Joshua Arnold – WashingtonStand.com
A strange irony is unfolding in the Middle East, as America’s military operations against Iran are being cheered more by Iran’s close neighbors than by the U.S. populace. Not only Israel but also the Gulf Arab states — to say nothing of Iran’s own oppressed people — are overjoyed that the U.S. military has taken the radical regime to the woodshed. But will America provide the requested encore?
“Politically, this is a war that is enormously popular on the part of the Israeli people,” American Foreign Policy Council Senior Vice President Ilan Berman explained on “Washington Watch.” “Because the Israelis have been living with this — what is effectively an existential threat of a radical Islamist regime acquiring the world’s most deadly weapons and threatening on a routine basis to wipe them out as a nation.” What’s more, Israelis have “been living with this for about a generation.”
The war’s popularity in Israel is noteworthy because, even more than the post-October 7 conflicts against Iran’s terrorist proxies, it has effectively shut down all normal life in the country, as the whole nation must remain in tense readiness for incoming Iranian missiles, which nearly always target civilians. “Kids haven’t gone to school since the start of the war a month ago,” said Berman. “Now the Jewish holidays are coming up next week. And so they will be out of school effectively for two months, maybe more.”
“It’s clearly enormously disruptive to the Israeli economy,” Berman added. “Disruption sets in in earnest the longer the conflict goes on because … Israel has a small standing army, but a large reserve corps. The more the reservists are called up for duty — both with regard to Iran and also with regard to Israel’s northern front in Lebanon — the longer this cycle goes on, the more disruptive it is to the fabric of society and to the economy.”
In Israel, “obviously there’s trepidation as to how this goes,” allowed Berman, but “there’s also trepidation about the potential for the White House to leave too early.”
“That’s a trepidation that’s shared by Iran’s neighbors in the Gulf, countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain,” Berman continued. “They have been attacked more than Israel has in the current conflict. And so, when they are talking to the White House, the message that they’re sending is, ‘You can’t leave too early. You have to degrade Iranian capabilities more. Because you’re separated from Iran by a large ocean. But we’re not.’”
While none of the Gulf Arab states have officially joined the war against Iran, they are all aiding the U.S. and may eventually enter into combat.
One wrench in the Trump administration’s efforts to establish diplomatic back-channels with the battered remnants of the Iranian regime is that “a deal that’s acceptable to the United States may be less so to Israel, less so to Iran’s Gulf neighbors,” Berman suggested. “And that’s going to be a line that the administration is going to have to walk, I think, very carefully. And that’s why you see a maximalist set of American demands that have now gone to Iran.”
Iran has already objected Trump’s initial demands, releasing its own demands that are just as intolerable to the Trump administration, as they would effectively amount to declaring an Iranian victory. If the two sides do reach an agreement, there would have to be quite a bit of compromise from both sides.