Both governments need to ditch dangerous policies, argues Steven Simon
accident that Israel and Iran are on the precipice of war. It is the result of long-standing agendas devised by misguided policymakers on both sides.
Iran’s policy towards Israel has been geared towards two things it feels it needs to stand nose-to-nose with its adversary. The first is the ability to strike from territory adjacent to Israel. Iran wants to be able to threaten Israel with a broad spectrum of attacks, from nuisance strikes to massive ground and missile assaults. Hence the importance of its proxies in Syria and Lebanon. The second perceived requirement is a nuclear-weapons system to match Israel’s.
Israel, for its part, has followed a strategic doctrine dubbed “the campaign between the wars”. The idea, driven by the recognition that major wars no longer produced decisive victories, was to maintain pressure on adversaries between such conflicts to deter them from starting one. The problem with this doctrine, long apparent outside Israel’s security bubble, is now clear: it is virtually guaranteed to ignite such wars.
Iran has now selected the worst of all possible ploys in response to the twin pressures it was facing: to take a strong stand against Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza, and to respond to Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria. Iran had been handling the Gaza challenge well by limiting itself to political support for Palestinian militants and leaving kinetic resistance to Iranian proxies.
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