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Israel’s response to Iran’s attack this past weekend signals an “astonishing win,” my colleague Graeme Wood wrote yesterday. With help from several allies, Israel managed to fend off what could have been a mass-casualty event (though one 7-year-old girl sustained life-threatening injuries). But the attack was also “a gift to the hapless Benjamin Netanyahu,” Graeme argues. I called Graeme in Tel Aviv yesterday to talk about how the prime minister could use this moment as an opportunity to revitalize Gaza negotiations—and why he’s not likely to do so.

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A Realignment

Isabel Fattal: You wrote yesterday that Israel’s response to Iran’s attack signals an operational and strategic win. How so?

Graeme Wood: For the past two weeks, since it struck Iran’s consulate in Damascus, killing multiple officers and senior officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Israel has been on anxious footing waiting to figure out how Iran was going to attack. There was some doubt, I think, in ordinary people’s minds about how Israel would handle whatever Iran was going to do next. What Iran eventually decided to do was to send more than 300 drones and missiles toward Israel. And Israel not only survived that, but by dawn the next day, the country was up and running as if nothing had happened. The ability for Israel to weather the attack was beyond anyone’s expectations—both as a matter of technical ability and also as a kind of moral ability, to have life go on after what Iran promised was going to be a serious challenge.

Isabel: You write that this could be the moment for Netanyahu to tell his more militaristic right flank to stand down.

Graeme: The way that a lot of people naturally understand these types of attacks is as a matter of tit for tat. Of course there are many in Israel who think, We need to respond in kind. That is the view from Netanyahu’s right. But it is not the most productive way that the aftermath of this attack can be used.

Whenever something big like this happens, it’s almost impossible to put oneself into the mindset of 24 hours ago. But 24 hours ago, many of us would have said, Israel’s in a horrible muddle because it has waged an absolutely brutal war in Gaza. It has not succeeded in dislodging Hamas. It has not gotten its hostages back. There is a humanitarian catastrophe. And there is no negotiation that’s anywhere near happening that could redeem Israel from this pickle that it’s partially put itself in.

Now there is this kind of realignment of the security paradigm. Could a creative, thoughtful, competent government use that realignment to move forward from what seemed like an intractable position in Gaza? Yes. There are angles that a government could take so that tomorrow is not like yesterday. Part of that includes just acknowledging, where did this success come from? The success came in part because Israel, over the past several years, has created what turns out to be a pretty durable and effective alliance with the governments of Arab states in the region. We’re talking about Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Without those states, the prospects for having only one casualty in Israel from the Iranian attack would have been nil. That means that there’s gratitude to be doled out to those states, and there are compromises that can be made as part of that expression of gratitude.

Isabel: So you think that now there could be an opening for negotiation that didn’t exist before the attacks?

Graeme: Yes, exactly. The reason that opening didn’t exist previously is that Netanyahu has consistently tried to mollify those to his right who have maximalist views of the post-Gaza situation—maximalist views meaning that, at the end of the day, there’s not just no Hamas, but no Palestinian government or security force whatsoever in Gaza, and no Arab security force whatsoever. That’s not a reasonable hope for the future, and it has prevented Netanyahu and his government from considering any reasonable future at all.

Among the things that they could have considered are creative solutions that would have involved these Arab allies who have populations, as well as governments, who are not thrilled by what they’re seeing in Gaza. And in the past 24 hours, Israel’s need for those countries has been demonstrated. It’s a moment where a trusted, courageous leader could step in and perhaps create some kind of change in policy that would allow the Gaza war to, if not conclude, then come closer to its conclusion.

Isabel: What’s Netanyahu’s window to do something like this?

Graeme: If you see what’s being spoken about in Israel, it’s Netanyahu being pressured to retaliate. This is not an incomprehensible command. If there were 300 drones sent toward any country, the population of that country would say, We have to do something material to cause those who sent them to regret having done so. It’s unclear whether Netanyahu is going to take that bait, or do what a great politician has to do sometimes, which is to say to people, You’re not going to get what you want; you’re going to get what you need. And what we need as a country is something other than this. That’s what the situation really calls for, and it’s a call that would probably have to be answered in, I would say, the next week.

Isabel: What else should readers keep in mind as they’re following this story?

Graeme: One thing that I think will be a nagging question for a lot of people is, What did the Iranians want to happen? Even if they didn’t want massive death and destruction, what they did was an unambiguous act of aggression. But another possibility, which is reasonable to consider, is that they didn’t expect most of those drones and missiles to get through. They needed to retaliate, and as soon as they did so they said, Okay, we’re done here. Even before the missiles and drones would’ve reached their targets, they said that. So we have to consider the possibility that this was a half-hearted attack.

Isabel: This attack is also unprecedented in a few ways, isn’t it?

Graeme: They’re attacking from Iranian territory. And if you attack from Iranian territory, you invite retaliation on Iranian territory, which is a huge change from the status quo ante. This really is a before-and-after moment. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander said this publicly, which means it’s probably an official statement of doctrine now: From now on, if Israel attacks Iranian interests, figures, and citizens anywhere, we will retaliate from Iran. If that’s what they’re going to do, that’s a new disposition.

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Today’s News

Jury selection is under way on the first day of Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in Manhattan; it marks the first time a former president has been on trial for criminal charges. The civil war in Sudan has now reached the end of its first year. More than 14,000 people have been killed, according to some estimates; last month, the UN warned that nearly 5 million people could soon suffer a “catastrophic” level of hunger. The FBI opened a criminal probe into the recent collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. The investigation will cover, in part, whether the ship’s crew knew their vessel had “serious system problems” before leaving port, according to The Washington Post.

Dispatches

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Evening Read

Philip Shribman, in a college photo from around 1940; behind it, an excerpt from a wartime letter he sent to the sociology professor George F. Theriault Sources: Courtesy of David Shribman; Wieland Teixeira / Getty

The Man Who Died for the Liberal Arts

By David M. Shribman

Philip Alvan Shribman, a recent graduate of Dartmouth and just a month away from his 22nd birthday, was not worldly but understood that he had been thrust into a world conflict that was more than a contest of arms. At stake were the life, customs, and values that he knew. He was a quiet young man, taciturn in the old New England way, but he had much to say in this letter, written from the precipice of battle to a brother on the precipice of adulthood …

He acknowledged from the start that “this letter won’t do much good”—a letter that, in the eight decades since it was written, has been read by three generations of my family. In it, Phil Shribman set out the virtues and values of the liberal arts at a time when universities from coast to coast were transitioning into training grounds for America’s armed forces.

Read the full article.

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Updated 11:29 a.m., April 14, 2024

The moment we were all afraid of finally arrived yesterday evening. For me, it was announced by a phone call from a terrified teenage cousin in Iran. Had the war started? she asked me through tears.

Iran had fired hundreds of drones and missiles on Israel, hitting much more widely than most of us had anticipated. Only thanks to Israel’s excellent defenses, and the help of its Western and Arab allies, have almost all of these been intercepted. The only casualty so far is a 7-year-old Arab girl in southern Israel.

Nevertheless, the Rubicon has clearly been crossed. Iran and Israel have been fighting a shadow war for years, but on April 13, the conflict came into the open. No longer hiding behind deniable actions, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the militia that holds most of the power in Iran, declared that it was behind the attacks, which seem to have been launched from various cities in Iran as well as by Tehran-backed militias in Yemen and Lebanon. The IRGC said that it was responding to Israel’s April 1 attack on an Iranian consular building in Damascus, which killed several commanders, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the IRGC’s chief official in the Levant region.

You don’t need to be an expert on Iran to know some facts about Iranians in this moment: First, most are sick of the Islamic Republic and its octogenarian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been in charge since 1989, and whose rule has brought Iran economic ruin, international isolation, and now the threat of a war. You need only look at the majority of Iranians who have boycotted the past two nationwide elections, this year and in 2021, or the hundreds killed in the anti-regime protests of recent years to know that this government doesn’t represent Iranians.

Second, the people of Iran have no desire to experience a war with Israel. Despite decades of indoctrination in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment by their government, Iranians harbor very little hostility toward Israel. In the past few months, many Arab capitals have seen mass demonstrations against Israel, but no such popular event has taken place in Iran. In fact, in the early stages of the Israel-Hamas war that broke out in October, many Iranians risked their lives by publicly opposing the anti-Israel campaign of the regime.

[Read: What Hamas promises, Iranians know too well]

Third, Iranians have a recent memory of how terrible war can be. I was born in Tehran in 1988, in the final throes of the brutal eight-year conflict that began when Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and continued for way too long because of the Iranian regime’s ideological crusade. My mother spent many nights in Tehran’s bomb shelters when she was pregnant with me, taking refuge from the missiles that Iraq rained down on Iran. A cousin of mine was killed in that war, and my father was among the many injured. Iranians remember those years too well to want to repeat the experience. (Incidentally, some also remember that Israel gave occasional military help to Iran in that war.)

The people of Iran know that their main enemy is at home, and that war will bring them only more repression and hardship. Hours before Iran started firing missiles on Israel, it sent police around Tehran to crack down on women’s compliance with the mandatory veiling rules. After the attack, for hours past midnight, thousands of cars thronged gas stations around Tehran; a friend FaceTimed me from a Tehran supermarket crowded with people frantically stocking up. Another friend told me he had retreated to his rooftop and was refusing to sleep for fear of an attack.

The U.S. dollar was already trading for a record 647,000 Iranian rials yesterday morning, and now Iranians are bracing for another increase, which will further diminish their livelihoods. As a point of comparison, in 2022, the dollar sold for fewer than 220,000 rials. I’m old enough to remember when it was just 8,000; in 1979, it was 70. The collapsing Iranian currency reflects Iran’s economic destruction.

Many Iranians will hold their own regime accountable for the horror that a hot war with Israel could bring. Labor unions have already said as much. “With firing hundreds of drones and missiles on Israel, the Islamic Republic has adventurously begun a war that could turn a society of 90 million to a torched ground,” declared the Independent Iranian Workers Union, which represents thousands of workers around the country. “The regime is concluding its final mission to destroy Iran.” A teacher’s union issued a similar call. On X, a user well-known for her support of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote, “I spit on anybody supporting this war on either side. Poor Iran and the people of Iran who are saddled by you.” The Persian-language hashtag #no_to_war has been shared by thousands of Iranians inside and outside the country. Many have used it to attack Khamenei and the Islamic Republic.

The regime has tried to muster a show of public support for the strikes on Israel, with unimpressive results. Videos of a Saturday-night rally for this purpose in Tehran’s Palestine Square appeared to show a couple of hundred people there at most. A gathering at Zahedi’s grave in Isfahan looked to consist of fewer than 30 people. Only slightly more assembled at the grave, in Kerman, of Qassem Soleimani, IRGC’s leading commander who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2020.

For his part, Israel’s troubled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may want nothing more than a war with Iran to distract from his failing war in Gaza and his declining popularity at home. The United States and its European and Arab allies, who rightly stood by Israel against Iranian aggression tonight, would be wise to push Netanyahu to avoid a broader conflagration that will benefit no one in the region, least of all the people of Iran or Israel. Saudi Arabia, which joined Jordan last night in helping to intercept Iranian missiles, has started off well by calling for immediate de-escalation. Israelis should remember that even after six months of their brutal war in Gaza, several Arab nations stood by them against aggression from Tehran.

Decision makers in Riyadh and Amman, as well as elsewhere, are well aware that Khamenei and his murderous regime are a threat to the peace and security of their own people, the region, and the world. The interests of the whole region lie in helping the people of Iran in their long-lasting quest to overthrow Khamenei and build a different Iran. Short of such a victory, it is quite likely that when the octogenarian Khamenei dies, Iran’s rulers will move away from his disastrous policies, which have brought Iran to the brink of a disastrous war. Even many of Iran’s current elite don’t want such a conflict.

More than a decade ago, in 2012, when Israel came close to attacking Iran over its nuclear program, an online campaign began in Israel that led to thousands of ordinary Iranians and Israelis posting their pictures online with a seemingly naive message: “Israel loves Iran” and “Iran loves Israel,” an announcement that the people of these two nations had no desire to die in a war with each other.

This fundamental reality has not changed. The people of Iran don’t want a war against Israel. And the people of the region and the world can’t afford one.

On April 1, Israel killed Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by attacking Iran’s consulate in Damascus. Iran spent the next two weeks promising revenge, and the world tried to imagine what form that revenge might take. Missile strikes on the Golan Heights? Bombing an Israeli embassy? (Iran has practice at this one.) When I flew from Dubai to Tel Aviv a few days later, I wondered whether Iran would go old-school and attack an El Al check-in counter, the way the terrorists used to in the 1980s. Emirati airport authorities, it turns out, had anticipated that move. They placed the El Al counter next to that of an Iranian airline, so anyone who rolled a grenade at Israelis would also do some damage to passengers bound for the Iranian holy city of Mashhad.

Now we know the form of the retaliation. Late Saturday night, about an hour before midnight Israel time, Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles from its own territory, as well as from Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, at the country it refers to as “the Zionist entity.” Almost all were shot down, officials said, eliminated by Israeli air defenses and, notably, by the militaries of the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. No drones even entered Israeli airspace. This morning, Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army spokesman, beamingly called the defensive operation an “unprecedented success.” The Iranians, for their part, professed happiness with the outcome, though they also seemed eager to forestall an Israeli counterstrike. While the drones were still in the sky, Iran’s UN mission tweeted that the matter of the assassination “can [now] be deemed concluded.”

To summarize: Israel blew up an Iranian general in an Iranian diplomatic mission—the sort of facility normally inviolable under international law, though the Iranian regime is rather famous for its disregard of such proprieties—and for two weeks, Israel and its allies have been preparing for a regional war or unprecedented terror campaign, something that would make the October 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent Gaza War look like mere prelude. Instead, after its drones and missiles were swatted down like flies, Iran is now suggesting that the two countries call it a tie.

This tie is an astonishing Israeli win. As Hagari suggested, it is an operational triumph, because it demonstrated that swarming attacks from a sophisticated adversary are not effective against Israel over long ranges. These are the same Iranian-made drones that, in Russian hands, have been terrorizing Kyiv for the past two years. In Tel Aviv last night, no air-raid sirens went off. (I didn’t bother setting my alarm, because I was confident that at least a few drones would get through and I’d have to scamper to shelter. I assume many others in Tel Aviv are still snoozing as I write this.) The uneventful night was also a strategic triumph. Iran’s Arab adversaries—Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—all cooperated, taking concrete measures to keep Iran’s response ineffective. Iran’s Arab allies, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, did not enter the operation in a significant way. The Israeli skydome held up. The strategic alliance held up. Israeli kids get a day off school as a precaution, but other than that, my neighborhood of Tel Aviv looks normal, with the same population of bleary-eyed hipsters out looking for cappuccinos. (The only reported injury was to a 7-year-old Israeli girl, wounded by falling shrapnel. Inconveniently for Iran, she was Arab.)  

The attack is also a gift to the hapless Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, whose incompetence was universally acknowledged just a day ago. Now, after botching the response to the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history, Netanyahu’s government gathers credit for having repelled the most significant Iranian attack in Israel’s history. This morning, one could argue that Israel is safer than it has been since before October 7. “I think there are strategic opportunities,” the IDF spokesperson said in his briefing, and “we should look for those opportunities.” Netanyahu does not even have to launch a counterattack. Joe Biden has advised him that the U.S. will not support one, which relieves Netanyahu of the obligation. European countries that have criticized Israel over Gaza have stopped to condemn Iran instead.

But just because Netanyahu could decide to do nothing precipitous doesn’t mean that he will. He and his cabinet are constantly in search of new and ingenious ways to squander an opportunity. So today in the Middle East everyone is trying to imagine how they will misspend the credit Iran has just extended them. If Netanyahu behaves uncharacteristically, he could reach out to Israel’s Arab allies, and to its international critics, and try to reboot Gaza negotiations and bring home the Israeli hostages who are still alive. With Gaza at least partially in rubble and in famine conditions, and with essentially zero progress in negotiation with Hamas, some jolt to the status quo is necessary. Hamas has shown little interest in achieving a viable deal, and now its position has weakened slightly, because Iran seems so obviously disinclined to intervene in its favor by regionalizing the war. This reminder that Israel’s enemies are not limited to Hamas, and that Israel owes debts to its Arab friends who wish to see Gazans return to their homes (and who not-so-secretly also wish Israel could somehow eliminate Hamas without fuss once and for all), could catalyze a new Israeli reaction to the conflict.

​​These Arab allies deserve Israel’s gratitude. They also might be reminded of what is in their own interest. After all, Iran’s overseas ventures are not limited to Israel. Iran evidently feels free to violate Jordanian airspace as it pleases. If it is willing to swarm Israel with drones, why not Saudi Arabia too? It already attacked Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia’s largest oilfield, in 2019, an attack that went unanswered by Saudi Arabia and the United States. Iran, its Revolutionary Guards Corps at the front, has already wrecked Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. Who is next? The Gaza war has alienated Israel from these allies, and in particular from their citizens, who see images of the devastation daily on Al Jazeera. Now Israel can point to Iran’s aggression and disregard of national boundaries as a common cause with which to begin to undo that alienation.

Netanyahu’s government is beholden to right-wing elements that have made a hostage deal difficult to strike and post-invasion Gaza planning almost non-existent. These same right-wing elements want retaliation: If Iran sends 300 drones and missiles to Israel, Israel should send 300 back. (Unlike the Iranian ones, many of the Israeli ones will reach their targets.) Now could be the moment for Netanyhu to tell his right flank to stand down. The reasons Israel is not on a war footing this morning—children are merely in Zoom lessons today, and there have been no further call-ups of reserve troops—are technological (an incredible air-defense system) and diplomatic (a partnership extending from the Levant to the Persian Gulf), not ideological. Many Israelis would welcome a shift back to a national-security-focused right, and away from a fundamentalist religious one. Not long ago, Netanyahu had a sort of proprietary hold on that position in Israeli politics. Now the religious right has a hold on him.

Netanyahu is a master of self-preservation, and he knows he likely will not be the one to lead such a shift. His instinct to stay in power would, in that case, come into conflict with his instinct to preserve and improve Israel’s geostrategic position. Unfortunately, in the contest between those two instincts, the outcome is unlikely to be anything close to a tie.