The hour of Israeli leadership has arrived
Hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his address before the Joint Houses of Congress, Kuwait’s Al-Jarida newspaper reported that Iran has provided Hezbollah with electromagnetic pulse weapons.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office, July 25, 2024. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images.
Citing a source from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, the newspaper reported that the devices now in Hezbollah’s hands are capable of neutralizing Israel’s radars and communications systems.
The IRGC also reportedly provided Hezbollah with drones with electromagnetic pulse warheads and EMP bombs. Some of the EMP projectiles can be launched from stationary launchers and others from drones and can reach targets deep inside Israel, according to the Kuwaiti report.
The implications of the report are stark. The destructive power of an EMP attack is equal to that of a nuclear attack. Given Iran’s nuclear advances, there is every reason to believe that Iran has developed EMP capabilities, and would transfer them to Hezbollah. Iran’s now open threat of an EMP attack against Israel is nothing less than a threat to annihilate Israel. And since the threat was made in the midst of Iran’s multi-front war against Israel, it has to be taken seriously, with appropriate urgency.
During the course of his address to Congress, Netanyahu described the existential threat Iran poses to both Israel and the United States and laid out his vision for contending with it.
In his words, “America and Israel today can forge a security alliance in the Middle East to counter the growing Iranian threat.
“All countries that are in peace with Israel and all those countries who will make peace with Israel should be invited to join this alliance. We saw a glimpse of that potential alliance on April 14. Led by the United States, more than half a dozen nations worked alongside Israel to help neutralize hundreds of missiles and drones launched by Iran against us. …
“The new alliance I envision would be a natural extension of the groundbreaking Abraham Accords. Those accords saw peace forged between Israel and four Arab countries, and they were supported by Republicans and Democrats alike.
“I have a name for this new alliance. I think we should call it: ‘The Abraham Alliance.’”
On the face of things, since both Republicans and Democrats have played a role in forging the alliance—former President Donald Trump through the 2020 Abraham Accords, and President Joe Biden by organizing the Arab states in support of intercepting Iran’s missiles and drones shot against Israel on April 14—Netanyahu’s vision ought to attract support from both sides of the aisle. The problem is that Trump and Biden view their regional alliance as a means to achieve opposite ends.
Biden’s actions in the region are a continuation of those initiated by former President Barack Obama, and to understand his policies, they must be viewed in the context of Obama’s policies.
Obama’s predecessors hoped to buy off Iran with a “grand bargain” that could moderate its policies. That is, they believed Iran should change. In contrast, Obama believed that the United States should change.
Obama’s foreign policy was predicated on his anti-imperialist worldview. Guided by its principles of Western culpability for the pathologies of the Middle East, Obama believed that Iran’s hostility towards America was justified. As he saw things, it was up to the United States to make amends to Iran by changing the way it operated in the Middle East.
To accomplish this goal, Obama began realigning the United States towards Iran and its Sunni allies in the Muslim Brotherhood at the expense of Israel and America’s traditional Sunni Arab allies.
Obama’s betrayal of both Israel and the Sunni Arabs brought the long-estranged neighbours together. The Israeli-Sunni partnership was first brought to bear in the 2014 Hamas war (“Operation Protective Edge”) against Israel. Obama sided with Hamas’s state sponsors Qatar and Turkey and insisted that Israel accept the terror regime’s ceasefire demands. Supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Netanyahu was able to withstand Obama’s pressure.
The true birth of the Abraham alliance then, came without U.S. involvement, in response to the U.S.’s betrayal of Israel and the Sunni Arabs under the Obama administration.
When Trump came into office, he abandoned Obama’s realignment and sought to rebuild America’s credibility in the eyes of its allies. To this end, Trump embraced the new Israeli-Sunni partnership, using it as a means to rebuild U.S. credibility and reassert U.S. regional leadership.
Trump envisioned a regional partnership where, supported by U.S. military equipment, intelligence and diplomatic support, U.S. allies led by Israel and Saudi Arabia would combat Iran on their own. America wouldn’t fight the wars of the region for its allies, but it also wouldn’t second guess its actions in pursuit of the common goal of defeating the threat Iran posed to the region.
Trump’s defeat in 2020 blocked the full implementation of his vision. Biden for his part, used the alliance structure of the Abraham Accords that Trump created to reinstate Obama’s realignment policy. Biden returned the Palestinians to center stage and so blocked additional states including Indonesia and Saudi Arabia from normalizing relations with Israel.
Since Oct. 7, the administration has used a combination of coercion and subversion to prevent Israel from taking decisive action against Iran and its proxies, particularly Hezbollah.
After Oct. 7, the administration denied Iran’s involvement in Hamas’s invasion of Israel despite overwhelming evidence that Tehran played a central role in planning and facilitating Hamas’s day of genocide.
On the ground, the U.S. has micromanaged, slowed, subverted and delegitimized Israel’s war in Gaza, and blocked it from taking decisive action against Hezbollah, the Houthis or Iran.
The administration has embargoed and slow-walked weapons transfers to Israel to prevent it from defeating Hamas or moving to offence against Hezbollah. While preventing Israel from degrading Hezbollah’s capabilities, the administration has been working to strong-arm Israel into a deal with Iran’s terror army in Lebanon. The deal on the table would see Israel surrender its sovereign territory to Hezbollah in exchange for an unenforceable Hezbollah agreement to curtail its unprovoked attacks on Israel.
Vice President Kamala Harris has been the administration’s outspoken champion and full partner in Biden’s pro-Iran policies. The Biden-Harris vision of a regional alliance is a consortium led by the U.S. in which the U.S. uses the Iranian threat against Israel and its Arab allies to compel them to make concessions to Iran.
Given the disparity between the purpose of a regional alliance for Trump on the one hand and Biden on the other, obviously, Israel would prefer to wait for Trump to return to office to act against Hezbollah and Iran. Unfortunately, it can’t wait. The threat is too severe and urgent. The Kuwaiti report itself would be a reason to act now. But when combined with Hezbollah’s conventional threat to northern Israel, time is of the essence.
With this in mind, Netanyahu’s call Wednesday for Washington to expedite the weapons shipments that Biden and Harris have stalled since December is noteworthy. One hopes Netanyahu’s call will be answered. But again, even if it isn’t, given the gravity of the threat, Israel will still have to take action.
Despite the magnitude of the undertaking required, there are reasons for cautious optimism. The approaching election will make it more difficult for Biden and Harris to stand in Israel’s way, or punish Jerusalem if it acts.
Looking to his legacy, Biden may recognize that if he tries to block Israel from doing what it must, he will pay a price. Americans will not remember well a president who chose to shield Hezbollah from assault and so preserve its ability to destroy Israel.
In boycotting Netanyahu’s speech on Wednesday, Harris signalled that she remains loyal to her San Francisco base. But as the Democratic presidential nominee, if she alienates too many moderate Democrats and Independents, Trump will win.
If Israel acts—and Harris condemns it—or if the administration condemns Israel at the U.N. Security Council, the American public whose representatives in Congress gave Netanyahu 51 standing ovations will punish her.
On the other hand, Israel’s need to act largely alone won’t disappear even if Trump wins. True, Israel will likely act with U.S. support. But again, Trump’s vision of a regional alliance is one where the U.S. supports its allies as they defend themselves against Iran, not where the U.S. defends its allies from Iran for them.
So whether it is Biden, Harris or Trump in the White House, Israel will be the primary force fighting Hezbollah and Iran. And if Israel doesn’t act now, it may find it impossible to act later.
Netanyahu spoke to Congress at a pivotal moment in regional, U.S. and world history. Hours after he spoke, as Biden was giving his speech abdicating his run for reelection and transferring the baton to Harris, the United States suffered a joint Russian-Chinese penetration of Alaskan airspace. That act of unprovoked aggression shows that months before voters go to the polls, America is facing the challenge of a new, daunting enemy alliance directed straight at U.S. power at home and abroad. More than ever, the United States requires allies capable of sharing the burden.
Netanyahu’s address was a stirring expression of Israel’s readiness to shoulder the burden of securing the Middle East from Iran and its proxies. In fact, after nine months of war, during which Israel has been demonized and criminalized for fighting what he rightly referred to as civilization’s war against barbarism, Netanyahu seized the reins of regional leadership of the war on Wednesday.
Having done so, given the threats, the time has arrived for him to lead Israel—and the free world—to victory.
