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August 8, 2024
The poet WH Auden wrote: “Thou shalt not with statisticians sit, nor commit a social science.” Perhaps he was right, for those of us who occasionally commit some social science could not have imagined that Israel would assassinate its principal negotiating partner in Gaza, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
By Gregory F. Treverton
Note: The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of SMA, Inc.
Historians may be more on the mark, for they emphasize the importance of individual leaders. And in this case, it’s hard not to agree with Emma Ashford[1], whose blunt assessment was: “It’s hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to provoke a broader regional war on the part of the Netanyahu government.”
Us social scientists would assess that no one, save perhaps Hamas, should have any interest in a wider war. Israel has its hands full in Gaza, along with sporadic strikes in the north at Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran hardly needs more evidence of its vulnerability, after Israel assassinated Haniyeh in a Tehran government guest house. That came shortly after an Israeli rocket killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Now, Hamas selected as its new leader Yahya Sinwar, suspected as the architect of the October 7 attack, and, if anything, more hard line than Haniyeh. It now seems like the question of the war widening is when, not whether. Both Iran and Hezbollah are almost duty bound to retaliate.
So, the world is on the verge of a war that is in no one’s interest, save perhaps Hamas. Iran has no reason to call forth strikes on it from Israel—or even the United States. It is doing pretty well already with one of its two main enemies, Israel, bogged down in a no-win war in Gaza while the other, Saudi Arabia, is constrained by that war from cooperating more openly with Israel.
Indeed, notwithstanding the ritual American bedeviling of Iran, it has been relatively restrained. In April, when it retaliated against Israel with 300 missiles and drones, it telegraphed the operation to the United States, letting Israel, the United States and a surprising set of Arab partners destroy the missives before they reached their targets. It also, apparently, put pressure on its proxies, Hezbollah and the Houthis, to cool it. Yet we Americans have plenty of experience with “proxies” beyond our control—Netanyahu’s Israel the most recent case in point—so Iran’s “control” over Hamas or Hezbollah or the Houthis has to be put in quotation marks.
So, too, we’ve understood after more than a half century that the Arab states will do anything for the Palestinians except help them. We also know that the future of the Middle East will include more Israeli settlers on Palestinian lands. That is proceeding apace even while the war in Gaza rages. The world is back where it was in October 2023 except that the risk of major escalation is higher.
There still is no endgame and no visible Israeli strategy for what comes next. Vague talk about a reformed Palestinian Authority governing Gaza, perhaps in some tutelage by Arab states—or even the United States—will be all the more fictitious if and when the war widens. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu seems driven, perhaps like another politician closer to home, by staying out of jail. That will drive a stake through the heart of any two-state solution, which probably has been dead for a generation in any case, as he remains dependent for staying in office on his hard, religious right who may share Hamas’ interest in continuing war if it opens yet new lands for Israeli settlers. So much for social science.
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Gregory F. Treverton stepped down as Chair of the US National Intelligence Council in 2017. He is now Professor of the Practice at Dornsife College, University of Southern California, Chair of the Global TechnoPolitics Forum, and an SMA Executive Advisor. |
[1] Emma Ashford is a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center, where her work focuses on questions of grand strategy, international security, and the future of US foreign policy, see https://www.stimson.org/ppl/emma-ashford/
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Edited by Dick Eassom, CF APMP Fellow
Published on August 8, 2024, by SMA, Inc.