Is the Mideast at a Turning Point?

The past week could emerge as a turning point in the Mideast war that the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies launched last year on October 7. To wit: rather than maintain a war of attrition that favors the enemy, Israel is pursuing the strongest army in Tehran’s arsenal, Hezbollah. Yet as Israel makes its moves to end a year-long stalemate with Hezbollah, the Biden-Harris Brahmins preach, instead, the virtues of something they call diplomacy. The army Israel is pursuing — Hezbollah — was an early Iranian project in what it turned into its “ring of fire.” That is a strategy of surrounding Israel with terrorist groups in the hope of choking the Jewish state. This week Israel ended the stalemate. It booby-trapped Hezbollah’s communication devices and obliterated its commanders as they were plotting an October 7-like invasion of the Galilee. While not yet fatal, the Israeli moves are a significant blow.Americans cheered. One of those slain, a Hezbollah founder named Ibrahim Aqil, masterminded the 1983 Marine barracks bombing at Beirut that killed 241 Americans. “No one sheds a tear” over Aqil’s demise, administration officials say. Yet “we continue to not believe that kinetic action, military action, by either side is really in either side’s best interest,” the White House National Security communications chief, John Kirby, told ABC News today. Short of “kinetic,” then, what is Washington’s advice? “We’ve been involved in extensive and quite assertive diplomacy,” Mr. Kirby says. “In fact, one of our envoys, Amos Hochstein, was in the region just a few days ago. We will certainly keep up those conversations as best we can, and we’re talking to both sides here.” One of these sides, to be clear, is America’s most trusted Mideast ally, while the other is a group that tops America’s list of terrorist organizations.In reality, Mr. Hochstein has been shuttling between Beirut and Jerusalem since shortly after October 8, when Hezbollah started bombing northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas. His diplomatic frenzy has amounted to naught. The Lebanese terror organization insists that it wouldn’t stop attacking until Israel surrenders to Hamas. There too Mr. Kirby urges “diplomacy.” Yet, he adds, “We are not achieving any progress here in the last week to two weeks.”Why? “It doesn’t appear like Mr. Sinwar is prepared, at all, to keep negotiating in good faith,” Mr. Kirby says. Why would he? Washington’s attempts at preventing “escalation” add up to pressuring Israel to make concessions and begging Hezbollah and Hamas to play nice. Terrorists rarely respond to such pleadings. Yet, that “doesn’t mean that we are not trying,” Mr. Kirby says, adding that what might seem unrealistic now could quickly turn realistic.What the White House seems to tell northern Israelis is that they must sit tight until the magic of American diplomacy bears fruit. Sure, it might fail, as Gaza and Lebanon make clear, but isn’t “trying” good enough? With a lame-duck presidency and as all America’s attention is on the November elections, Israel is now ignoring such inanities and applying some real pressure on its most formidable foe. Will Hezbollah buckle? Officials at Jerusalem suggest that their latest blows to Hezbollah are meant ultimately to reach a pact that would credibly end the terrorist threat. They believe that diplomacy with terrorists is futile unless accompanied with a credible military threat. If diplomacy fails, it indicates, the hits would intensify until Hezbollah cries uncle. By opposing that strategy, Washington displays a misunderstanding of how the Mideast and the real world work.

Is the Mideast at a Turning Point?

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