A Middle East Wake-Up Call – WSJ

For Israel, the priority is to deal directly with Hamas. But soon both Washington and Jerusalem must develop a response to Iran s undoubted role as funder and sponsor of these attacks. Lawyerly quibbles about the exact details of Iran s involvement can t obscure the reality that its role was sufficient to demand a response. If the U.S. and Israel are, in effect, deterred by their fears of Iranian retaliation from inflicting this price, Iran has achieved its long-sought hegemonic position in the Middle East even without the nuclear weapons it will soon possess. It can attack Israel without being punished. It will do so again. Israel and the U.S. must either act or accept this new reality.

The Biden administration has a historic choice to make. Strategic passivity in the face of Iran s relentless and remorseless rise to regional power was the central plank of President Obama s Middle East policy and has largely guided policy in the Biden years. The Biden administration hoped that U.S. security guarantees to Israel and Saudi Arabia could maintain a regional balance in the face of growing Iranian power. The Hamas attacks were intended to frustrate this initiative. Iran is determined to destroy the Jewish state and to banish American power from a region that remains vital to the peace and prosperity of the world. Mr. Biden must decide whether he will stand his ground or cede regional leadership to a hostile Iran.

Finally, there is the question of whether American and Western opinion will awaken to the new state of the world. In a horrible way, the descent of death-dealing paragliders into a peaceful music festival in Israel is an apt symbol of our times. The post-Cold War trance of the West, reaping peace dividends, celebrating flower power, and generally living as if utopia had already arrived, has left us mentally and morally disarmed. The revisionist powers that recognize no moral limits on their power as they seek to overturn the existing world system in an ocean of blood are descending onto our festival of folly like the hell-bound paragliders of Hamas. We cannot and should not respond with irrational panic and random outbursts of violence. We must soberly and deliberately address a mortal danger to everything we hold dear and we must at long last wake up.

via www.wsj.com

Walter Russell Mead.