President Trump’s Mideast moves show why Israeli deterrence is crucial - by Evelyn Gordon

...Despite Iran’s willingness to engage in military provocations, it has shown no desire to risk serious military consequences on Iranian soil. Indeed, it has escalated very carefully, moving up to each new level only after concluding—based on the non-response to previous attacks—that it could do so safely. And so far, it’s been right: Even the attack on the Saudi refineries, its worst to date, drew no military response from Riyadh or Washington. But years of Israeli airstrikes against Iranian and Iranian-affiliated targets have proven that the Jewish state won’t let Iranian aggression go unanswered, and any Iranian escalation will be met commensurately.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
16 October '19..

U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest Mideast decisions cast Israeli airstrikes in Syria and (reportedly) Iraq in a different light. Previously, these airstrikes seemed to be aimed solely at preventing Iran from establishing military infrastructure in both countries that could threaten Israel. But it now turns out they were also sending an important deterrent message: If Tehran attacks Israel, Jerusalem will have no qualms about striking back.

The conventional wisdom has been that even if these airstrikes were necessary for Israel’s defense, they posed a real risk of escalation. And obviously, that remains a possibility.

But given Trump’s latest moves, they may actually be making war less likely by letting Tehran know that Jerusalem—unlike, say, Saudi Arabia—won’t sit with folded hands if it suffers a significant Iranian attack like last month’s strike on Saudi oil facilities. The realization that Israel has both the ability and the will to hit back hard might well deter Iran from launching such a strike, even though it now knows that it wouldn’t be risking an American response.

For this reason, much of the rhetoric about how Trump’s recent decisions will affect Israel is overblown, even though the decisions themselves are unequivocally horrible. Strategically, the U.S. withdrawal from northern Syria abandons that area to very bad actors (Turkey and/or Iran). It’s also a moral atrocity, as it abandons the Kurds to Turkey’s tender mercies despite their having been America’s most loyal and effective partner against the Islamic State. And it signals the world that Washington won’t protect its allies, thereby reducing the incentive to be an American ally. Trump’s inaction after Iran destroyed half of Saudi Arabia’s oil processing capacity sent a similar message.

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