Middle East and Other Musings: From Push, Shove To Shiv, Harvard History Professor. More.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Soon push will come to shove then shiv.

Biden is a certified idiot and corrupt weakling.

+++

Iran Is Pushing Biden Around

The American president wants to avoid escalation leading to war, but the decision isn’t his alone.

By Douglas London

Hours after Kataib Hezbollah injured three American troops with an attack on an air base in Iraq on Dec. 25, the U.S. struck back, hitting three facilities used by the Iran-backed militia. U.S. officials described the act as a proportionate retaliation to deter further attacks and mitigate the risk of a full-scale war between the U.S. and Iran.

U.S. military officials say there have been 103 attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. Several Americans have been injured. The U.S. has retaliated half a dozen times against Iran’s Arab proxies in both countries. The math isn’t working for the Biden administration, and neither is time.

Iran relishes the idea that it is engaged in a David-vs.-Goliath struggle with the U.S. This plays well in the Islamic world and allows the ayatollahs to justify repression at home. At the moment, Iran is dictating the pace and scope of the conflict. The Biden administration, leery of escalation, has maintained a purely reactive military posture, giving Tehran’s decision makers the impression that a window is open during which they can attack U.S. forces with impunity. In the past, this dynamic has emboldened the mullahs to push the envelope.

President Biden mistakenly believes that restraint will prevent war. On the contrary, the U.S. must impose a real cost on Iran to deter further attacks. Hitting proxies is militarily ineffective—Monday’s strike will have no discernible effect on Kataib Hezbollah’s capabilities—and gives the mullahs fodder for their regional propaganda campaign. It allows the regime to paint itself as the standard-bearer of Islamic resistance against the American imperialists.

Better for the U.S. to play offense than defense. If Mr. Biden wants to avoid a larger war, he should consider how his decision-making would be limited by a single missile or drone that slips through U.S. defenses and kills American troops. The cable-news channels would eviscerate him and his policy of caution. Such pressure, particularly during a presidential campaign, would force his hand and likely trigger a spiral of reciprocal escalation.

This is all avoidable given U.S. military advantages. The key for Washington is to see the world through Iranian eyes. Since coming to power in 1979, Tehran’s revolutionary regime has adopted an asymmetrical approach in its conflict with the U.S. The mullahs see themselves as being at war with the Great Satan. Washington, on the other hand, views Tehran’s provocations as an occasional annoyance—a distraction from larger national-security and economic threats posed by China and Russia.

Iran’s leaders are aware of their disadvantages but have no interest in peaceful coexistence. They need to maintain conflict with the U.S. to legitimize their oppressive regime. Iran’s strategy therefore depends on understanding Washington’s red lines. Having worked the Iran portfolio as a Central Intelligence Agency operations officer for decades, I expect that every time U.S. officials announce Iran doesn’t want a direct war with the U.S., Tehran gives its proxies a green light to attack Americans and Israelis. When the U.S. throws its muscle around instead, Tehran reins in its network of regional militias.

This was aptly illustrated after the U.S. killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020. The U.S. demonstrated its willingness to commit an open act of war against a leader roughly equivalent to the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs, national-security adviser and director of national intelligence. At the time, the U.S. had also significantly bolstered its military presence in the region with additional ships, aircraft and Marines. Iran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at U.S. bases across Iraq—missing each time, probably on purpose. The Iranian military pulled its punches rather than risk inviting a massive American military response.

The U.S. also must think asymmetrically, trying anything that might illuminate the ayatollahs’ weaknesses. Tehran’s leaders obsessively project an image of omniscience, control and power to ward off popular revolt. Now might be the time for the U.S. to consider visible but deniable cyberattacks that temporarily take out Iran’s power grid, banking, oil or port infrastructure. Cyber operations can similarly target Iran’s television and radio stations, using them to expose regime corruption. The ruling clerics have been willing to kill dissidents abroad for far less.

Washington should make clear its willingness to pursue more kinetic targets if Iran escalates. The U.S. already has the capacity to employ standoff weapons, such as sea- and air-fired cruise missiles, to destroy facilities producing Iranian drones and other armaments. Depending on Iran’s response, the U.S. could target IRGC platforms and facilities in the Gulf.

The U.S. needs to move quickly to change the status quo with Iran. Hope that our defensive capabilities will continue to limit casualties isn’t a viable strategy to avoid war. Iran is already at war and considers its proxies expendable. Tehran sees no value in restraint. Experience has taught the mullahs that there is political opportunity in provocation. Washington’s pusillanimity is, for them, an invitation to do more. U.S. officials are right that Iran’s leaders have no interest in a war they can’t win. The problem is that Washington is letting them fight the war they can.

Mr. London, a former CIA operations officer, is author of “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence.” He teaches intelligence studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and is a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Claudine Gay and Why Academic Honesty Matters

Politicization and lower standards jeopardize Harvard’s standing as a great research institution.

By James Hankins

Claudine Gay, the president of my university, is under attack for academic dishonesty. She is charged with several instances of plagiarism, in her dissertation and other published work, in addition to data falsification. As of this writing it seems not unlikely that she may be fired or asked to resign.

It isn’t my intention to discuss the merits of the case. Whether Ms. Gay’s transgressions are fireable offenses would seem to depend on whether it can be proved that she intended to deceive other scholars and take credit for their work, and whether her scholarship drew conclusions based on consciously falsified data. Perhaps a charitable interpretation of her conduct exists.

What concerns me is that the public discussion so far hasn’t shown a sufficient appreciation of how serious academic honesty is in research institutions. Some of Ms. Gay’s supporters treat the allegations as trivial, dismissing them as the product of right-wing scandal-mongering. That is a historically uninformed view. Research universities, and the wider modern project of improving human life through research and scholarship, depend on academic honesty.

Consider how modern universities differed from their medieval predecessors. Medieval university teaching was built around collections of authorities in philosophy, medicine, law and theology. Lectures consisted of explaining the authorities, memorizing them and applying them to solve practical problems. Formal disputations tested students’ ability to make logical arguments based on mastery of the authorities. Peter Adamson, a historian of medieval philosophy, points to the contrast with modern attitudes in the title of his 2022 book, “Don’t Think for Yourself: Authority and Belief in Medieval Philosophy.”

Students weren’t supposed to think for themselves because the authorities had proved their worth and deserved respect. They stood at the fountainhead of shared traditions. One showed mastery of a subject by treating the authorities with good judgment, resolving apparent conflicts between them, ranking them in order of reliability, and in exceptional cases—like that of St. Thomas Aquinas—synthesizing them into a larger vision.

Contrast this approach to knowledge with that of the modern research university. The model first emerged in the 17th century with such philosophers as René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes, whose method depended on radical doubt of all received authorities. The London-based Royal Society, ancestor of the research university, took as its motto Nullius in verba, “Don’t take anyone’s word for it.” Good method starts from empirical observation, not authority, and all hypotheses must remain open to doubt, criticism and revision. Francis Bacon, who inspired the creation of the society, called for natural philosophy, or science, to be reoriented toward “the relief of man’s estate.” The meaning of “fact” changed around this time. The old Latin word factum originally meant “something done.” In the new scientific communities of the early modern period it came to mean an empirical description of data that competent observers could accept. It followed that agreement about facts required the data on which they were based to be publicly available.

As science and scholarship developed, academics widely accepted that progress depended on being able to draw a line between the known and the unknown. Once the frontiers of knowledge had been identified, effort and resources could be directed where they were most needed. For the same reason—efficient use of resources—it was important that those in the field assign credit for discoveries made. A structure of incentives developed that rewarded researchers who contributed to knowledge. Sometimes rewards were offered in the form of simple monetary inducements, as when the British Parliament in 1714 offered a prize of up to £20,000 to anyone who could discover a method of finding longitude at sea. More often, however, the reward was employment and promotion within the academy. Fellowships, grants, and free time for research were assigned on the basis of the quality of an academic’s work. At the high end of achievement, an outstanding mind might be recognized with a Fields Medal or a Nobel Prize.

Since Harvard became a research university in the early 20th century, its presidents have upheld the standards of academic honesty necessary to advance the progressive enterprises of science and scholarship. Since World War II, the university has enjoyed great success and has been generally rated at or near the top of universities worldwide for the quality of its faculty and research. Those ratings are no longer as secure as they once were, despite the university’s matchless endowment, as peers in such countries as China have begun to advance in the sciences.

In appointing Ms. Gay, the Harvard Corp., the university’s governing board, seems to have shifted the institution’s priorities. It revealed those goals in its Dec. 12 statement, noting that Ms. Gay is the right leader “to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.” Harvard’s mission is no longer simply advancing knowledge, but knowledge “that will help address deep societal issues and promote constructive discourse.” From such a perspective, academic honesty seems to matter less than having the right progressive values, and the refusal to disclose underlying data is permissible so long as conclusions support a preferred narrative.

Harvard is still among the world’s premier research universities. It still has a great deal to offer, and calls on the right for it to be taxed or regulated at the state level—by Massachusetts—are shortsighted. The university nevertheless needs a reset. It can’t continue down the path of political engagement, which undermines its true mission. If the university’s governing bodies continue to behave as though academic dishonesty isn’t of great concern, it can only damage our hard-won prestige, cheapen the value of our degrees and erode the standards necessary for academic excellence.

Mr. Hankins is a professor of history at Harvard.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear Dick,

The IDF uncovered a huge tunnel that traversed 60 feet deep under northern Gaza and was connected to the apartments of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. The tunnel is understood to be an underground hideout for Sinwar, who had been operating in northern Gaza before fleeing to Khan Younis in a humanitarian convoy.

The tunnels had prayer rooms, ventilation, sewage, power and communications lines. The video below shows IDF soldiers operating inside the network used by Hamas’ leadership, and then blowing up the massive structure.

The IDF is continuing to advance in Khan Younis. Today Israeli troops reached Hamas’ intelligence division in the city and acquired "very valuable" materials from the site. The Israeli Air Force carried out 50 strikes in the city as ground troops pressed deeper into the city.

Mia Schem, the 21-year-old French-Israeli who was kidnapped by Hamas and held captive for 54 days, spoke publicly about the horror of captivity. She told her harrowing story of being shot in the hand and then sexually assaulted.

In Gaza, Mia had surgery performed on her without pain killers, and was held in a home that was guarded 24/7 by a man whose wife brought her small scraps of food every few days as their child taunted her. She said other Gazans would come to the house and she "felt like an animal in a zoo."

She was later taken into the tunnels and described the horrible conditions the other hostages were forced to endure. She said they could hear the Israeli operation above, and that was a signal "they didn’t forget me."

Upon her release, Mia felt compelled to apologize to the other hostages for being allowed to leave and assured them that they too would be freed. "Make a fuss," the hostages told her, "so they won’t forget us."

Mia’s harrowing story was released as The New York Times posted an investigative report into the barbarism and sexual assaults perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. The gruesome and graphic stories can be read here.

Our next AIPAC update email on the war will be sent on January 2. We will continue to frequently post to our social media feeds with relevant news and updates. Click here to follow AIPAC online.

As 2023 comes to a close, I want to thank you and your family for your enduring support of AIPAC and our shared mission.

Our work together has never been more important. I look forward to partnering with you in 2024 to ensure the U.S.-Israel relationship continues to grow stronger, Israel has the resources required to win this war, and that we have the political strength needed to help our pro-Israel friends and defeat anti-Israel candidates.

Sincerely,

Alisha Tischler

AIPAC Southeast Regional Director