotely in the ways Sinwar had in mind. 29 months later, the Middle East is almost unrecognizable. Israel stands indisputably as the military hegemon, its enemies demolished or decapitated. Sinwar is dead and the network he hoped would ride to his rescue is in ruins.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was blown up in a joint U.S.-Israeli airstrike on Saturday. The regime that bankrolled and armed the "axis of resistance" for four decades is on the edge of collapse - perhaps taking with it Hamas, Hizbullah and the Houthis. Tehran is making enemies of the entire region - firing drones and missiles haphazardly, and often including civilian targets.

On Oct. 6, 2023, it was all different. Iran's proxy network was at the peak of its power. Hamas governed Gaza. Hizbullah held Lebanon hostage with 100,000 rockets. Assad sat in Damascus, reintegrating into the Arab League after years of isolation. The Houthis controlled the Yemeni coast and menaced shipping lanes with near-impunity.

Behind them all stood Iran, with a nuclear program viewed as an imminent threat in Jerusalem and the West, backed by a missile arsenal regarded as a strong deterrent against direct Israeli or American attack. Gulf nations were quietly reestablishing ties with the Islamic republic. "Two years later, none of those pillars are standing, and the Islamic republic is never going to be the same," said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group.

What Sinwar set off was an unraveling of everything he and his sponsors yearned for - a defeated Israel, Palestinian hopes for statehood, a Middle East rid of Western influence. "Talk about a colossal miscalculation leading to catastrophic consequences," said Bilal Saab, a Chatham House fellow and former Pentagon official. "That cataclysmic event single-handedly changed the face of the Middle East."

Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has neutralized every major threat on its borders. A former senior Israel Defense Forces official said, "There is still war, but I can tell you that no one but the biggest dreamers ever thought we would be in the position we are in now. Israel is not untouchable, but we have made it very expensive to touch us."

AIJAC welcomes decision to list Hizb ut-Tahrir as a prohibited hate group

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) welcomes the decision to list Hizb ut-Tahrir as a prohibited hate group under the new legislation introduced following the Bondi terror attack. AIJAC has long called for Hizb ut-Tahrir to be formally proscribed, given its well-documented record of extreme Islamist ideology, antisemitic incitement and hostility to Australia’s democratic values.

This designation, the first of its kind under the new hate group legislation, is an important and necessary step in confronting the spread of extremist ideology that threatens social cohesion, public safety and the fundamental values of Australian society. Under the listing, individuals who are members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, recruit for it, or provide training, funding or material support to the organisation, will now be in breach of the law.

By formally designating Hizb ut-Tahrir as a prohibited hate group, authorities are sending a clear message that organisations which promote intolerance, division and extremism have no place in Australia.

AIJAC commends the Government and law-enforcement authorities for taking this important step and urges continued vigilance to ensure that extremist groups and those who support them are held fully accountable under the law.

Actress asks 'where are the college campuses' protesting Iranian regime

British Iranian actress Nazanin Boniadi called out progressive activists for their lack of outrage over the regime's human rights violations before President Donald Trump conducted military strikes against the nation.

The "Rings of Power" actress appeared on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper" Wednesday to discuss the ongoing war against Iran and concerns over the vacuum of leadership in the nation after the U.S. eliminated its leaders.

She agreed with concerns that an ISIS-level threat could take over the country but noted that several human rights activists and organizations did not acknowledge civilian deaths until after the U.S. targeted Iran.

"For people who care about international law as I do, I'm getting plenty of messages from colleagues in entertainment and saying, ‘I’m so sorry in this moment, what's happening to your people.' Thank you, but where were you a few weeks ago, when tens of thousands of Iranians were being killed by their own regime?" Boniadi asked. "This is a regime that has been violating international law for decades."

Tapper remarked that he also hadn't "really heard a ton" from international progressive activists regarding Iran's human rights violations, even after the nation launched hundreds of missile and drone strikes against other Muslim-majority countries in retaliation.

"I mean, if any other country did that, I think there'd be a huge hue and cry and huge marches in the streets. Iran does it, and there really isn't that result in the progressive community. What do you make of that?" Tapper asked.

"Look, in 1979, progressives world over, including in Iran, were all too willing to sacrifice women‘s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and every other basic human rights at the altar of anti-imperialism. Are we going to do the same in this moment? Are we really caring more about whose hands are on the trigger, or are we going to care about human lives, civilian lives?" Boniadi answered.

"This is a regime that has violated human rights," she continued. "International law has wreaked havoc on the region, domestic oppression, transnational repression, hostage diplomacy, destabilizing the region. And now, it's killing fellow Muslims in neighboring countries. Where is your outrage? Where are the college campuses?"

Boniadi, whose family fled Tehran for England following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has been a longtime supporter of Iranian protesters and has previously used her career to highlight atrocities conducted by the Iranian regime.

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03/05 Links Pt1: Who Wants This War?; The New Israeli Rules of Engagement; Iran ‘catastrophically’ miscalculated in striking Arab countries; Israel eases wartime restrictions, offices to reopen

From Ian:

Lee Smith: Who Wants This War?

The name given to the Iran campaign, Operation Epic Fury, suggests that Donald Trump’s political trajectory may have begun with the 1979 embassy takeover. It was plain proof that America was losing, and it inspired him to turn things around. America’s defeat in Vietnam, left-wing political violence, and rampant drug use left our country sucking wind during the ’70s. But the embassy siege was a public humiliation that lasted 444 days, during which the revolutionary cadres ground our faces in excrement: “The United States has made threats and raised a great deal of noise,” said Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “America can’t do a damn thing.” And because America didn’t do a damn thing, it acclimated itself to losing to Iran and its regional allies.

President Reagan rolled back the Soviet empire but blinked after the Iranians directed Hezbollah to kill U.S. armed forces, spies, and diplomats in Beirut. Bill Clinton admitted he was a loser. After the U.S. president spent political capital and personal prestige to bully Israel into giving up land to create a state under the Iranian revolutionaries’ old friend Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian terror master told Clinton no. “I’m a colossal failure,” Clinton told Arafat. “And you made me one.”

George W. Bush’s global war on terror turned Iran into a regional hegemon, presiding over what was for a time known as the Shiite crescent, reaching from the Persian Gulf to the eastern Mediterranean. Democratizing Iraq meant ensuring power would rest with the country’s Shiite majority, whose political leaders, with few exceptions, were controlled by Tehran. Even though the administration had been warned that elections in the Palestinian territories would lead to a Hamas victory, Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed for elections, which the Iranian-backed terror group won, leading to Hamas’ eventual takeover of Gaza. As if the freedom agenda hadn’t done enough harm to American regional interests, Bush stopped Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah to protect a Lebanese government the administration saw as a beacon of democracy, even if it was controlled by Hezbollah.

By withdrawing from Obama’s nuclear deal and from guarantees to protect Iran’s bomb against Israeli attacks, Trump started to roll back the losing. In January 2020, he helped initiate the terror regime’s eventual death spiral by liquidating Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, Iran’s expeditionary terror unit. “Soleimani has been perpetrating acts of terror to destabilize the Middle East for the last 20 years,” said Trump. And what the United States did “should have been done long ago,” Trump said. “A lot of lives would have been saved.”

That is, because America had gotten used to losing, because previous presidents had neglected the normal business of protecting U.S. citizens, Americans died. Trump promised victory. “I will not hesitate to deploy military force when there is no alternative. But if America fights, it must only fight to win,” Trump said in an April 2016 speech. “I will never send our finest into battle unless necessary, and I mean absolutely necessary, and will only do so if we have a plan for victory with a capital V.”

So why didn’t the influencers opposed to Trump’s Iran campaign hear that part, that what distinguished him from his predecessors wasn’t that he renounced violence against our enemies—far from it—but that he swore to win? Further, here’s a president who means not only to dismantle Iran’s threat to Americans but also to avenge the many thousands of Americans kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the Iranians in the past five decades. That’s epic fury revising in fire and steel 47 years of American defeat at the hands of an anti-American regime that no U.S. president dared to challenge until Trump.

For normal Americans, it’s inspiring to see a commander in chief picking up the gauntlet for the purpose of killing terrorists who target Americans. More than 80% of the president’s party thinks so. And thus there’s no question that the campaign run by Carlson, Kelly, Walsh, and the others is designed to demoralize Americans. The tell isn’t that they don’t know the history but that their accounts are congested with lies. Maybe they’re lying for clicks and views; maybe they’re being paid by foreign parties. In the end, the external drivers are irrelevant because the crucial factor is that the demoralizers are themselves demoralized.

Winning is hard and losing is easy. Now, after embracing the ethos of losing, and elevating it as a sign of personal virtue, the demoralizers find themselves very clearly on the losing end—on the side of the ayatollahs and at odds with the White House and the Pentagon’s display of military dominance in the skies over Iran. The lesson is that losers love company, even if that company wears clerical robes stained with the blood of thousands of Americans and many hundreds of thousands of innocent people throughout the Middle East. As the history of the American hard left shows, there is no way out of that kind of ugly bitterness, in part because that’s where history’s most determined losers feel most comfortable. For the rest of us, winning is preferable.

Amit Segal: The New Israeli Rules of Engagement

On Oct. 6, 2023, the Israeli defense establishment realized something was stirring in Gaza but failed to act. Officials were paralyzed by the fear of a miscalculation. Decades of containment, restraint and forbearance had made Israel slow to stir and vulnerable in appearance. Two and a half years later, Israel stands at the pinnacle of its power in the Middle East - a transformation that occurred only after it shed rules it had adopted in recent decades.

There are new rules of the game. For years, Israel shied away from targeted killings, granting terror leaders and Iranian officials the time and peace of mind to plot against the Jewish state. The IDF's new mindset is the exact opposite: If terrorists are running for their lives, they can't make plans to take ours.

Another rule is: when enemies announce their intention to destroy you, believe them. "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" aren't lip service or empty words. They are mission statements.

Ignoring small security problems invites larger ones. Israel fled Gaza to avoid improvised explosive devices and shooting attacks, only to be attacked by two commando divisions with the world's largest tunnel network at their disposal. It withdrew from Lebanon because it couldn't stomach 20 fallen soldiers a year; in exchange, Hizbullah entrenched itself on the border with a missile arsenal rivaled by few global powers.

For years, the enemy fired rockets and Israel replied with "proportional" force. This normalized the firing on civilians, kidnapping and invasion. But this changed after Oct. 7. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah thought he was still playing by the old rules, launching a few rockets daily. It ended with his elimination, the decapitation of his organization, and the destruction of 80% of their missile stockpile.

The new rules are in effect in the operation launched on Saturday. The Jewish state can't accept the existence in Iran of production facilities and thousands of ballistic missiles, with every launch sending half of Israel into shelters and threatening mass casualties. It can't tolerate a regime that continues to fund its greatest enemies with more than a billion dollars annually.

President Trump understood that Iran is a danger to regional and world peace. Iran's attacks on peaceful Gulf states and Cyprus show what they would have done had they been allowed to develop nuclear weapons. This war will save us from the necessity of many others.

A Weakened Iran Is Already a Victory

In the war against Iran, something major has already happened. An evil and powerful regime that has destabilized the world for nearly half a century has been significantly weakened.

Aware that its fearsome reputation has crumbled and it is now in survival mode, Iran is hoping that the hundreds of missiles and drones it is launching against Israel, American bases and Gulf countries will regain some of its honor and help it survive.

But no matter what happens, something earth-shattering has already happened in the Middle East. The world's biggest sponsor of terror has lost its power to terrorize the world.

A nation that for decades has proudly trumpeted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" is now worried about its own death.

A nation that threatened to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons is now worried about its own destruction.

Since 1979, the arrogant mullahs of Iran have been spreading their toxic poison and getting away with it.

This week, as we commemorate the failure of another Persian named Haman to destroy the Jews 2,500 years ago, these arrogant mullahs are getting a taste of their own medicine.

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03/04 Links Pt2: Iran’s shadow in Australia’s antisemitism debate; 5 Reasons Why Paraguay Matters to Israel and the Jewish People; Newsom’s Bright Idea: Defund Allies in Wartime

From Ian:

Iran’s shadow in Australia’s antisemitism debate

The political response in Canberra over the past week found a predictable reaction from the Australian Greens, led by Senator Larissa Waters. She focused squarely on condemning the military strike itself. Waters said: “The Greens condemn these illegal, abhorrent and unilateral attacks. Australians do not want to be dragged into another US-Israeli war.” She added: “Australia’s support of Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal attack last night was disgraceful. We cannot bomb our way to peace.”

In a climate of heightened sensitivity, such statements by Larissa Waters are adding fuel to the fire of a political debate already saturated with anxiety about antisemitism, extremism and foreign influence.

For Australian Jews, this convergence of events creates a uniquely complex terrain to navigate.

On one hand, many in the Jewish community view Khamenei’s leadership as synonymous with a regime that has called for Israel’s destruction, funded armed proxies targeting Jewish civilians, and, according to Australian reporting, been linked to antisemitic criminal activity domestically. On the other hand, public mourning gatherings in Australia are being defended by organisers as religious observances rooted in Shi’a tradition rather than explicit political endorsements. I see this as a thinly veiled platform to further criticise Israel and call for Australians to “globalise the Intifada”.

Layered onto that is a polarised political environment in which anti-war rhetoric, foreign policy debates, and diaspora identities intersect in unpredictable ways. The result is not a simple story of opposing camps, but a dense and emotionally charged national moment. Expressions of grief in one community are interpreted as ideological alignment by another. Political denunciations of military action are heard by some as moral consistency, and by others as insufficiently attuned to the security fears of Jewish Australians.

As the Royal Commission gathers evidence and tests the boundaries between free expression, foreign alignment, and hate, this episode illustrates the difficulty of drawing clean lines. In an era where overseas conflicts are instantly absorbed into Australia’s domestic discourse, symbols carry weight far beyond their immediate setting. For Australian Jews, the landscape is therefore not defined by a single event but by the cumulative effect of rising incident data, geopolitical reverberations, and the knowledge that narratives formed abroad can reshape the social climate at home.

In the meantime, Australia finds itself needing to balance principles of pluralism and freedom with a pressing need for security and cohesion. For many Jewish Australians, that balance feels more delicate than it has in decades. My prayers are with the most pro-Jewish US president of my lifetime, Donald Trump, as he attempts to rid the world of the most dangerous and evil regime in the history of the world in Iran.

Seth Mandel: A 2028 Contender Bets on the Nazi Tattoo Guy

Gallego’s move was important because he is testing the waters for a possible presidential run in 2028. He’s betting that the Nazi tattoo guy is where the country’s headed.

And how does Gallego himself talk about Israel? Not great. After backing Platner, he had this to say on the Iran conflict: “So Netanyahu now decides when we go to war? So much for America First.” A Democratic senator with national ambitions sounding indistinguishable from woke-right podcasters is a bad sign of what’s to come.

If the party’s officeholders engage in an Israel-bashing arms race, the distinction they think they are making between anti-Semitism and spirited criticism of Israel’s government becomes functionally meaningless. Moreover, what kind of atmosphere does this create for Jews who consider themselves part of the Democratic coalition? If the party’s prominent electeds egg on the post-tentifada atmosphere in which synagogues are mobbed by violent Hamas apologists calling for an intifada, does Ruben Gallego get to wash his hands of the repercussions of his actions simply because he didn’t say “Jews have horns”?

Now imagine Ruben Gallego and Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest assuring Jewish Democrats that they oppose hatred in all its forms including antisemitismandislamophobia. Feel better? Of course not. Recently, Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen publicly suggested AIPAC is anti-American. What’s he accomplishing besides further encouraging the anti-Semites? Nothing. They hear every dog whistle loud and clear.

What’s happening here is the creation of an environment in which anti-Semitism will grow and prosper with almost nothing to slow it down. There will be less and less room for non-closeted supporters of Israel. And that will continue until the electoral incentives in the Democratic Party change. Ruben Gallego is betting they won’t.

Students for the ayatollah

You do not have to support the US intervention in Iran to be alarmed by the students shedding tears for the ayatollah. Under his rule, Iranian authorities violently suppressed dissent. They arrested, tortured and executed those who spoke out against the Islamic Republic. Mandatory hijab-wearing is imposed by law, with security forces routinely capturing and punishing women for dress-code violations. In 2022, 22-year-old Kurd Mahsa Amini died after being detained by Iran’s morality police, sparking the Woman, Life, Freedom protests across the country. Amini had just been admitted to a university in Urmia to study biology. Yet in 2026, students at a top London university openly celebrate the regime that killed her.

When it comes to the keffiyeh-wearing tote-bag-resistance class, many of whom grew up in Kent or Surrey and know nothing of Iran, Islamism or anything else, it is easy to dismiss such ayatollah apologism as ignorance, stupidity or naivety. Indeed, the bizarre notion that Islamic extremists – from Hamas and Hezbollah to the ayatollahs – are a part of some ‘global left alliance’ has a long, shameful history among post-class ‘progressives’. Meanwhile, Britain’s Islamists, who are legion on modern campuses, understand perfectly well what they are supporting and why when they express grief for Khamenei.

Since the student vigils started garnering attention in the press, the MSC has hit back, accusing the media of trying to ‘smear Shia Muslim students’. It also claims that accusations of ‘extremism’ are ‘Islamophobic’ for focussing on a ‘fake issue’ that ‘does not exist in the UK’.

The trouble is, the embrace of Islamist fanaticism is sadly nothing new for British universities. We saw it in October 2023, when students at Oxford chanted ‘Long live the intifada’ on campus. We saw it last year, when a ‘feminist’ society at Goldsmiths held a ‘night of remembrance’ for the butchers and rapists of the 7 October pogrom. No doubt we shall see more of it tonight, when the University of Manchester holds its candlelit vigil in honour of the supreme leader’s memory.

These campus celebrations of Islamic tyranny can no longer be dismissed as simple naivety or youthful radicalism. It is now a fixture of British universities and beyond. Those weeping for the ayatollah know they are on the side of barbarism.

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03/04 Links Pt1: With Iran attacking the region, Israel has the chance to step out of the villain role; The US and Israel are fighting the same war — in opposite political realities

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: With Iran attacking the region, Israel has the chance to step out of the villain role

While much of the Jewish world marked Purim yesterday, Jerusalem is celebrating it today. The reason rests within Jewish law and memory. In antiquity, Jerusalem was a walled city, so it observes Purim on Adar 15, a day later than most communities in what Jews call Shushan Purim (Purim in walled cities).

Per the Book of Esther, Jews in Persia’s capital, Shushan, fought one more day, thus celebrated one day later. Jerusalem keeps that tradition alive, as if the city insists on living within the tale’s original rhythm.

One phrase from Purim captures the holiday’s spirit better than any military briefing. It is the term v’nahafoch hu, which suggests that all on this day is the opposite, all on this day is flipped upside down.

In the megillah, the plot reverses: The threatened become the defenders, the confident become the anxious, and the power dynamics turn upside down. Jerusalem reads that line in the scroll today with costumes in the street and, this year, with a war in the background.

The war has already delivered its own v’nahafoch hu.

A War Too Logical to Explain By Abe Greenwald
Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.

The amnesiacs are forgetting America’s case for war on Iran not because the regime’s crimes directly caused them trauma. They’re discarding it, rather, because what’s traumatic for them is to accept that Israel, the U.S., and Donald Trump are doing the right, moral, and necessary thing—after so many administrations allowed the threat to grow.

This problem, like most of our current maladies, manifests in different versions on the left and right. To many on the left, American action abroad is by definition criminal. So, too, are the existence of Israel and Trump’s exercise of presidential power. Only the enemies of the U.S. and the Jewish state are righteous in the use of deadly force.

A smaller contingent on the right shares the left’s hostility to Israel and sees any shared goals between it and the U.S. as the deceptive product of Jewish manipulation. Alliances in general are a zero-sum trap for an America that must always shoulder the burden. Indeed, these populist right-wingers have anathematized a whole range of concepts and terms that would otherwise explain Trump’s decision to strike. Preemptive war is immediately suspect and specifically unacceptable absent an imminent threat. American military intervention becomes morally tainted if a byproduct of its success is the protection or liberation of non-Americans. And regime change is the language of madmen and fools.

For years, Trump helped to promote these anti-historical attitudes. They now permeate different parts of MAGA to varying degrees. As a result, he and his administration are at a loss to explain what they clearly now understand: that strong alliances based on shared values are the guarantors of civilization, and that the U.S.-Israel alliance is the strongest of all; that it’s better to strike one’s enemies before they pose an imminent threat; that liberation from tyranny is a rare miracle that the United States alone can facilitate in foreign lands; and that, except in wars over land, regime change is the only way that wars end.

Administration figures have instead offered thin, sometimes contradictory, justifications for Operation Epic Fury. These attempts at assuaging right-wing skeptics only stoke the populist suspicion that they’re being lied to. And they are, only not in the way they think. Trump isn’t protecting the secret agenda of an all-powerful cabal. He’s hiding the fact that he took his base for a wild ride only to return to the boring but valuable realities of establishment statecraft.

Spoiled by Peace, Again By Abe Greenwald
Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.

When the U.S. went to war with Iran, more Americans disapproved than approved of the decision. But two new polls, one by Fox News and the other by Politico, show the country is now split almost evenly on the question. The change isn’t surprising. American and Israeli forces have done an incredible job of targeting the regime and its weapons, and success is a sure path to popularity. But when support for a war hangs on day-to-day military fortunes, that war is only as popular as the latest developments.

If Americans were down on the war from the start, and if that’s their baseline attitude, I suspect it has a lot less to do with the logical reasons for skepticism that pundits cite and more to do with feelings toward Donald Trump and ideas about America’s general safety.

There are, of course, many Americans who are unable to support anything that Trump does. Given that the president’s popularity has taken a big hit over the past year, I doubt he’d have made much headway with the public regarding Iran even if he and his administration hadn’t offered a confusing account of its war aims and painted a very blurry portrait of victory.

But beyond the public’s feelings about Trump, there’s the matter of how Americans think about threats to the country. The fact is, it’s very hard for many of us to believe that foreign actors or countries pose a threat to the United States so great as to require military action.

There are multiple reasons for this. One is that a massive majority of living Americans have enjoyed some or all of what’s called the Long Peace—the period from the end of World War II to the present. When your life coincides with a stretch of history during which there has been no great-power conflict, you can begin to believe that’s the norm. And if your own country—the United States—is the chief cause and guarantor of that peace, you’re even more likely to believe in it.

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03/03 Links Pt2: Antizionism fuels the hatred of Jews; The Politics of the 'Good Jew'; This Purim, think of the 10,000 Jews who cannot celebrate

From Ian:

The holocaust that wasn’t

Persia is now Iran, and they have been plotting to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth for decades. They built an empire of proxies across the Middle East, from Iraq and Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza — planning to circle the Jewish Nation in a ring of fire that would be our ultimate destruction.

And then came October 7. For one day, the Gazan invasion brought the Holocaust to Israel. With deep understanding of history, the invasion was methodically planned to recreate the deepest Jewish horror in modern history — using fire, torture, and terror to rip families apart and not only slaughter but break the spirit of the Nation of Israel.

But we did not break.

The Nation of Israel fought back. And the nations of the world expressed horror at the death toll of the enemy who had tried to destroy us. And even some Jews joined the cries of pity for those who wished to slaughter Jewish men, women, and children.

We retrieved all of our hostages, dealt debilitating blows to all the proxies, and even struck the head of the snake — Iran.

But we were stopped before the job was completed.

And today we know that the ayatollahs of Iran are trying to reignite their ring of fire — their nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and their proxies.

And they slaughtered thousands of their own people who rebelled against the evil regime.

President Trump, like the king of ancient Persia, made decrees. He promised the demonstrators of Iran, “Help is on the way.” He told the world that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles that threaten other nations. And he built up unprecedented military might, ready to be unleashed on Iran.

But the ideologues of Iran will not — cannot — change their murderous ideology, because to do so would mean rejecting their identity. Like Haman, their one true desire is to destroy all of the Jews.

And they will never stop unless they are made to stop.

And now the world is waiting. What will President Trump decide? And what is he waiting for?

Iran is an existential threat to the Nation of Israel, a danger to the people of Iran, and the cause of enormous suffering around the world.

And now, as I write, the first siren goes off — not because there are incoming missiles, but because the attack has begun on Iran and we are to be ready for whatever might come next.

It is almost as if President Trump was waiting for Purim. Perhaps the man who writes his name in gold on towers he built knows that the stories of the Jews last longer than any building.

Happy Purim. There will be no celebrations now, but hopefully, when this is over, there will be. It is time for the horror Iran has inflicted on the world to be turned upside down and become a time of rejoicing and freedom — an opportunity for a better future for Israel, the Middle East, and the world.

Antizionism fuels the hatred of Jews

Denying Jews the rights afforded to all other peoples is not criticism, it is bigotry. Allowing Israel to be defined by libels rather than to be appraised along the same lines as all other states is not a political opinion, it is discrimination. And this discrimination is causing clear and present harm.

Indeed, the ideology responsible for this harm continues to not only be treated as legitimate political expression but applauded as brave dissent against a conspiratorial conception of Jewish power. This is how antizionism functions as a mask: by wrapping anti-Jewish hostility in the moral language of the day, it transforms prejudice into principle. As it has been throughout history, the targeting of Jews is repackaged as moral necessity.

For the overwhelming majority of Jews, Zionism is not a political position but an expression of peoplehood and self-determination – an indispensable and inextricable part of our Jewish identity. Targeting “Zionists” is a socially permissible way to target Jews, while offering plausible deniability.

Most institutions still refuse to make this connection.

Naming antizionism would require institutions to confront a belief system they have treated as morally legitimate, despite its discriminatory outcomes. Until they do, universities will continue to enforce anti-racism codes while tolerating antizionist “activism” that systematically marginalises Jewish students. Legal institutions will affirm equality before the law while permitting rhetoric that casts Jewish collective identity as inherently criminal. Politicians will condemn antisemitism in principle while remaining silent about Its contemporary permutation.

The upcoming Royal Commission has an opportunity to change this, and that must start with naming antizionism as the key driver of the anti-Jewish hostility now gripping Australia.

This “elephant in the room” will not disappear through silence. It must be named. And once named, it must be confronted. Otherwise, Jewish Australians will continue to hear solemn assurances that antisemitism is unacceptable — while watching the extremist and bigoted ideology that fuels it remain comfortably within the bounds of respectable debate.

The Politics of the 'Good Jew'

Historically, rulers could say: “I am not anti-Jewish; I employ one.” Today, movements can say: “We are not antisemitic; Jews support us.” The structure may be different, but the function looks strikingly similar. Just as in the past, this arrangement does not necessarily protect the broader Jewish community.

After the October 7th pogrom, when antisemitic incidents surged globally, it did not matter whether a Jew was Zionist, anti-Zionist, Left-wing, Right-wing, religious, or secular. Synagogues required security. Jewish schools increased guards. Students hid their Stars of David. The mob does not distinguish between court factions.

The medieval Court Jew believed that his access to power insulated him from the prejudices of the street. That turned out to be dead wrong — and deadly. The modern Jewish figure who aligns with dominant anti-Israel narratives may believe that proximity to cultural legitimacy offers similar insulation. They will learn, soon enough, that antisemitism is never that discriminating. Movements that chant “From the river to the sea” do not append footnotes clarifying which Jews are exempt. Conspiracy theories about “Zionist influence” do not pause to verify individual ideological credentials.

When Jewish identity itself is framed as structurally powerful, morally suspect, or politically malignant, internal Jewish disagreements offer little shield. There is a difficult tension here: Jewish tradition values debate, the Talmud is built on dissent, Zionism itself emerged from fierce ideological argument.

The problem is not that Jews disagree. It is that non-Jewish institutions selectively reward Jewish dissent that undermines Jewish collective security, while dismissing Jewish concerns about antisemitism as self-serving. That dynamic replicates something deeply old: Jews are most welcome when they reassure power, least welcome when they assert communal vulnerability.

One of Zionism’s central promises was the end of court politics. It would see Jewish policemen put Jewish criminals in Jewish jails. No more pleading before princes or dependence on elite favor. Sovereignty meant self-definition. Security meant self-defense. In the Diaspora, of course, Jews remain minorities. Engagement with broader society is inevitable and necessary. But the temptation to seek validation through disavowal is not new.

History shows that the court is never permanent. Legitimacy borrowed from power is conditional, and acceptance predicated on denunciation is fragile. The court will recalculate when the winds shift. The question for our moment is not whether Jews may criticize Israel, but whether Jewish identity itself is becoming contingent on ideological compliance — rewarded when it serves dominant narratives, suspect when it resists them.

We have seen this movie before, and many remakes. None have been good.

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03/03 Links Pt1: Iran’s Irrational Self-Destruction; Spencer: Ending A Campaign Of Violence Is Not Starting A War; Britain Walks a Mile in Israel’s Shoes

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Iran’s Irrational Self-Destruction

Vladimir Jabotinsky once said of the role of anti-Semitism in World War II: “The Jewish tragedy is, of course, not the microbe which has caused this war. It is only the culture-medium in which the microbe has grown to maturity.”

The same might be said of Iran’s quest to destroy the Jews at the expense of its own sustainability.

Jabotinsky wouldn’t live to see how right he was—in this, as was usually the case, the Zionist intellectual was a prophet. As the Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer noted about the Nazis: “The killing was totally anti-pragmatic, anti-modern, anti-capitalistic, anti-cost-effective. They murdered the inhabitants of the Lodz ghetto although they were producing essential goods for the German Army; they did the same in Bialystok and elsewhere.” In 1942, the Germans “took some 40,000 or so Jews from the ghettoes near [a] planned road and established slave labor camps for them to build it. And as they were building the road, these Jews were killed.”

Yaron Pasher tried to quantify it: “had the Germans taken the 3,000 trains that were used during the war for the Final Solution plus 2,000 trains of booty to move troops to the front (whether the Eastern Front or the Western Atlantic Wall), the Wehrmacht could have in general transferred approximately seventy-one divisions — namely, about five armies totaling just about half a million troops with full gear, including the horses and other pack animals on which German logistics were based.”

I know people are tired of Nazi analogies, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that the ayatollahs in Iran were similarly beset with, and blinded by, a self-defeating obsession with the Jews.

To Iran, nuclear capability would give the regime two different ways to threaten a new Holocaust: a bomb itself, obviously, but also a nuclear umbrella that would give it immunity from outside attack and enable it to encircle the Jewish state in a “ring of fire” in perpetuity, making life in Israel increasingly difficult, squeezing Israel’s economy, and eroding its territory by making its existing borders indefensible.

The rallying of Western allies committed to nonproliferation used several means to derail Iran’s pursuit of a bomb. One of those means was economic: the policy of “maximum pressure.” President Trump made such pressure a priority, bleeding the Iranian economy with sanctions. The administration itself estimated that by mid-2019, the pressure campaign had cost Iran $10 billion in lost oil exports alone.

The President Fixes a Historical Mistake

President Trump is making a long-overdue correction to decades of a flawed U.S. Iran policy. Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been, both in ideology and in action, an enemy of the U.S. Washington tolerated its provocations, fearing regional instability or a military quagmire; or they convinced themselves that the Iranians, despite their fanatical rhetoric, were rational actors who could be bargained with.

Especially after the failure of U.S. nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, which inadvertently strengthened Tehran's hand in the region, Iran came to be seen as a problem the U.S. would have to live with, for good and for ill.

The basic logic of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was that Washington should recognize Iran's aspirations as legitimate, so that the mullahs would come to feel they had a stake in maintaining the regional order. American allies, in turn, would have to learn to "share the neighborhood" with Iran. This meant restraining U.S. allies from taking their own steps to check Iran's growing regional power.

The fatal flaw in the scheme was in misunderstanding Iran's motivations. The mullah's terror regime wanted what it had always wanted and said it wanted over and over, which was to destroy the U.S.-led order in the region, wipe Israel off the map, and overthrow the Gulf Arab states in a global Islamic revolution to be headquartered in Tehran. The U.S.'s accommodating policy allowed Iran to build a fearsome regional empire. This made the Oct. 7 attacks possible. President Trump is making a long-overdue correction to decades of a flawed U.S. Iran policy. Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been, both in ideology and in action, an enemy of the U.S. Washington tolerated its provocations, fearing regional instability or a military quagmire; or they convinced themselves that the Iranians, despite their fanatical rhetoric, were rational actors who could be bargained with.

Especially after the failure of U.S. nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, which inadvertently strengthened Tehran's hand in the region, Iran came to be seen as a problem the U.S. would have to live with, for good and for ill.

The basic logic of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was that Washington should recognize Iran's aspirations as legitimate, so that the mullahs would come to feel they had a stake in maintaining the regional order. American allies, in turn, would have to learn to "share the neighborhood" with Iran. This meant restraining U.S. allies from taking their own steps to check Iran's growing regional power.

The fatal flaw in the scheme was in misunderstanding Iran's motivations. The mullah's terror regime wanted what it had always wanted and said it wanted over and over, which was to destroy the U.S.-led order in the region, wipe Israel off the map, and overthrow the Gulf Arab states in a global Islamic revolution to be headquartered in Tehran. The U.S.'s accommodating policy allowed Iran to build a fearsome regional empire. This made the Oct. 7 attacks possible.

The Iran Endgame

On Sunday, Trump disclosed that he had agreed to talk with the regime and that they may now be more amenable to a deal—whatever that means at this point. Aside from optics, it is unclear what benefits such a “deal” would have for the United States or its allies. Furthermore, we have no idea who the president has agreed to talk to, since, as he put it, “most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone.” Trump did not mention whether his “three very good candidates” for leadership in Iran are among the living. In fact, he later indicated that they were all dead: “The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump told ABC News. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”

A few hours before his Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump offered yet another set of options. He told a media outlet that he had several “off ramps”: “I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding.’”

Neither of those options is particularly promising, either, as they both could result in the same undesirable outcome: the survival of the IRGC. On the other hand, what Trump means by “take over the whole thing” is unclear. But, given that the president is not interested in an Iraq-style takeover, it seems likely that such a scenario would morph into some version of the “Venezuela option.”

A third, hybrid option would offer the worst of both worlds: a quick end to the campaign followed by a Venezuela scenario. Yet any scenario that involves rehabilitating figures such as Larijani, assuming he’s still alive, or other IRGC veterans, such as Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (who is also being promoted as a “Delcy” candidate), and lending renewed legitimacy to IRGC structures is clearly a terrible idea, for all the aforementioned reasons: It will lead to renewed IRGC control of the country, this time backed by the United States. A future Democratic administration would likely build on any such arrangement, including the removal of sanctions, to further strengthen an IRGC-led government, leading to a resurgence of the current regime under an American protective umbrella.

Given these options, and their negative likely outcomes, the preferable course of action is to continue to, first of all, destroy all critical nuclear and ballistic missile infrastructure in Iran while continuing to decimate the IRGC’s command structure as far down as possible—not just on the military side, but also the “political” (including Larijani and Ghalibaf and others). This could be done over a reasonable amount of time. Then, as the president said in his speech, let the Iranians seize their moment and figure it out. No “taking it over” and no “Venezuela.” Kill our enemies, obliterate their command structures, annihilate their offensive capabilities, and go home.

Whether the president will decide on this course of action or choose one of the many available off-ramps or “deals” will become clear soon enough. To date, the U.S.-Israeli joint campaign has been a model of operational integration and division of labor. But given the existing uncertainty, it behooves Israel—which, as of Sunday, has claimed to have eliminated some 40 senior figures on the clerical, military, and IRGC sides—to intensify the pace of targeting the command structure even beyond the first tier and to include “political” figures like Larijani (who reportedly has been targeted), Ghalibaf, and the rest of the country’s leadership cohort. The fewer such figures the Iranian opposition, however fractured, has to contend with, and the fewer experienced cadres it has to draw on for support, the more successful attempts to build something new in Iran are likely to be. If the opposition fails, a weakened IRGC is better than a stronger IRGC, especially one backed by the United States.

That the Iran regime, whose hands are soaked in American blood, has lived this long is a long-standing affront to the United States. Since 1981, the survival of the regime has emboldened American foes throughout the world while threatening the security interests of the United States and its regional allies. It allowed the regime to kill hundreds of Americans as well as hundreds of thousands of people throughout the region, and to murder its opponents on the soil of free countries around the world. Instead of putting an end to these malign activities, successive American administrations have kept Iran’s terrorist regime on life support, with Barack Obama even briefly elevating it to allied status. Its destruction would be a sizable contribution to world peace—while serving the American national interest. That alone should be enough.

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03/02 Links: America’s Invaluable Ally; The death of a tyrant; Tehran’s traffic cameras allowed Israel to track Khamenei; Two more US servicemembers killed raising total to 6

From Ian:

Israeli President: "If Someone Rises to Kill You, Rise to Kill Him First"

Speaking at the site of an Iranian missile attack in Tel Aviv on Sunday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog thanked U.S. President Donald Trump "for his courage" and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "for the correct decision" in launching the strikes on Iran.

"We are united at this moment to defeat the enemy and bring about change," he said.

Israel is at war, "and in war, you must first take care of the home front and protect it, and second, attack and act with full force to defeat the enemy."

"If someone rises to kill you, rise to kill him first," he said, quoting the Talmud.

"It is our duty to be strong, resilient, and steadfast. We will get through this and move forward, and our children and grandchildren will one day be grateful for these moments."

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett said, "I've never been prouder to be an Israeli and we will never apologize for what we are doing. I give my full backing to the government and its leader." "There is no left and no right. The entire people of Israel stand behind the [air force] pilots."

John Spencer: Iran's War on the United States Did Not Start Yesterday

Iran started a war against the U.S. in 1979. It has never stopped. The Islamic Republic defined itself in opposition to the U.S. and built its foreign policy around confrontation with America and its allies. During the Iraq War, Iranian-backed militias killed 603 U.S. service members. I know this personally. My soldiers and I faced their weapons. This was part of a deliberate strategy by Tehran to attack American forces. The campaign never ended.

In January 2020, Iran fired ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq. More than 100 American service members were later diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries. Between October 2023 and early 2024, Iranian-backed militias conducted more than 170 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

At the same time, Iran has enriched uranium to levels far beyond civilian energy requirements. It has developed longer-range missile systems with capabilities that are not defensive in nature.

Diplomacy has been attempted repeatedly over decades. While talks proceeded, Iran continued to fund Hizbullah, Hamas, Shia militias in Iraq, and the Houthis. It continued to refine missiles. It continued enrichment. It continued attacks on Americans. At some point, a pattern must be acknowledged for what it is.

The question today is not whether Iran's war on the U.S. exists. It is whether the U.S. ends it. History suggests that when America fails to respond decisively to sustained aggression, the aggression grows. Americans have been targeted for 47 years. Enough.

The death of a tyrant

What he lacked in religious scholarship and charisma he made up for in ruthless political maneuvering. Alongside other hardline members of the clergy, he developed a tight-knit partnership with the IRGC. And so from the 1990s onwards, Khamenei’s reign was marked by an ever-tightening grip on civil society.

After reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami beat Khamenei’s choice in the 1997 elections, he launched a crackdown on even mild challenges to the status quo. He closed down newspapers, jailed key politicians and had his henchmen silence reformers. This pattern of responding to any internal challenge through brutal and increasingly lethal repression increased in intensity throughout his reign. He violently put down student protests in 1999; beat and shot demonstrators during unrest following the disputed 2009 election; and crushed large-scale, increasingly working-class protests with lethal force in 2019, killing hundreds.

The death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, at the hands of the so-called morality police, prompted what were then the most widespread anti-regime protests of his rule. Khamenei responded by killing nearly 600 protesters and arresting more than 20,000. It turned out that was just a foretaste of what he was to visit on anti-regime protesters earlier this year. Officially, the Islamic Republic claims that just over 3,000 people were killed. External observers suggest the real death toll could be over 30,000.

The growth of popular Iranian opposition to the Islamic Republic is not a surprise. Iranians’ living standards have plummeted, and their freedoms crushed, under the reign of the two ayatollahs. The economy is shattered, state-level corruption rife and the most basic of civil liberties non-existent.

At the same time as the Iranian populace has been living in dire straits, Khamenei and his IRGC cronies have been relentlessly and expensively pursuing their Islamist mission abroad. They ploughed billions into supporting a network of Islamist militias – the so-called Axis of Resistance – across the Middle East. They invested an enormous amount of resources into the military and perhaps even more in pursuit of a nuclear-weapons capability. And all the while ordinary Iranians struggle to access water and electricity.

Right from the start, Khamenei was only too happy to neglect the lives of Iranians in the interests of violently promoting the Islamist mission abroad. With Iranian backing, Hezbollah detonated a truck bomb outside the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, killing four Israelis and 25 Argentinians, including children. It struck again in Buenos Aires in 1994, bombing a Jewish community centre, killing 85 people. That was just the start. Since the early 1990s, Iran has backed its proxies to the hilt in their transnational war against the supposedly Satanic forces of America and Israel. Countless lives have been lost and a region torn apart, as Khamenei’s Islamic regime expanded its reach into Iraq during the 2000s, and Syria and Yemen in the 2010s.

It’s possible to argue that the Islamic Republic’s war with the Great and Little Satans has now come home to roost. The current US-Israeli intervention is the latest, most dangerous phase of a conflict started by an Iranian proxy slaughtering hundreds of Israeli Jews over two years ago – Hamas’s pogrom on October 7. And it has now claimed the life of Khamenei himself. He has become the most significant fatality in a war he has done so much to stoke.

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