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Now that a ceasefire has paused Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran and the tit-for-tat Iranian response, it may be worth taking a moment to think about the campaign’s true objectives. 

In one of his few cogent remarks, an exasperated Donald Trump observed that Israel and Iran have been at each other’s throats for so long that they’ve forgotten what the fight is really about. With World War III at least momentarily averted, it’s as good a time as any to take a look at what each antagonist really wants.

In a recent exclusive report, The Economist magazine explained that the sudden concern over Iran’s nuclear installations was triggered by a secret intelligence report that Iran has not only been developing a nuclear bomb, but has also been putting an equal effort into figuring out how to incorporate a functional nuclear explosive into the warhead of a ballistic missile. It was the imminent weaponization of a nuclear weapon, The Economist suggested, that finally led Israel to take action. 

Although the information was shocking, The Economist stopped short of saying who had provided the intelligence. Since Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had already reported that the CIA was not convinced that the Iranians were close to making a bomb, the information reported in The Economist probably did not come from the CIA. 

That leaves Israel’s Mossad as the likely source. These days, it’s hard to tell whether Mossad is still providing viable intelligence or is simply supporting a policy direction favored by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Even beyond the question of a nuclear weapon, both Israel and Iran clearly had other goals as well. 

A pertinent question is: What would the Iranians have actually done with a nuclear weapon if they’d developed one? Iran’s current leadership may be perverse and diabolical, but it’s not stupid; and, at least in its upper ranks, it’s not suicidal. The ayatollahs and their Islamic Revolutionary Guard know that if they ever launched a missile with a nuclear warhead, they would almost certainly be erased from the face of the planet. 

The Practical Value of Joining the Nuclear Club

So why spend so much political capital on letting everyone know that you’re developing a nuclear weapon when you know that you most likely will never use it? The answer, besides the intimidating effect of being able to say that you have a nuclear bomb, is that in today’s international climate, only nuclear powers are really taken seriously. 

Take India for example. The subcontinent represents a fifth of the planet’s population, yet no one really paid close attention to what India had to say until it had the bomb. Spain and Italy may be as economically dynamic as France, but France is a nuclear power; Spain and Italy are not. North Korea was a joke until it began testing its own nuclear weapons. 

In the world that we’ve created, if you have an atomic bomb, you have a front row seat at the table. If you don’t, what you have to say may or may not be listened to. You are basically in a minor league, only able to be a temporary, rotating member of the UN Security Council — not one of the Big Five who have permanent seats. 

North Korea got the picture early on and turned itself into a nuclear power as quickly as possible. Certainly, if the North Koreans ever actually use a nuclear device, they risk instant vaporization, but at least everyone is willing to hear what they have to say, including Trump. 

What the Iranians might really be looking for may not be the absolute destruction of Israel as much as a seat at the adult table. What they really want is to be taken seriously. It’s a tough world and the US has played a major part in setting the parameters that define the price of entry. 

So much for Iran. The next question is what does Netanyahu really want? 

Netanyahu Rides the Tiger

On a personal level, it’s pretty clear that Netanyahu is riding the proverbial tiger. The moment he steps off or loses momentum, he risks being devoured. 

His biggest career mistake may have been not to retire when he was ahead. His desperation to hold on to power has driven him further and further towards the extreme right. He may not like it, but if he loses the support of his questionable allies, he may face a criminal trial either for corruption or for having lost control over Hamas (leading to October 7), or worse. 

All the same, Netanyahu believes that the initial division of territory at Israel’s creation did not make sense. The original layout, which connected large sections of Israel’s population by only a slender corridor, was nearly impossible to defend. The practical solution was to drive Palestinians off their land, in order to have a more practical perimeter. 

Of course, the seizure of land by force frequently ran counter not only to Talmudic teaching but also to human decency. Netanyahu was always damned if he did, and equally damned if he didn’t. 

His solution has been the evisceration of Gaza — which, apart from causing a humanitarian calamity, has also distracted everyone from his crimes in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank. And now no one is going to notice what’s happening to Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank when everyone is more afraid that World War III might be about to start.

The truth is that only Netanyahu knows what his ultimate objective really is. He’s engaged in a lethal chess game in which the stakes are nothing less than the cultural life and death of Israel as well as Palestine. 

Trump seems more engaged in his routine golf games at Mar-a-Lago than in what is happening in the rest of the world. Asked what he plans to do next, his usual reply lately has been that he doesn’t know.

Culture and Confrontation

What is missing from all this probing of motivations is any attempt at understanding the culture of the different participants. 

Israelis are extremely sensitive to antisemitism, but Arabs are as Semitic as Israelis, and probably even more so. In fact, “Semite” is a term for an ethnic, cultural, or racial group associated with people of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, including Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians), Arabs, Arameans, Canaanites (Ammonites, Edomites, Israelites, Moabites, Phoenicians, and Philistines), and Habesha peoples.

The creation of Israel, besides its focus on being Jewish, was really an injection of European culture into a region that was purely Semitic. To this day, Israel is more comfortable as a part of Western Europe than it is with the neighborhood that surrounds it. 

Like the ancient Romans before them, the US failed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and the rest of the Middle East, not because intervention per se was doomed, but because they never really managed to understand the culture that they were dealing with. In each case, it was intervention without cultural understanding that ultimately doomed the whole enterprise to failure. 

Where do the Iranians fit in this mix? Just as the Israelis claim descent from ancient Hebrews, Iran claims descent from ancient Persia, one of the great powers and influencers in human development. 

Like the ancient Romans before them, the US failed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and the rest of the Middle East, not because intervention per se was doomed, but because they never really managed to understand the culture that they were dealing with. In each case, it was intervention without cultural understanding that ultimately doomed the whole enterprise to failure. 

Most Israelis today seem indistinguishable from the average American. Iran has a different playbook. Most Americans think Iranians are arrogant. Iranians see that arrogance as an attempt to understand the true nature of the person they are confronting. 

The American and, to a certain extent, the European approach is to start off by trying to behave in a civil fashion. If that doesn’t work, the next step is to smash the other person. An Iranian might think that the American and European approach leads to only a superficial understanding of whom one is actually dealing with. The Iranian wants to, in essence, stress test the relationship before coming to any conclusion about it. An American or European might think that the Iranian is being aggressive. Neither side understands what is really taking place. 

Salman Rushdie described the relationship perfectly in his novel The Satanic Verses. The false verses that were eventually excised from the Koran actually existed in history, but in Rushdie’s story they resulted from Satan tricking Muhammad into thinking that he was the angel Gabriel and giving the prophet false verses. When Muhammad ultimately realized the trickery, he returned to the mountain to find the real angel Gabriel. They tussled with each other, and through wrestling, Muhammad was able to realize that this time he had found the true angel. 

The point is that a certain amount of confrontation reveals the true nature of who it is that you are really dealing with. The danger in this approach is that too much confrontation risks a battle in which one side or the other loses face. Losing face in any culture can be dangerous, but it is particularly dangerous in Iran, where it means losing one’s position in society, and consequently losing power. 

After Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, died, I went to Iran and interviewed a number of well-placed government officials. One asked me why Americans were so suspicious of Iran. I told him to look at the wall behind him. A large poster with garish letters said “Kill Americans!” The official laughed. “Oh that,” he said. “That doesn’t mean anything.” I thought he was probably right, but I added a cautionary warning. “Americans are very literal,” I said. “If you say you will do something, they take you at your word. “

Getting it wrong can be costly. All our attention is focused on nuclear weapons for the moment, but nuclear weapons aren’t the only means of inflicting lethal damage. A missile doesn’t have to carry a nuclear warhead. A simple dose of radioactive waste or a biological agent can make a city uninhabitable. A few strategically placed bars of plastic explosive, each the size of a cigarette pack, can shut down a city. Then there’s the potential damage that can result from cybercrime. 

While most of us enjoy watching action films, few of us want to actually live one. Deescalation is in everyone’s interest.

Neither Iran nor Israel wants to start another world war. The danger is that either side might accidentally do just that by simply misinterpreting what the other side is really trying to do and why. In that context, the best course of action might be to listen more and bomb less.

During the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I spent several weeks in Saudi Arabia. Scud missile attacks were a nightly routine. The missiles were mostly harmless. Saddam could easily have made them lethal by filling the warheads with a deadly toxin, but he knew that if he did that, a literal holocaust of retribution would follow. Saddam realized that he was effectively walking a tightrope. 

Iran is walking a similar tightrope today. Its nuclear program might have provided some leverage, but, for now at least, that’s gone. There’s nothing to be gained by fighting a war of attrition. 

The number of missiles Iran sent over America’s major airbase in Qatar was exactly equal to the number of B-2 bombers that blew up Iran’s nuclear installations. The difference is that the Iranians warned both Qatar and the US that the missiles were on their way. The intention was to send a message, but not to escalate the situation further by purposely killing Americans. 

Even Trump could see what the Iranians were doing. He responded by thanking them for their subtle graciousness. Netanyahu missed the message entirely and used the launch of two rogue missiles to send an even greater number of bombers over Tehran. It was the fact that Netanyahu missed the message — or simply decided to ignore it — that so infuriated Trump and finally led him to force Israel to recall its air force. 

Neither Iran nor Israel wants to start another world war. The danger is that either side might accidentally do just that by simply misinterpreting what the other side is really trying to do and why. In that context, the best course of action might be to listen more and bomb less. For the moment, it looks like that’s the course of action that all sides have decided to take.