As game theorists debate restoring MidEast balance, Israel pursues ‘total victory’

(Originally published Oct. 7 in “What in the World“) Israel continued to pound Hezbollah in Lebanon, launched a new Gaza offensive, and expanded its airstrikes to the West Bank, while the U.S. protected its southern flank by striking Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The West Bank attack, which targeted a Hamas leader in a café in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, killed at least 18 people. Israeli warplanes meanwhile struck an underground bunker south of Beirut in an effort to kill the likely successor to Hezbollah leadder Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last week. Airstrikes continued over the weekend, when Israel also launched a new offensive in Gaza.

Israel was apparently contemplating an attack on Iran’s oil fields in retaliation for its Tuesday missile barrage of Israel. The tip came from none other than U.S. President Joe Biden, who while boarding his helicopter responded to a reporter’s question as to whether he would support such an attack by saying, “we’re discussing that.” Whether Israel is still considering the attack after Biden announced it as a possibility remains unclear, but Israel’s defense minister said all options were open.

The Pentagon said U.S. forces struck 15 Houthi targets in Yemen, with local media reporting four strikes, in Sanaa and a city to the south, Dhamar, as well as in the port of Hodeidah. U.S. Central Command said the attacks were aimed at blunting the Houthis’ offensive capabilities to continue attacking Red Sea shipping. But only an idiot would think the U.S. isn’t coordinating with the Israeli Defense Forces.

Back in July, Israel conducted its own retaliatory airstrike against the Houthis, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington to address Congress and meet lame-duck U.S. President Joe Biden. Netanyahu told Congress then he was going to fight until he achieved total victory, and in retrospect this is probably when he told Biden what he could do with his ceasefire plan and gave him an ultimatum: Either back Israel and be on the right side of the outcome or stand aside and risk seeing it devastated. We already know Washington subsequently gave Israel the green light for its attack on Hezbollah, if not for the full invasion of Lebanon.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky take note: this is how you control your benefactor. Just use the weapons it gives you how you like. Biden won’t let you fire the long-range missiles he gave you into Russia? Fire them anyway. ‘Tis better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. Like big Wall Street banks before the global financial crisis, Israel is “too big to fail.” After $56 billion in military aid, Ukraine is, too.

After settling into what seemed like an interminable stalemate, the war in Ukraine is picking up, too, as drones and missiles take up the role artillery played before both sides apparently ran out. As Russia launched a fresh wave of drones over the weekend against Kyiv and Odessa, Zelensky accused the U.S. and its European allies of stalling delivery of long-range weapons (perhaps to prevent him from taking a page from Netanyahu’s book). The Pentagon responded that its deliveries of long-range weapons like Atacms are hampered only by low supplies of the missiles.

Some bright bulbs at the Pentagon are reportedly starting to realize something else mentioned repeatedly in this space: deploying your military against potential foes—real or imagined—as a “deterrent,” forces them to respond in a way that can feel like “intimidation” until they ultimately must respond to the challenge by retaliating in kind. Deterrence also emboldens a nation’s allies to indulge in whatever provocations they might not have dared without a superpower backing them up. As this realization sinks in, Pentagon generals are debating whether sending U.S. forces to the Middle East to “deter” retaliation by Iran and its proxies is only fanning the flames of the conflict there. It only eggs them on.

The ball appears to be in Tehran’s court. Now that Israel has invaded Lebanon, it has upset the equilibrium that arguably kept the conflict to a simmer, military game theorists argue. By eliminating Hezbollah’s ability to threaten attacks from northern Israel, the argument goes, Israel now has little preventing it from moving against its direct enemy, Iran, and eliminating the threat is poses—a.k.a. “total victory.” (The hole in this argument, of course, is that Hezbollah started launching rockets into Israel almost a year ago, thereby actuating the threat and eliminating Israel’s incentive to avoid it. Also, Hezbollah’s capability hasn’t been eliminated by Israel’s invasion: on Monday, it launched more rockets against a military base near Haifa.)

Tehran, the game theorists reason, must now demonstrate that a direct attack against it would cost more than Israel is prepared to pay in civilian casualties. That presumably was the message Iran was sending with its missile barrage into Israel last week. Whether Israel took away that message is another question: it has vowed to retaliate, and with the U.S. involved now keeping Iran’s Houthi proxies at bay, Netanyahu would seem to have little disincentive not to march his army all the way to Tehran.

Washington may soon be able to tie the two wars—Ukraine vs. Russia and Israel vs. Iran—together in a neat ideological bow, preferably before elections. An airstrike last Friday hit an ammunition warehouse near a Russian base in northern Syria near the local international airport. The strike came so close that Russian anti-aircraft guns were fired against the attackers. The New York Times makes the point tepidly that the attack raises the risk that Russia gets “ensnared” in the Middle East conflict. But in the White House’s own “axis of evil” logic, Moscow is already involved—as an ally of Iran’s.

And guess who also has a base in Syria (and next door in Iraq)? The U.S. At Al-Tanf near the Iraqi border. Last month, Ukrainian commandos attacked a different Russian base in Syria, near Aleppo. These events are undoubtedly completely random and disconnected and are being undertaken without any knowledge, much less coordination, between interested parties.