If they did, President Franklin Roosevelt and his military staff—not to mention the American people en masse—would have laughed in their metaphorical faces.
It would not have been a pleasant laugh, either.
It would have been appropriate, however, as would the definitive actions that followed.
On the evening of April 13, Iran launched more than 300 drones and ballistic missiles toward Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s air defenses, aided by Jordan and the United States, “foiled” the attack.
Ninety-nine percent of the missiles and drones were shot down.
One 10-year-old girl is in intensive care.
Much has been made of the fact that this attack was the first-ever direct assault from Iran on Israel.
But Iranian proxies, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen, have been waging a proxy war against Israel for decades.
But that action, which killed at least seven senior Iranian commanders overseeing Iran’s covert operations against Israel, including kingpin Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, would itself have been part of Israel’s larger campaign of self-defense in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, slaughter conducted by Hamas against Israel.
That atrocity appalled the civilized world.
In a coordinated assault, planned by Iran, Hamas raped, tortured, and indiscriminately killed some 1,200 people, including infants, children, and the elderly.
The carnage was horrific.
Hamas also took some 250 people—again including infants and the elderly—hostage.
Before the Iranian attack, many in the hand-wringing class were calling for Israel to agree to a “cease-fire.”
In fact, Israel has several times agreed to a cease-fire, under two conditions.
Hamas must surrender.
And the hostages must be released.
As I noted, there are probably few or no hostages left to release.
Nor is Israel going to forsake its self-defense.
For those who bemoan civilian casualties in Gaza, I note that Israel has conducted itself with uncommon, perhaps, unprecedented care in limiting civilian casualties.
The most pertinent description of Israel’s behavior in response to this latest round of attacks on its people and its sovereignty was summed up in a French apothegm:
“Cet animal est très méchant: quand on l’attaque il se défend”: “This animal is very unpleasant: when one attacks it, it defends itself.”
Is Israel’s response “disproportionate”?
Mention of what is “rational” brings me to an aspect of Iran’s behavior that is seldom acknowledged but explains a lot.
I mean the large element of insanity that informs its actions and the actions of its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere.
The Iranians are an intelligent and talented people.
The mullahs who govern them are, to speak frankly, nuts.
And they are self-confessedly murderous nuts to boot.
Iran is the world’s largest exporter of terror.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979 and instantly transformed it from a secular state into a theocratic totalitarian despotism.
“If one allows the infidels to continue playing their role of corrupters on Earth, their eventual moral punishment will be all the stronger.
“Thus [! thus?], if we kill the infidels in order to put a stop to their [corrupting] activities, we have indeed done them a service.”
“To allow the infidels to stay alive means to let them do more corrupting. [To kill them] is a surgical operation commanded by Allah the Creator. ... Those who follow the rules of the Koran are aware that ... we have to kill,” Khomeini said.
This is what Israel is up against.
In my high school, teachers would often tell us boys “Verbum sapientī satis est”: “A word to the wise is sufficient.”
It appears that the Biden administration has yet to receive that memo.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has never been anything but clear in its aims.
And here I was talking about “rational” behavior.
