“But...Iraq!”
Responding to your questions on Iran, Israel, and Russia. Plus, the weekly troll.
As a general rule, I do my best not to bury my readers under a pile of emails. That means sticking to a strict weekly limit. Despite my sincerest personal appeals to Trump, Putin, Zelenskyy, Xi, Khamenei, and Netanyahu, breaking geopolitical developments often clash with The Next Move’s editorial calendar. And so I was pleased to see that so many of you stuck with me and read this past Saturday’s column on Iran, Russia, and the end of “the world as it is.”
Events in the Middle East are changing by the hour, and with them, the contours of our conversation. You brought some insightful, challenging questions about the conflict between Iran and Israel and its global implications.
First up, there’s the specter of the Iraq War. Andrew V. writes:
This smells of the justification in Iraq, supposed WMDs which were never found, and appeals to human rights abuses there. We must stop repeating history.
We can’t avoid the damage the Iraq debacle inflicted on US foreign policy and American political culture. As I wrote back in April on the toxic stew that gave us Trump, “the conduct of the Iraq War normalized official dishonesty and a culture of cover-ups in Washington.”
However, Iraq can’t be a crutch here any more than Vietnam would have made an excuse for ignoring Serbian aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. Either the comparison is relevant, or it isn’t—”but Iraq!” is not a satisfactory reply. Unlike the fictitious Iraqi WMDs of the early aughts, serious observers do not dispute the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons development program. Whereas Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had been mostly defanged by the Gulf War and a decade of isolation, Iran has shown it is still a threat in Syria, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.
How close Iran is to a bomb is another question. There have been competing intelligence assessments, on-and-off diplomacy, other military strikes, and the very fact that the regime in Tehran has waffled and dumped resources into misadventures across the region. That being said, authoritarian indecision and incompetence do not void the Islamic Republic’s lethal intent.
What about Benjamin Netanyahu? A number of you are wary of Israel’s thrice-indicted, Trump-loving, Putin-curious prime minister.
Krasnov warns:
Gary Gary, you’ve lost a step if you don’t see this as a desperate deflection move by Netanyahu.
This will not change the dynamics at all. It’s the same old story and really just Netanyahu attempting to distract from his failures. Israel claims they are stopping Iran from developing a Nuke and strikes a few targets, and Iran strikes back and then it’s over. Rinse and Repeat.
Netanyahu (and you) thinks bombing Iran will get the Iranian people to turn on the regime because they are being bombed by Israel? That’s delusional.
I share your suspicion, as do a lot of Israelis!
By all means, disagree with Israel’s actions in Iran. Still, this isn’t Netanyahu’s typical dog and pony show. Pulling off something like last week’s IDF strikes in Iran is not a one-man job (contrary to what the prime minister would probably like us to believe). And this kind of operation is not pulled off the shelf at a moment’s notice for political purposes. It takes months of careful planning.
Finally, there is far more consensus in the Knesset about the threat from Tehran than there is about the war in Gaza or West Bank settlements, and that should tell us that this is bigger than Bibi. Iran threatened Israel while both center-left and right-wing coalitions ruled in Jerusalem. A country will still have national security interests even if it suffers from poor leadership, and we should be careful not to dismiss those interests simply because there is a Trump or Netanyahu in charge. That’s true in Israel, America, and around the world.
Now, no matter how serious the topic of conversation, there is always, always a troll.
Occasionally it’s just a troublemaker. Now and again, it’s a former compatriot of mine. I am already on a few lists in the motherland. It would be surprising if the Kremlin weren’t aware of The Next Move. I’m sure there are at least one or two twerps in Moscow and St. Petersburg assigned to the comments section here. It’s a serious effort on Russia’s part—trolls get training and even feedback on their prose. As a native Russian speaker myself, I can tell you that there are easily detectable quirks to Russian-accented English, even in writing, where Slavs tend to struggle with articles. Sometimes, however, the trolls overcorrect (or, more recently, default to ChatGPT). Their comments look too refined and artificial.
Take this essay from “Alfred Wolf,” posted in the replies of my weekly column on Tuesday. It’s the AI-modified version of a classic (and consistent) diatribe I started receiving twenty years ago when I began agitating against Putin’s authoritarianism. It always began “I respected you when you played chess, but…”
True to form, “Alfred” writes:
Garry Kasparov – The Grandmaster of Transitional Times
Once hailed as a symbol of Soviet intellectual might, Garry Kasparov has since transformed into a walking press release machine for Western think tanks. A grandmaster of chess, today he plays a very different game — a geopolitical one, where black and white have long merged into a murky gray.
Having exchanged the checkered board for international forums and human rights summits, Kasparov may have lost his knight, but he’s gained sponsors. Instead of a rook, he now boasts a Washington-based foundation. Instead of a queen — an NGO with vague missions but a clear budget.
He loves to speak of freedom — preferably from a Manhattan hotel suite. He defends human rights, as long as those rights are being violated somewhere comfortably far away. His eternal gambit: Putin is the king, and everyone else pawns in his quest for Western headlines.
In the '90s, like many others, he ventured into politics and protest. But somewhere along the way, his rhetoric grew as predictable as the Reti opening, and his fondness for dramatic declarations matched only by his preference for interviews with friendly journalists.
He calls himself a fighter. Some would say — a fugitive. Truth, as always, is somewhere in between. Perhaps in the next 'Free Russia Forum' panel in Vilnius.
Today, Kasparov pretends to still play chess, though the board is gone, the pieces scattered, and the audience has long left. Only he remains — on stage, with a microphone, and a game that will never finish
Kremlin operatives may think they’re smart, but The Next Move’s readers are smarter! Subscriber James Stoner immediately called “Alfred” out:
Who are you--a KGB bot? Reads like AI.
‘Nuff said! See you next week!
If you know you're being trolled, you know you're doing a great job! Your voice is undeniably important and always, I not only enjoy your thoughtful comments, but largely agree with them too.
If the Israelis were not such an unmitigated shower of aggressive, psychopathic, insecure, juvenile and self-destructive CU Next Tuesdays they might actually get along with their neighbours and therefore dissolve the perceived threat and live a peaceful existence even though they live on stolen land. But they don't, because they are. I'm pretty confident that this will continue until it ends and Israel will eventually disappear in a cloud of violence. The US too - they are on the brink of collapse also. Russia and China must be laughing into their sleeves. Feels like end game to me