PM Netanyahu: Iran is different - containment is not an option

 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

PM Netanyahu at the swearing-in ceremony for the new director of the Mossad

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Tuesday, 1 June 2021), at the swearing-in ceremony for the new Director of the Mossad:

 

"Our greatest threat is the existential threat posed by Iran's efforts to arm itself with nuclear weapons, whether to threaten us directly – with atomic weapons – with the destruction of a small state, or to threaten us with tens of thousands of missiles or a great many missiles backed by a nuclear umbrella. This is a threat against the continuation of the Zionist enterprise and we must fight this threat relentlessly.

 

“All of you do this. We spoke yesterday about the actions that have been taken and these actions must continue. I have said these things to my friend of 40 years, Joe Biden, and I told him: 'With or without an agreement, we will continue to do everything in our power to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons.' Iran is different from the other countries that have nuclear weapons today; therefore, containment is not an option.

 

“If we need to choose – and I hope it will not happen – between friction with our great friend, the US, and getting rid of an existential threat, getting rid of an existential threat will prevail. This first falls on all of you, on the political leadership of the State of Israel and on you David. All of you must do everything, everything, to ensure that Iran will never arm itself with nuclear weapons."

My comment:

Netanyahu is spot on. Today is not February 22,1946, with George F. Kennan sending his Long Telegram from Moscow and defining the containment of the USSR. Iran is not the USSR and containment is not an option.  The question is do Bennet, Lapid and Gantz get that?   

The Iranian Queen’s Gambit meets Israel’s Sicilian defense

Using a live chess theory approach, we can identify Iran’s strategic moves in real time and examine what are its goals. Ultimately, the most important question is: Will Tehran use nuclear weapons?

By ZAQ HARRISON/THE MEDIA LINE 

With its economy on the brink of collapse, the survival of the Islamic regime in Tehran might depend on a new deal with the United States and the West. Iran’s proxy war, making use of Hamas and Hezbollah, against Israel, is a critical tool to pressure the West to acquiesce to the demands of the Islamic Republic. These include a complete opening of their economy to the world markets and the acceptance of their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Using a live chess theory approach that studies chess strategies, openings, and historical games between grandmasters, we can identify Iran’s strategic moves in real time and examine what are its goals and whether it is a rational actor. Ultimately, the most important question is this: Will Tehran use nuclear weapons?

Unlike artificial intelligence (AI), which is an analytical process, chess is a systemic process. AI is built on mimicking human cognitive ability with the aid of supercomputing, extrapolating infinite scenario options. Chess relies on unique human choices for each move that may or may not involve intuition and self-awareness.

A recent article said the 2021 Israeli-Palestinian crisis was the first war with supercomputing and AI. Israeli systems used AI to make highest-value target recommendations for military intelligence. Another system mapped the terrain in Gaza and was able to identify in real time changes that would indicate live launch sites. Yet another utilized field information to alert Israeli troops of possible imminent attacks.

Brig. Gen. Yosef Kuperwasser, a former head of the Research Division of the Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence Directorate, in a groundbreaking paper published by the Brookings Institution, supported the use of Systemic Thinking (of which chess analysis is an example) as a geopolitical and military intelligence analytical tool. “Systemic Thinking,” Kuperwasser wrote, “allowed analysts to offer more rounded intelligence estimates and produce a holistic intelligence product by better understanding the way arenas develop and increasing focus on the cultural surroundings of a subject (ideology, religion, public opinion, psychology, literature, and arts).”

Chess is about controlling the center, gaining spatial advantage, and protecting the king – all concepts that can be applied to the Israel-Iran conflict. Nothing in chess is random; all pieces have only one objective: to serve the king (the regime). As the game progresses, pieces are sacrificed for the greater good. Unless the players agree to a draw, a tie, the game is over when the attacking player declares to the opponent “checkmate,” from the Persian shah mat: the king is dead.

I spoke at length with former Iranian chess champions and asked them to analyze the Islamic Republic’s geopolitical moves through the lens of chess openings and strategies. All spoke freely on condition of anonymity out of concern for the safety of their families that still reside in Iran.

In the geopolitical chess game between Iran and Israel, Iran is playing white and is on the offense. In chess parlance, Iran is playing a Queen’s Gambit. A gambit is a chess opening that dangles a piece, daring you to take it. The Queen’s Gambit temps the opponent into allocating important resources atop each other, restricting their movements. It is not unlike the Battle of Thermopylae, where the Spartans were trapped in a mountain pass.

The Iranians will continue to sacrifice Hamas, as well as Hezbollah, when it suits them to achieve a strategic imbalance. Loyalty, after all, is to the king; it is not asked of the king.

When the Queen’s Gambit is played, even the queen herself can be sacrificed. According to a former family member of Iran’s ruling elite who served under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and then briefly under the Islamic regime, the Islamic regime did exactly this when it “sacrificed” Gen. Qasem Soleimani, IRGC Quds Force major-general. Articles in Time and the Atlantic Council both point to the lack of a substantial Iranian retaliation for his “martyrdom” and the potential benefits of Soleimani's death to the regime – providing a rallying point for the people and eliminating a potential internal threat for the clerics who wish to control the transfer of power when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dies.

Israel is playing black, on defense, and has declined Iran’s gambit. The Jewish State is playing a version of the transposed Sicilian Defense, whose main goal is to pressure white’s center. It does this by sacrificing a position on the periphery while attacking and holding a critical space in the center. Israel, knowing Iran has a space advantage that cannot be overcome, is playing Sicilian to counter and execute deep attacks into enemy territory. This is strategic subterfuge in seeking to place an attacking piece deep into enemy territory where it can cause chaos. Black’s goal with the Sicilian Defense is to bring imbalanced and asymmetrical positions onto the chessboard and maintain this imbalance.

Chess is about controlling space, attacking weak squares, and gaining control over other open squares. Iran can produce insane complications, create a lot of tactical possibilities to surprise Israel, and get into a long, drawn-out endgame if Israel does not finish the job in the middle game. If Israel would have been entrenched fighting in Gaza, Iran’s next move would have been for Hezbollah to fire its missiles into Israel, opening a third front and wreaking havoc.

Chess purists reading this will revolt. Iran and Israel are playing parallel games. In an actual game of chess, the Sicilian Defense cannot be played against the Queen’s Gambit. Geopolitics is not limited by the 64 squares and the time clock of a standard game of chess.

During the Cold War, chess theory demonstrated that the former Soviet Union was extremely unlikely to launch nuclear weapons. In Russian (Soviet) chess, the draw is a valued strategic tool. The same chess theory tells us quite a different story regarding the Islamic Republic in Tehran that will sacrifice anything and anyone to stay in power.

In chess, a space advantage allows a player to take strategic risks; it makes affordable the consequences of the opponent’s counter.

American constitutional and criminal law professor Alan Dershowitz frequently tells an anecdote about the late Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani that illustrates a classic implementation of the centrality of space in chess theory. Rafsanjani, considered a relative moderate, once told an American journalist that if Iran launched a strategic nuclear strike on Israel, it would “kill as many as 5 million Jews,” and that if Israel retaliated, it would kill 15 million Iranians. This, Rafsanjani says in Dershowitz’s telling, would be “a small sacrifice from among the billion Muslims in the world. … It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.”

Zaq Harrison is an entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in the private and nonprofit sectors. Harrison writes on topics ranging from global real estate analysis to pre-IPO evaluation of ridesharing firms to foundational causes of the global financial crises of 2008 to free-market societal responsibilities in the 21st century

Israel, the Hamas Charter, Jihad and Lenin's Useful Idiots

Jerusalem Post, May 24, 2021, Letters to the Editor

In “A military operation like none in history” (May 21), Yaakov Katz asks: “After 16 years of doing it one way, is it not time to try something else? “

It is. 

Israel UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan addressed the UN General Assembly on Thursday (May 20) and said, “Let me remind you of what many of you, unfortunately, ignore: Hamas is an internationally designated jihadi terrorist organization that has fired more than 4,000 rockets at Israeli cities over the last 11 days. 

Right now, as I speak to you, Israeli civilians are running to find shelter from Hamas’s indiscriminate attacks.

“Here is a quote from the Hamas charter: ‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.’ And it continues: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.”

About time! Why did it take Israelis 14 years of Hamas rocket attacks before they finally quoted the Hamas Charter at the UN? Are we going to wait another decade before they draw attention to the Jihad in Palestinian Islamic Jihad?

So to try something else would be to educate the politicians and media in the West about what is really going on, so that next time Israel is not under unnecessary constraint due to their cluelessness. Bernie Sanders, for instance, introduced a resolution blocking $735 million weapons sale to Israel. Proof that Lenin, a century after his death, can still create useful idiots. 

 MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC 

Beersheba

Is Israel on the Verge of War with Iran?: Professor Richard Landes

 

48:39 into the video

Question:  Richard, obviously we tie all this with “is Israel on the verge of war with Iran” and this is the big concern and the people in Gaza have been used by the Arab nations, by Muslim nations to attack Israel, and  of course Iran have used Hamas and have been the big backers of Hamas and I wonder where Iran, Iran are Shi’as  which is 10 percent of the Muslim world the rest are Sunnis, but hatred of Israel trumps that divide. So am wondering where you see this happening with Iran. Thank God we haven’t seen Iran stepping in  as a  nuclear power which could be apocalyptic if that happens. But obviously Iran have been emboldened by the Biden presidency. So what are your thoughts on how Iran fits into this or are we moving towards something more serious? 

Richard Landes: Well, we’ve been moving towards something more serious for a long time now. There is an article that a British scientist, theologian Mark Pickles and I wrote called The Ticking Time Bomb, which was inspired by what happened with the explosion in Lebanon, which is just to say that, you know, whatever the cease-fire is now, it’s temporary. This is a long war and it’s a war that when it does not tear us apart, ends up tearing up apart the Muslim worlds. So, Syria is an unbelievable disaster. People are screaming about 200 dead in Gaza, that’s  a half a day’s work on a quiet day in Syria. No concern. Again humanitarian racism, what do you expect, I expect the Jews to live to higher standards, Arabs kill each other, what the hell. 

So on the one hand you have this sort of crazy humanitarian racism, on the other hand you have a tolerance for the belligerence of the Muslim world, in this case Iran. One of the most astounding accomplishments and I don’t understand it because if Obama, who grew up a Muslim, both his father and his step father were Muslim, so as far as the Muslims are concerned he is Muslim, we don’t know what he considers himself, you are not supposed to say that, but in any case what’s puzzling is if ihe is and if he has, he definitely has sympathies for Muslims, one would think it would be Sunni, because that is what he grew up, and yet one of the most astonishing accomplishments that he managed to make was the belief that by keeping Iran from having the bomb for 5 years we are contributing to peace rather than just kicking the can down the road . And this is a widespread belief in liberal and progressive circles, certainly in America and apparently also in Europe. That’s an astonishing accomplishment. 

Iran is a millennial movement. There is lots of evidence of this and not just a millennial movement but one that drives their behavior. So the idea that Iran will be peaceful, or that, you hear this often, Iran says we don’t want nuclear weapons, we want peaceful use of nuclear stuff and people say, maybe they mean it. No, maybe they don’t!   

So a number of articles I have read during this time said Iran is watching very carefully. Essentially what they are doing, they are using Hamas to probe our defences, and that is almost certainly the case, and they are certainly not done and instead of working for the end of this insane regime which is destroying Iran, people are protecting it for reasons that I really don’t understand and  I mean the only explanation that makes sense and I don’t like to go there is that they hate Israel more than they like themselves. You know, the joke in the 20th century was, Isiah Berlin said antisemitism is hating Jews more than absolutely necessary. In the 21th century it is hating Jews even if it is bad for you. Even though you are hurting yourself, you can’t give it up

OK, so the other thing about Iran though is that it has the Sunni states aware of how dangerous it is. Now the apocalyptic Sunnis like Hamas have no trouble making deals with apocalyptic Shiites. That is not a problem. But the non-apocalyptic Muslims look at this and say, wow, this is very serious and dangerous stuff and that is where the Abraham accords come from, and so forth. Again, Iran is a terrible threat which is unrecognized, in fact in the West, in America, I don’t know about England, I would imagine it is the case, people say America went into Iraq because Israel wanted them to. No, the Israelis were saying no, Iraq is not the problem, the real problem is Iran. So you know again, literally history gets twisted in a way that systematically weakens democracies, human rights, progressive values, feminism, all of these things.  It’s pathetic. 

Israel quotes Hamas Charter at the UN General Assembly. About time!

 

Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, addressed the General Assembly of the UN on May 20, 2021 and said the following: 

Let me remind you of what many of you, unfortunately, ignore: Hamas is an internationally designated jihadi terrorist organization that has fired more than four thousand rockets at Israeli cities over the last 11 days. Right now, as I speak to you, Israeli civilians are running to find shelter from Hamas's indiscriminate attacks.

Here is a quote from the Hamas charter: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

And it continues: “The Day of Judgement will not come until Muslems fight the Jews and kill them.”

About time! Why did it take Israel 14 years of Hamas rocket attacks before it finally quoted the Hamas Charter at the UN? Are we going to wait another decade before they draw attention to the Jihad in Palestinian Islamic Jihad?

 This following article I wrote 13 years ago: 

December 31, 2008

From Be'er Sheva, under Grad attack, with anger

By Mladen Andrijasevic

Israeli president Shimon Peres gave this statement yesterday: "Nobody in this world understands what are Hamas' goals and why it continues to fire missiles,"  "This shooting has no point, no logic, and no chance."   

I am angry with Shimon Peres. Was it so difficult to read Hamas' Charter, Article 13 "There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by jihad." or Article 7 of the Hamas Charter which reads "O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!"  and  is taken from hadith Bukhari (Vol 4, Book 52, No. 177) and quotes Prophet Muhammad?

Do all these Middle East experts from Tony Blair to Martti Ahtisaari really believe that Hamas will "moderate" and  go against what Muhammad ordered? Had they read one book by Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye'or, Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Robert Spencer they  would have understood that one word explains it all - jihad.  After all, the name of the parallel organization to Hamas says it explicitly  - Islamic Jihad. The ten ton elephant is in the middle of the room, but they refuse to see it.     

Why is it that we have to suffer because our political elites are in denial  and refuse to read up on jihad and educate themselves?  Enough is enough. How long is the civilization which created the Grad rocket used by the jihadists, created the laptops and software ( Google Earth) they are targeting us with, the integrated chips, microprocessors, flip-flops, half--adders, p-n junctions, down to the Schrödinger equation, how long will we who created all they are using to attack us with refuse to look at the vast information available at our fingertips about their motives?       

Never in human history has the future of our civilization depended on the group so reluctant to look into quite easily accessible information.

Those who threaten Israel also threaten us

 The following is an improved Google translation of the article from Le Figaro May 18, 2021

Manuel Valls, Luc Ferry, Michèle Tribalat et Philippe Val

FIGAROVOX / TRIBUNE - Faced with tensions between Israel and Hamas, 76 personalities including Manuel Valls, Philippe Val and Renée Fregosi affirm their solidarity with the Israeli people and call for the fight against Islamism in all its forms, in Israel as in France.

By collective tribune

Posted yesterday at 15:49, updated yesterday at 17:43

While Israel fully disengaged from Gaza in 2005, attacks from the Gaza Strip occur sporadically. For several days, Israel has faced an unprecedented offensive: Hamas has fired thousands of deadly rockets and missiles at the Israeli population.

Hamas is not aiming at the establishment of a state for the Arab people of Palestine, but the destruction of the Hebrew state.

Faced with this aggression, most of the media coverage seems surreal. Certain journalists do now dare to speak of "attacks by the Islamists of Hamas", but most still fully support the belligerents while others evoke yet another original Israeli provocation (real estate conflicts in East Jerusalem or the supposed invasion of al-Aqsa, for example) which would have set fire to the powder, while we know that the stockpile of rockets (financed in particular by the Iranian sponsors of Hamas) and the tunnels had already been in place for a long time.

As for certain political parties in France, their eagerness to defend Hamas confirms their Islamo-leftist drift despite their soft denials. On the other hand, four hundred thousand dead in Syria and all the victims of Islamist terrorism in the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan or Africa do not move these indignant people.

The attempts to excuse or justify Islamist violence which would be the consequence of the just anger of the humiliated, the "despoiled" and the oppressed are unfounded and untrue. Because the “Palestinian cause” is not and never has been the cause of a  economically or politically desperate Third World. The Arab misfortune is real, but its cause lies at the heart of the Arab powers and is not in Israel. The Palestinian misfortune is real, but the reason for this misfortune is called Hamas and not Israel.

As long as Europeans do not integrate Islamist cosmology into their analysis  of the Muslim space and the Arab world, they will not understand the real issues. We see the deadly thought of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an incarnation, in France and in Europe as well as in North Africa and the Sahel. It is the same ideology which armed the hand of the assassin of Samuel Paty, as it fanaticized Kobili Traoré who massacred Sarah Halimi because she was Jewish, that is to say a supporter of Satan in the Islamist phantasmagoria.

In the present confrontation, Israel is within its rights. Whatever errors some may want to reproach its rulers, Israel has the right to exist and to persevere in its being. And here it  fights its  attacker. It still fights today to defend its territory and its population (Jewish and Arab, affected indiscriminately  by rockets).

But Israel doesn't just do that. By confronting the advanced figure of Islamism in Gaza, Israel contributes to the defeat of an Islamic totalitarianism which is also raging in our territory. You don't have to be a great expert to understand this and understand that beyond what is at stake in the Middle East, it is probably our future, here, in France and in Europe, that is also at stake.

 Let’s affirm our solidarity with the Israeli people!    

Signatories:

Mehdi Aïfa, militant anti-islamiste

Michel Albouy, professeur des universités

Paul Atlan, médecin

Claudine Attias-Donfut, directrice de recherches

Michel Auboin, consultant

Bat Ye'or, écrivain, chercheur

Jean-Jacques Benoît, maire honoraire de Pessa,

Hortense Bile, présidente de AMIFA

Claire Brière-Blanchet, journaliste

Frédéric Joseph Bianchi, président de l'association Terra Eretz

Jean-Marie Brohm, Professeur des universités émérite

Catherine Chalier, philosophe

René Chiche, professeur de philosophie

Elie Chouraqui, cinéaste, journaliste

Sophie Chauveau, écrivain

Charles Coutel, professeur des universités

Brice Couturier, journaliste, essayiste

David Duquesne, infirmier libéral, éditorialiste

Yves Doukhan, consultant, membre du bureau de Dhimmi Watch

Bernice Dubois, présidente d'honneur du Mouvement pour la paix et contre le terrorisme

Annick Duraffour, agrégée de Lettres

Alexandre Feigenbaum, président de Dhimmi Watch

Elisabeth de Fontenay, philosophe

Renée Fregosi, philosophe, politologue

Luc Ferry, philosophe

Jean Giot, professeur des universités émérite

Aline Girard, conservateur général honoraire, essayiste

Gilles-William Goldnadel, avocat

Yana Grinshpun, MCF Université

Philippe Gumplowicz, professeur des universités

Alain Herbeth, essayiste

Danielle Khayat, magistrate en retraite

Alexandre Krivitzki, psychanalyste

Marcel Kuntz, directeur de recherche

Serguey Kuznetsov, écrivain

Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, philosophe

Teddy Lasry, compositeur, musicien

Michel Laval, avocat

Jean Pierre Lledo, cinéaste

Barbara Lefebvre, enseignante, essayiste

Yves Mamou, journaliste, essayiste

Aurélien Marcq, haut fonctionnaire

Liliane Messika, écrivaine, traductrice

Thibaut Moreau, psychanalyste

Franck Muller, professeur émérite

Marc Nacht, psychanalyste

Fabien Ollier, directeur des éditions QS

Rémi Pellet, professeur des universités

Céline Pina, essayiste

Ziva Postec, réalisatrice, monteuse

Michaël Prazan, écrivain, documentariste

André Quaderi, professeur, psychothérapeute EMDR

Gérard Rabinovitch, chercheur CNRS

Richard Rossin, chirurgien, fondateur de Médecins sans frontières

François Roudaut, professeur des universités

Xavier-Laurent Salvador, MCF Université

Georges-Elia Sarfati, professeur des universités

Jean-Paul Sermain, professeur des universités

André Senik, professeur de philosophie

Bruno Sire, président honoraire Université Toulouse Capitole

Jean Szlamowicz, professeur des universités

Talila, chanteuse, comédienne

Pierre-André Taguieff, philosophe, CNRS

Jacques Tarnero, essayiste

Thibault Tellier, professeur des universités

Semira Tlili, présidente de #Reseau1905

Dominique Triaire, professeur des universités

Michèle Tribalat, démographe

Monette Vacquin, psychanalyste

Henri Vacquin, sociologue

Philippe Val, journaliste, essayiste

Caroline Valentin, avocat

Manuel Valls, ancien premier ministre

Sophie Valles, membre de #Reseau1905

Ibn Warraq, essayiste

Aude Weill-Raynal, avocat

Jean Pierre Winter, psychanalyste

Michel Gad Wolkowicz, psychanalyste

Jacques Wrobel, médecin