Thanking Yahya Sinwar

In a roundabout manner he may be the cause of Middle East peace

It is hard to think back to what things were like 2 years ago before Hamass launched its deadly assault on Israel. Despite Hamass, and Hez(no)bollah, and the Houthis, and Iran itself regularly stating that their goal was the destruction of Israel as a state and the mass extermination of Jews everywhere, the conventional wisdom was that they wouldn’t actually do anything serious. Oh sure a few protests, a missile or two, maybe a bomb somewhere, but those stockpiles of missiles would never get used and the Iranian’s nuclear bomb program would never get to the point where they could actually build one. There was enough denial in Jerusalem that you’d think it was on the banks of a river in Egypt. Mind you it wasn’t just Jerusalem, conventional wisdom everywhere was that this could be managed. That a combination of high tech tools, spying and negotiations would keep the peace because, at base, Hamass and co. didn’t really mean it when they screamed “death to Israel”. Oh sure maybe a few hotheads did, but not enough to matter and the tech tools and spying would identify almost all potential attacks before anything too bad could happen.

October 7th changed all that.

On that day Israelis learned that, given a chance, many of their Gazan neighbors would rape and kill their way across the entire country. Which, if you happen to be an Israeli who prefers not being raped or killed, is something of a problem.

[It also, additionally, exposed a surprisingly virulent and widespread seam of antisemitism in the West, but that’s not the subject of this post.]

Fortunately for Israel, Hamass’ actions do not seem to have been well coordinated with their fellow “death to Israel” groups and so Israel was able, fairly quickly, to eliminate the major threat of Hamass without being dragged into a war with anyone else at the same time.

Now Hamass still isn’t completely destroyed, but most of its pre Oct 2023 leadership is dead, and most of the infrastructure it built in Gaza has been destroyed along with the missiles and other weaponry. Moreover Gaza has been sufficiently isolated and partitioned that Hamass is no longer an existential threat. That doesn’t mean Gaza is solved, but, now that Israel has realized it no longer needs to pay attention to the UN or the chatterati in the rest of the world, it’s getting that way.

Then there was the decision of Hez(no)ballah to start getting froggy. Operation Grim Beeper and the subsequent decapitation bombing of Hezbollah buildings in Lebanon cut that threat out nicely and Lebanon as a whole is probably more stable because it doesn’t have Hez(no)bollah able to throw its weight around secure in the knowledge that it has weapons and foreign backers that other Lebanese groups do not have.

The deballing of Hezbollah undoubtedly helped the next domino to fall - the Assad regime in Syria. Israel didn’t need to do much there, just wipe out places where Hezbollah and the Iranians had gathered to provide support to the Assad regime and let the other Syrians get on with removing the Assads and their allies. Interestingly, and this may end up playing in Lebanon too, Israel has been providing a certain amount of assistance to the Druze community in Syria. It could well be that in the fairly near future Israel ends up having Druze allies/clients in both Syria and Lebanon that can act as a counter to other less friendly groups.

It is worth pointing out here that Gaza is tiny - less than 400 sq km/150 sq miles. Lebanon is bigger, but at ~10,000 sq km / 4,000 sq mi it’s roughly half the size of Israel. You could fit Israel (including Gaza and the West bank) and Lebanon combined into a couple of New England states (say Vermont + New Hampshire) with room to spare. Syria is much bigger (IIRC is the size of a decent-sized US state) so it makes sense that Israel would not try to project force across Syria. Now Iran is even bigger, larger than Alaska or about 2.5 x Texas so boots on the ground there is tough. Plus it’s 1000 miles (plus or minus) away from Israel across two or three other countries (Jordan, Syria, Iraq). Now, is Syria all peaceful happy rainbows now that Assad & co are gone? No. But they are not allied with Iran and the new government seems generally more willing to ally with the general Sunni world and not be directly hostile to Israel.

So with the direct threats of Hamass and Hez(no)ballah removed, and with the Houthis having been slapped around when they tried, Iran’s leverage and ability to threaten Israel was reduced. Moreover, in retaliation for Iranian attacks to support H&H, Israel removed a lot of Iranian Air Defense systems last year. But, even so, Israel did not in fact attack Iran proactively last year. One suspects that the influence of President Autopen and his puppet masters.

However it seems that the Iranian leaders believed that even after Trump was elected, the Israelis would not make a serious attack on them. Possibly because Trump talked about deals and peace? possibly because they believed their own propaganda. Hence, despite having had six months to buy some better air defense they decided it was more important to get their nuke finished. Not an unreasonable decision given that their other methods to put pressure on Israel had gone. Perhaps they were unable to get any new air defense? For sure Russia has none to spare and maybe the Chicoms were unwilling? After all if they had some nukes they could blow up Israel and dominate the rest of the middle east.

However going for the bomb turns out to have been a fatal error for many of them - so far Israel has killed a couple of dozen top generals, aides and the like along with another dozen plus of leading scientists. And more of both are dying all the time as people are promoted and then are killed.

So the question is what now? It looks like Iran has lost complete control of its airspace, lost a lot (probably about half so far) of its missile launchers and a lot missiles, as well as the top leadership and scientists mentioned earlier. And while some of its nuclear stuff seems to be well buried (odd for the “civilian program” it claims it is developing), much of the easy to reach surface stuff is now wreckage.

But the surviving mullahs are still in power, the Fordow plant is still running (probably the underground parts of Natanz as well) and the current stocks of highly enriched uranium are still around in various places. What is also still in place is the endemic corruption that allowed Israel’s spies to penetrate the country so extensively again and again.

Regime Change Has To Happen

The usual idiots, as well as a few unusual ones, are concerned. They are concerned that the US will be dragged into a war, or that the US will be forced to occupy Iran, or more. They are concerned that if the Iranian regime collapses there will be anarchy. And chaos and so on. They are possibly even correct that regime change in Iran will be messy and lead to civil wars and more.

The problem is there is no alternative. If the mullahs remain in charge they will continue to seek the destruction of Israel. The kick the can down the road option ended October 7, 2023. Israel cannot afford to permit people to remain alive or in power when they call for its destruction and build tools to do so. Now, for various reasons, Israeli and US leaders may not come out and say that the Mullahs must be eliminated, but that has to be the end goal. When President Trump said “Unconditional Surrender” he means the same thing. Probably Israel and the US would prefer the mullahs to surrender and allow for inspections and occupation.

I doubt they will get their wish. Even if Khamenei survives and can call for surrender, which is probably a major reason why he is still breathing, I expect there are sufficient true believers who will refuse to do so. However it seems fairly clear to me that the Iranian population generally is not supportive of the fundamentalist Islamic rule of the mullahs.

There appears to be a hope that the son of the last Shah might be able to unify the country. If that happens that will be good and, of course, if there’s a peaceful transition of power from Khamenei to him that’s better.

But my guess is that this isn’t going to happen. Or that if it does happen, it doesn’t last long and Iran gets some level of revenge taking that may be simple vigilante justice for the worst regime fanatics (best case) or a full blown civil war (worst). However I don’t think Israel is going to care too much, just as long as they have the opportunity to remove the HEU and blow up whatever bomb and missile technology is hidden in those underground bunkers. Sure they’d prefer Iran to be stable and peaceful, but an Iran that is fighting itself and doesn’t have any enriched Uranium isn’t a threat to Israel.

Either way it looks like we’re at the end stage of the elimination of the Iranian regime and its support of destabilizing groups all over the Middle East. That’s probably going to help bring general stability to Lebanon, Iraq and Syria etc. and really it could only have been done once Yahya Sinwar made his attack on Israel.

So perhaps Sinwar can be awarded the first posthumous Nobel Peace Prize