As the fallout from the IDF strikes that killed seven international aid workers continues, we’re seeing a lot of premature outrage.
The White House released a “Statement from President Joe Biden on the Death of World Central Kitchen Workers in Gaza.” The substantive portion:
I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen, including one American, in Gaza yesterday. They were providing food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war. They were brave and selfless. Their deaths are a tragedy.
Israel has pledged to conduct a thorough investigation into why the aid workers’ vehicles were hit by airstrikes. That investigation must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public.
Even more tragically, this is not a stand-alone incident. This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed. This is a major reason why distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza has been so difficult – because Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians. Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen. Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians. The United States has repeatedly urged Israel to deconflict their military operations against Hamas with humanitarian operations, in order to avoid civilian casualties.
The United States will continue to do all we can to deliver humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, through all available means. I will continue to press Israel to do more to facilitate that aid. And we are pushing hard for an immediate ceasefire as part of a hostage deal. I have a team in Cairo working on this right now.
The notion that it’s possible to operate in complete safety in the midst of a horrific war, whether for reporters or humanitarian assistance workers, is misguided. “Outrage” over the specific incident before the investigation is complete is wildly premature, unless US intelligence is telling the President more than is known publicly. His wider concern that Israel is doing too little to protect civilians, however, may be correct.
Regardless, to the extent it had sympathy in the wake of the October 7 massacre, Israel is quickly losing world support. It’s not just the WFK strikes, after all.
NYT (“In a U.N. meeting, U.S., Britain and France do not join the condemnation of an Israeli strike in Syria.”):
In an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, the majority of diplomats condemned Israel, saying that it had violated international laws and breached the U.N. charter that protects diplomatic premises when it bombed an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria.
The United States, France and Britain did not condemn Israel, but they joined other nations in reiterating that diplomatic structures should be considered off limits during wartime and that the airstrikes, on Monday in Damascus, the Syrian capital, had risked plunging the Middle East into further instability.
“Any miscalculation could lead to broader conflict in an already volatile region, with devastating consequences for civilians who are already seeing unprecedented suffering,” Khaled Khiari, the U.N. assistant secretary general, told the Council.
Russia, a close ally of Iran, had called for the meeting to discuss Israel’s attack, after Iran’s mission to the U.N. submitted a letter to the world body arguing that the airstrikes had violated international law. The attacks killed seven members of Iran’s Quds forces, including three generals.
Iran and Syria both attended the meeting and addressed the Council. Israel, which did not attend the meeting, has said that the target was not a diplomatic one because it had been used frequently by Iran’s military commanders and personnel in Syria.
Robert A. Wood, the U.S. representative at the meeting, told the Council that Washington had communicated to Iran that it was not involved in the attack and had no prior knowledge of it. Mr. Wood did not directly criticize Israel, saying instead that the United States was concerned about Iran and its proxy militia’s use of Syrian territory to attack Israeli targets and American bases.
“Any confirmed attack on property that was in fact a diplomatic facility would be of concern to the United States,” Mr. Wood said. “Diplomatic missions and their property, as well as official diplomatic residents, must be protected even in and especially in terms of armed conflict.”
Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., Vasily Nebenzya, said his country was extremely concerned by what he called Israel’s disregard of international rules, and described the attacks as “reckless actions.” Mr. Nebenzya also lashed out at the United States, Britain and France for their “verbal gymnastics” in applying double standards by refusing to directly criticize Israel.
“If it was your embassy that was attacked or your consulate in the region, would you respond in the same way?” Mr. Nebenzya said. “This is your rules-based order in all its glory.”
Which, frankly, is absolute nonsense. If our consular buildings were the headquarters of a globally recognized terrorist group, they would absolutely be legitimate targets. France would not hesitate to do it were its citizens being targeted.
Still, as noted at the time, the risk of escalation is high.
NYT (“Fears grow that an Israeli strike in Syria could spur retaliatory attacks.“):
Current and former U.S. officials expressed fears on Tuesday that Israel’s airstrike on an Iranian embassy compound in Syria could escalate hostilities in the region and prompt retaliatory strikes against Israel and its American ally.
The officials said the attack, which killed three generals in Iran’s Quds Force and four other officers on Monday, had dealt a serious blow to the force, the external military and intelligence service of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Ralph Goff, a former senior C.I.A. official who served in the Middle East, called Israel’s strike “incredibly reckless.”
“It will only result in escalation by Iran and its proxies, which is very dangerous” to American troops in the region who could be targeted in retaliatory strikes by Tehran’s proxies, Mr. Goff said.
Indeed, after the Israeli strike in Damascus, Syria’s capital, American troops based in southeastern Syria knocked down an attack drone, a Defense Department official said. It was unclear if the drone was aimed at the U.S. forces, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. If it were, it would be the first attack by Iran-backed militias against American troops in Iraq or Syria in nearly two months. No injuries or damage were reported.
The official said there had been no further attacks overnight, but that Pentagon officials were monitoring the situation closely.
Mr. Goff said the deadly strike in Syria fit Israel’s “longer-term strategy of degrading” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force unit, and “punishing them for ongoing plots to kill or kidnap Israeli Jews around the world.”
In the yearslong shadow war between Iran and Israel, Syria has been key terrain for Israel as it works to degrade Iran’s ability to move advanced weaponry by land and air closer to Israel’s borders.
“The strike yesterday is a significant escalation and risks tipping an already volatile, unstable region into full-scale war,” said Dana Stroul, formerly the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy official who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “This is the Israeli version of the U.S. strike on Qassim Suleimani,” she said, referring to the former longtime leader of the Quds Force, who was killed by an American drone strike near the Baghdad airport in 2020.
Ms. Stroul said assessing the post-Suleimani era is instructive because the command and control of the Quds Force was degraded.
“We have seen Iran-backed militia groups take decisions into their own hands under the leadership of Qaani, as well the rise of rival power centers in Iran,” Ms. Stroul said, referring to Gen. Ismail Qaani, the current Quds Force commander. “This has led to a more diffuse, but not less lethal, Quds Force-led network abroad. But Iran’s core strategy never changed. Tehran will continue to invest in its terrorist network abroad in order to keep the fight away from its own borders.”
More broadly, Ms. Stroul said, the message is that Islamic Revolutionary Guards “operatives and leaders are not safe anywhere.”
She continued: “It should have strategic effect on how the Quds Force operates abroad and should erode any semblance of invincibility or deniability that this terrorist organization only brings instability and violence to the places it seeks to operate.”
Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., a retired four-star general and former leader of the Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said the deaths of the senior Quds Force officers was “a blow.”
“Their long-term, carefully developed relationships will be lost,” he said.
Ms. Stroul said the strike would further inflame Tehran. “The question is, will Iran respond in a manner that de-escalates the situation, or will it climb further up the escalation ladder?” she said.
Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, sought on Tuesday to tamp down fears of escalation, saying that the United States had no involvement in the airstrike and did not know about it ahead of time.
Ms. Singh said at a news conference that the message had also been conveyed directly to Iran. “Tensions being high in the region, we wanted to make it very clear in private channels that the U.S. had no involvement in the strike in Damascus.”
General McKenzie said he expected Iran would retaliate in some way, but he downplayed fears of a major escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran.
“Iran’s options to hit Israel are very, very limited,” General McKenzie said. “And the Israelis aren’t going to back down.”
I’m reminded of former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown’s assessment of US-Soviet arms control: “When we build, they build. When we stop, they build.” Iran has been attacking Israel for decades. The notion that not hitting back is going to make them stop is ludicrous.
As to the wreckless of the attack, I’ll cite Bubba of jukebox-shooting fame: “reckless hell, I hit just where I was aimin.’” While I’m skeptical that decapitation strikes are strategically effective, they surely have some psychological impact. And it’s not obvious what other option Israel has at combatting Iran’s chief irregular warfare asset.
The larger picture, though, is the humanitarian catastrophe that is the war in Gaza. The best available estimates have more than 30,000 dead as of late February. That’s more than any Arab-Israeli war since Lebanon in 1982. Oxfam estimated that the toll is some 250 per day, the highest of any recent conflict. Israel claims that more than 10,000 of those are Hamas fighters, out of an estimated 30,000 at the beginning of the war; that’s almost certainly exaggerated.
And, as I’ve argued throughout the conflict, it’s not at all clear what the Netanyahu government’s plan is, or, indeed, whether they have one. This war has been too destructive to chalk it up to “mowing the grass.” Even if the IDF manages to kill 20,000—or, hell, 30,000—Hamas fighters, what’s next? What’s the plan for postwar Gaza?
