The Smart Way for Trump to End the Israel-Iran War

Opinion|The Smart Way for Trump to End the Israel-Iran War

Behind the strikes and counterstrikes in the current Israel-Iran war stands the clash of two strategic doctrines, one animating Iran and the other animating Israel, that are both deeply flawed. President Trump has a chance to correct both of them and to create the best opportunity for stabilizing the Middle East in decades — if he is up to it.

Iran’s flawed strategic doctrine, which was also practiced by its proxy, Hezbollah, to equally bad result, is a doctrine I call trying to out-crazy an adversary. Iran and Hezbollah are always ready to go all the way, thinking that whatever their opponents might do in response, Hezbollah or Iran will always outdo them with a more extreme measure.

You name it — assassinate the prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri; blow up the American Embassy in Beirut; help Bashar al-Assad murder thousands of his own people to stay in power — the imprints of Iran and its Hezbollah proxy are behind them all, together or separately. They are telling the world in effect: “No one will out-crazy us, so beware if you get in a fight with us, you will lose. Because we go all the way — and you moderates just go away.”

That Iranian doctrine did help Hezbollah drive Israel out of southern Lebanon. But where it fell short was Iran and Hezbollah thinking they could drive Israelis out of their biblical homeland. Iran and Hezbollah are delusional in this regard — Hamas, too. They keep referring to the Jewish state as a foreign colonial enterprise, with no indigenous connection to the land, and therefore they assume the Jews will eventually meet the same fate as the Belgians in the Belgian Congo. That is, under enough pressure they will eventually go back to their own version of Belgium.

But the Israeli Jews have no Belgium. They are as indigenous to their biblical homeland as the Palestinians, no matter what “anticolonial” nonsense they teach at elite universities. Therefore, you will never out-crazy the Israeli Jews. If push comes to shove, they will out-crazy you.

They will play by the local rules, and yes, those are not the rules of the Geneva Conventions. They are the rules of the Middle East, which I call Hama Rules — named after the Hama attacks perpetrated by the Syrian government of Hafez al-Assad in 1982, the aftermath of which I covered. Al-Assad wiped out the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama by mercilessly leveling whole swaths of the city, whole blocks of apartments, into a parking lot. Hama rules are no rules at all.