Eliot A. Cohen: “Israeli friends report an eerie calm: The hospitals are preparing for mass casualties, while citizens go about their more or less normal lives—and in the evening drag into place the steel plates that shut the windows to their safe rooms. For the residents of southern Lebanon, the atmosphere is no doubt considerably more fearful and uncertain, living as they do in a failed state dominated by Hezbollah that may soon feel the full weight of Israeli fury.
“At such a time, the temptation, not altogether misplaced, is to focus on personalities: Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the aged follower of the maker of Iran’s revolution; Yahya Sinwar, the diabolical mastermind of the October 7 massacre; Hassan Nasrallah, the charismatic Hezbollah leader infuriated by the recent loss of his chief military aide, Fuad Shukr, to an Israeli strike; and above all Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, untrusted and untrustworthy, politically skilled but no statesman, intelligent but not wise, a former commando who shuns responsibility and is loathed by many, including, according to Israeli newspapers, his own generals.
“It is therefore not surprising that some, in Israel and abroad, regard the recent attacks that eliminated Shukr in Beirut and the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran—in a Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse, no less—as one more piece of folly by Netanyahu, who has mortgaged his country’s politics to religious extremists and who, many believe, is animated solely by a desire to survive in power as long as possible.
“There may be truth in all this, but only a part of the truth, and probably not the most important truth. A more detached strategic analysis yields a different picture.”
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Eliot A. Cohen: “Israeli friends report an eerie calm: The hospitals are preparing for mass casualties, while citizens go about their more or less normal lives—and in the evening drag into place the steel plates that shut the windows to their safe rooms. For the residents of southern Lebanon, the atmosphere is no doubt considerably more fearful and uncertain, living as they do in a failed state dominated by Hezbollah that may soon feel the full weight of Israeli fury.
“At such a time, the temptation, not altogether misplaced, is to focus on personalities: Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the aged follower of the maker of Iran’s revolution; Yahya Sinwar, the diabolical mastermind of the October 7 massacre; Hassan Nasrallah, the charismatic Hezbollah leader infuriated by the recent loss of his chief military aide, Fuad Shukr, to an Israeli strike; and above all Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, untrusted and untrustworthy, politically skilled but no statesman, intelligent but not wise, a former commando who shuns responsibility and is loathed by many, including, according to Israeli newspapers, his own generals.
“It is therefore not surprising that some, in Israel and abroad, regard the recent attacks that eliminated Shukr in Beirut and the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran—in a Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse, no less—as one more piece of folly by Netanyahu, who has mortgaged his country’s politics to religious extremists and who, many believe, is animated solely by a desire to survive in power as long as possible.
“There may be truth in all this, but only a part of the truth, and probably not the most important truth. A more detached strategic analysis yields a different picture.”
Read more: [https://theatln.tc/lHHP4iMY](https://theatln.tc/lHHP4iMY)