Opinion
Thomas L. Friedman
It’s Time
for America to Get Real With Iran and Israel
Oct. 15, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/opinion/iran-israel-war.html
Thomas L. Friedman
By Thomas L. Friedman
Opinion Columnist
Let’s review the latest headlines: The United States is
sending an advanced antimissile system to Israel, along with U.S. troops to
operate it. Iran’s foreign minister says there will be “no red lines” governing
Iran’s retaliation for any Israeli retaliation for Iran’s latest missile
retaliation. And reports from the Persian Gulf say Iran has quietly told Arab
gulf states that if Iran is hit by Israel, Tehran may respond by striking Arab
oil fields. If all of this does not terrify you, you are not paying attention.
May I make a suggestion?
How about sending our savvy C.I.A. director, Bill Burns, to
meet his Iranian counterpart on neutral turf in Muscat, Oman, with a real
strategy for coercive diplomacy vis-à-vis Iran that might actually work to
change the Tehran regime’s behavior? Burns could say to the Iranian
intelligence chief something like the following:
“Let me tell you how your country looks from C.I.A.
headquarters: You are infiltrated, exposed and isolated.
“Infiltrated? We heard that the latest joke going around
Tehran is that your supreme leader is in hiding and the only ones who know
where he is are the Israelis. Israel’s intelligence is very good, but the only
reason it could have penetrated your leadership and Hezbollah’s so deeply is
that so many Iranian and Lebanese Shiites hate both regimes and are ready to
spy for Israel. So, you have no idea today when you talk to one another or to
Hezbollah whether the person you’re talking to is working for Israel or you.
“Exposed? You, Iran, have fired nearly 500 rockets at Israel
since April and did not destroy a single military target or kill a single
Israeli soldier. I don’t have to tell you that on April 19, an Israeli
airstrike on Iran damaged an S-300 air defense system at the Eighth Shekari Air
Base in Isfahan. It was reported that Israel had deployed aerial drones and
fired at least one missile from a warplane with stealth technology — and you
never saw them coming. You are N-A-K-E-D.
“And finally, you are isolated. Israel has badly damaged
your Hezbollah militia, in which you have invested billions of dollars, so it
is no longer your protection against an Israeli strike on your nuclear
facilities. We have inflicted heavy damage on your Houthi militia in Yemen.
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is fed up with you and wants you out of his
country, and the Arab gulf states are now doing all they can to woo Assad away
from Iran. The mainstream Iraqi Shiite party led by Muqtada al-Sadr hates you
for the way your regime and militias have stolen so much oil revenue from Iraq
and dragged your Iraqi proxies into your fight with Israel. Polls show how
unpopular your regime is across the Arab world. Even Vladimir Putin does not
want to see you get a nuclear bomb. A nuclear-armed Iran to his south? He’s not
that crazy.
“So this is a moment of truth for Iran. You have two paths:
Either change your behavior or risk collapsing under the weight of your own
recklessness. But when I say change your behavior, this time I mean something
different from when we negotiated the nuclear agreement with you during the
Obama administration.
“We made a mistake back then. We were obsessed with curbing
the weapon you were never likely to use — a nuclear bomb, if you could even
make one — while ignoring the weapon you were using every day to undermine our
interests, the interests of our Arab allies, indeed the interests of most
citizens in the region craving stability, not to mention Israel. And that was
your implantation of militias armed with increasingly more precise and
longer-and-longer-range rockets in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Your
proxies crippled those states from the inside and threatened Israel and our
Arab allies on the outside.
“We are not playing that game anymore. If you continue using
your regional militias to attack Israel and you get into a no-holds-barred
missile shootout with Tel Aviv, we are going to protect the Israelis, and you
are going to get absolutely hammered. And if you carry out your threat to
attack Saudi or U.A.E. oil fields to deter us, or close the Strait of Hormuz,
your oil industry will be crushed. And your people will not forgive you. No
wonder our intel tells us that you are panicked about an Israeli strike.
“So, here is what we propose: an end to Iranian imperialism
in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza in return for our commitment not to
bring down your regime, but instead engage with you on building a regionwide
collective security arrangement. You pull back, we pull back and Israel pulls
back. But this nonsense of you nurturing failed states in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria
and Iraq so that their people can all fight and die while you cheer safely from
Tehran — that stops now.
“We are not out to humiliate you. You can call it a win for
your regime that the Great Satan has recognized Iran as a necessary part of any
regional collective security system. But the arming of Hezbollah, the Houthis
and the Shiite militias in Iraq is over. You stop that, and we will get the
Israelis to withdraw from southern Lebanon and Gaza. The Lebanese Army and a
credible, lethal, international force will replace Hezbollah, and an Arab
peacekeeping force will replace Hamas. We will also encourage Israel to limit
any retaliatory strike against you.
“Otherwise, you are on your own.”
My point is that if we want a peaceful and better Middle
East, we need to sharpen the choices for Iran’s clerical leadership: restart
nuclear talks, end the supplying of thousands of rockets to its proxies and be
able to stay in power — or we will give Israel every weapon in our conventional
arsenal, including the 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs designed to destroy
their deeply buried nuclear facilities and the B-2 bombers to deliver them.
As Karim Sadjadpour, Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, put it to me: The supreme leader Ali Khamenei “has
long believed that continued enmity with America and Israel is more vital to
the survival of his regime than rapprochement or reform. For that dynamic to
possibly shift, Khamenei must face a profound sense of existential angst, one
that convinces him that the current trajectory risks the very collapse of his
regime.’’
Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the former U.S. Central
Command chief, who oversaw the 2020 killing of Qassim Suleimani, the leader of
the elite Quds Force within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, agrees:
“Iran may seem unpredictable at times,’’ he said in The Atlantic, “but it
respects American strength and responds to deterrence. When we withdraw, Iran
advances. When we assert ourselves — having weighed the risks and prepared for
all possibilities — Iran retreats.”
That is why we need to confront Iran with an overwhelming,
credible threat of force, coupled with a diplomatic survival pathway out, but
one that this time addresses both Iran’s nuclear threat and regional behavior.
Our job is to change Iran’s behavior; regime change is the job of the Iranian
people. I believe the best way for that regime to lose its grip is to deprive
it of the oxygen of permanent conflict with Israel and America — and all the
excuses that Iran’s clerical tyrants give for why their people are so isolated
and impoverished.
But I don’t stop there. We also need to sharpen the choices
for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel: We must not be in the business
of making Israel safe so that a radical messianic government can annex the West
Bank. If we are going to keep resupplying Israel with missiles and even
dispatch U.S.-run missile systems, Bibi needs to purge the settler lunatics
from his cabinet, forge a national unity coalition and agree to open talks with
a reformed Palestinian Authority — with a new technocratic cabinet led by
credible leaders like former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad — on a two-state
solution.
That would pave the way for the U.A.E. and other moderate
Arab states to deploy troops to Gaza and for Saudi Arabia to normalize
relations with Israel and forge a security agreement with Washington.
Let me put this as clearly as I can: This crisis in the
Middle East will not end until Israel clearly defines its eastern border and
declares that everything beyond it is reserved for a Palestinian state in the
West Bank, once Palestinians meet the legitimate security requirements Israel
needs to accept a two-state solution. Israel needs to be out of the Jewish
settlements business — now. Israel’s creeping West Bank annexation is
destroying its legitimacy as a democracy, when its self-defense requires all the
friends it can get in the region and beyond.
Even more important, though, this crisis in the Middle East
will not end until Iran, in effect, defines its western border and declares
that everything beyond that is for the Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenis, Iraqis,
Israelis and Palestinians to decide — so long as they respect Iran’s legitimate
security needs. Iran needs to be out of the Islamic imperialism business.
In short, we really need some creative, coercive U.S.
diplomacy right now to finally put an end to both Israel’s and Iran’s colonial
projects, which feed each other. That is the necessary but not sufficient
condition for defusing the madness in this region. Israel cannot afford to be
in a long-term, large-scale missile war with Iran. It is too small. Iran is too
big and the United States is running low on interceptors to protect Israel —
should Iran and all its proxies fire on Israel at once. And Iran cannot afford
to be in a large-scale missile war with Israel because the United States and
its allies have run out of patience with its reckless adventurism that is
destabilizing the whole region.
Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Opinion columnist.
He joined the paper in 1981 and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author
of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National
Book Award. @tomfriedman • Facebook
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