Israel’s right to hit back at Iran

US President Joe Biden’s advice to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Israel repelled Iran’s missile-and-drone attack – “take the win” and move on – is glib, weak and displays a poor grasp of the strategic significance of the Rubicon the Iranians have crossed. Half the missiles fired by Iran reportedly failed to launch or crashed and burned before they reached their targets, and 99 per cent of the 350 missiles and drones were shot down or neutralised even before they reached Israeli airspace. But Tehran’s unprecedented act of brazen warfare, which signalled Iran’s emergence from the shadows where it has long operated through its Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies, demands a response.

As former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, who spent part of his childhood in the US and Canada, asked on Monday: What would the US do if more than 300 missiles and drones were shot towards American cities? Israel, he argued, needed to do what the US would do. While nobody wants the crisis to escalate into a full-scale Middle East war, Mr Bennett has a strong point. Should Iran, the world’s No.1 exporter of terrorism, go nuclear, Mr Bennett said, its long-range ballistic missiles would endanger Europe and later the US. Israel, he said, was fighting “the war of the West”. Mr Netanyahu’s determination to retaliate for Iran’s attack was endorsed on Sunday by Israel’s five-member war cabinet. Only a last-minute call from Mr Biden reportedly delayed immediate action. But the decision to retaliate remains. That response, as Mr Bennett said, needs to be clever, surprising and decisive, and inflict enough pain on Iran to make it think twice about attacking Israel again.

Iran’s attack highlighted the failure of Mr Biden’s Iran policy. He has tried to mollify the ayatollahs by easing sanctions, freeing tens of billions of dollars in frozen funds that have helped Tehran, and tried to renegotiate Barack Obama’s flawed 2015 nuclear deal. Iran’s ayatollahs also perceived weakness in the White House amid the schism between the Biden administration and the government in Jerusalem over Gaza. And, while Washington has said it will not play any part in whatever Israel does in retaliation for Iran’s attack, it would be unconscionable for it and other US allies to fail to support Israel in the face of Iranian aggression. The Albanese government condemned the Iranian attack but conspicuously refused to say it stood with Israel. “It apparently doesn’t want any pesky grabs of wholehearted support for Israel, even when under direct Iranian military attack,” foreign editor Greg Sheridan wrote on Monday. “And remember, that is direct military attack from a nation that is on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons, that is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and that has for years pledged as national policy the ambition to ‘wipe Israel off the map’.” At the very least, the Albanese government seriously should consider Israel’s request for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be designated as a terrorist organisation following the direct strike on Israel, and for increased sanctions on Iran.

The Islamist theocracy is highly offensive to right-thinking Australians, generations of whom have supported Israel since its establishment was applauded by Robert Menzies in 1948, after the Chifley government’s external affairs minister, HV Evatt, played a major role in founding the Jewish state through the UN.

G7 leaders condemned Iran’s aggression strongly, demanding that its attacks and those of its proxies stop. “We express our full solidarity and support to Israel and its people and reaffirm our commitment towards its security,” they said. The G7 also called for “an immediate and sustainable ceasefire” in Gaza, along with “ release of all hostages immediately and unconditionally”. That would be the first step to peace. Until then, Israel’s campaign in Gaza, where 2.4 million Palestinians are congregated in appalling conditions, will continue to “rescue our hostages from the hands of Iran’s proxy, Hamas”, says Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.