There Is No "Threshold" For "Managing" a Mideast War

Edited by Sam Thielman

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ON FRIDAY NIGHT, I rode a yellow-line train past the Pentagon on the way to a friend's house in Northern Virginia. It's always weird when I pass the Pentagon on the Metro. When I was WIRED's guy in D.C., I worked at least three days a week out of the Pentagon press bullpen, and so my reptile-brain response when I see it from a train window is to flash back to 2011 or 2012 and think of old colleagues and times gone by. Then, as my train pulled away, my phone buzzed to let me know that Israel had begun its widely forecasted series of airstrikes on Iran, and I remembered the Pentagon is not primarily a co-working space.

My friend was waiting for me at the station a few stops down the line. He's also someone whose work involves the Middle East, and if Vice President Harris wins next week, he'll be part of the coalition testing the theory of the pro-Harris liberals that she can be pushed left on Israel-Palestine-etc. As is our wont, we immediately began talking about the genocide, the regional war, the cycle of escalatory reprisal, and the U.S. political response fueling it while posturing as a check on it. We talked about it for hours until we couldn't talk about it anymore. The Jewish liturgical calendar has advanced beyond the season of lamentation. Reality has not. 

The next day, after I signed IRON MAN #1 at D.C.’s Big Planet Comics, I met up with another friend, someone with a much different background, whom I came to know because of Iraq. He still travels frequently to Iraq, and encouraged me to keep an eye on Iraq-Turkey negotiations on a liquified natural gas and trade pipeline/rail system that could provide Europe with an LNG source to reduce its energy dependency on Russia. When we turned to the impact of the combination genocide and regional war, I mentioned that it seemed to me the people of the Middle East will never forget this and the American role in it. I expected the kind of friendly, insightful pushback he often provides me. Instead, he swiftly agreed.

Israel didn't blow up Iranian oil infrastructure on Friday, and the resulting narrative is one of restraint, another narrow avoidance of "full-blown regional war." To some observers, it looks like Israel struck below a threshold that would prompt Iran into open and sustained conflict. Crisis averted. Cooler heads are prevailing. 

I would instead suggest, as I have throughout 2024, that strikes like this demonstrate how "full-blown" regional war happens. It happens by degree, until we can't see that we're already in a "full-blown" regional war. 

After strikes like Friday's, sponsor powers (the U.S.) congratulate themselves for stopping client powers (Israel) from devastating adversary powers (Iran). In doing so, they normalize strikes like these, and reaffirm the mirage that there is some "threshold" short of open, sustained regional conflict. That in turn reframes the responsible U.S. policy away from the root issue (the Gaza genocide and beyond it the Israeli oppression of Palestine) and focuses instead on limiting reprisal to a magnitude short of the imaginary Threshold. We just have to stay under the Threshold until Israel withdraws from Gaza, they think. Strikes like Friday's convince the Biden foreign-policy team that its theory of the case is vindicated. Never mind that the concept of "managing" conflict, widespread in Washington foreign-policy circles as it must be for the hegemonic power, is casually anti-human. 

In reality, Israel is so unrestrained by the U.S.that it is ethnically cleansing the north of Gaza, to the point where fanatics are unveiling maps for settling the entire Strip, and consolidating its Second Invasion of Lebanon, which as recently as this summer was a worst-case scenario to the Biden administration. Killing Hassan Nasrallah, Ismail Haniyeh, Fuad Shakr and now Yahya Sinwar and Hashem Safieddine has apparently proven to the Israeli government that it is correct to use October 7 as an opportunity to transform the Mideast balance of power—in this case, rolling back Iranian power-projection—much like how the rapid 2001 collapse of the Taliban proved to the American government that it was correct to use September 11 as an opportunity to transform the Mideast balance of power. The militarily significant thing Israel accomplished on Friday was the degradation of Iranian air defenses. That is enough to show you Benjamin Netanyahu is expecting to attack again. 

I won't pretend I have visibility on Iranian politics or decision-making. But there is an available interpretation that Iran has been reeling since the unexpected death of its hardliner president and its own attempts to stay under the Threshold have only resulted in disaster. Hezbollah faces the gravest challenge in its history. Meanwhile, the Houthis are currently capable of hitting Tel Aviv and impacting Red Sea commerce, and Iraq is placing greater restrictions on U.S. military freedom of action. (My friend who returned from Iraq mentioned that the U.S.-Sudani deal is locally understood as a withdrawal deal, despite Biden administration spin.) And should Iranian hardliners attempt to "restore their deterrent"—that is, escalate the regional war—their own ballistic missiles proved they can hit Israel, to the point of challenging Israel's own air defenses. (Remember that Iron Dome is not built to protect against medium-range ballistic missiles, which Israel has not truly faced before 2024, and a ballistic-missile shield is a different and far less tested system called David's Sling.) 

Sorry to keep saying it, but the only way to stop this regional war is to compel Israel to cease its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon while negotiating directly with Iran for a wider detente. The Biden administration has once again dispatched CIA Director Bill Burns to Cairo for an Egyptian-Qatari-Israeli parley now aimed at a two-day ceasefire. But the only way the administration can compel a ceasefire real enough to stop this downward spiral is to cease arming Israel, and the administration rejects that, as do Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. They think they have remained below the Threshold.  But the only real thing below their imaginary Threshold is the abyss. Their actions keep us in it. 

HULK HOGAN SAYS he didn’t see any Nazis at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally yesterday. [He was wearing sunglasses indoors.—Sam.] That was where Stephen Miller talked about America being for Americans only, while a "comedian" I never heard of called Puerto Rico an island of trash and couldn't stop himself from a giggle about Black people and watermelon.  Rudy Giuliani said Palestinians, whom Harris will bring here, are trained to kill at two years old. Then Trump promised mass deportations, an assault on "the enemy within" and a secret pact with House Speaker Mike Johnson to annul a presidential loss. You really don't need to know much history to know Germany for The Germans, Foreigners Out got translated into English. 

Every Knicks fan needs to remember that James Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden and our team, supports Trump. Zohran Mamdani can secure my vote for mayor by pledging that the city will seize and publicly own the Knicks. 

FOR MORE ON THE REGIONAL WAR and the 2024 presidential election, I'll be speaking on Monday, November 4 at 6:30 p.m. at the South Street Seaport location of McNally-Jackson Books as part of a panel Jewish Currents is putting together. Alex Kane of Currents is moderating a panel of me, Stephen Wertheim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Maya Berry of the Arab-American Institute. Yes, that's right—this is the day before the election. 

But let's say you don't want to wait that long and you'd rather hear me talk about IRON MAN. Well, if you're off work this Wednesday, October 30, come to Taylor & Co Books on Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn from 3-5 p.m., where I'll be signing the first issue and generally yapping. 

AS ELON MUSK ATTEMPTS to secure Donald Trump’s election, his rocket company SpaceX has won a three-quarter-trillion launch contract from the U.S. Space Force. FOREVER WARS readers know that I consider these military contracts, which beget more such contracts and operate at scales difficult for commercial operations to match, to be tectonic plates that Musk is shifting. For a different view, however, check out this Bluesky thread.

SOMETHING I DIDN'T EXPECT: Iran and Saudi Arabia conducted a joint naval drill. That Chinese-brokered detente has now overachieved low expectations. Iran-Saudi detente undermines the regional construct for U.S. power that Brett McGurk and colleagues have constructed over the past dozen or so years, predicated as it is against Iran on behalf of Gulf powers like the Saudis. 

At the same time, I wonder if the Saudis, despite their current objections, will accept an Israeli normalization deal if Trump is again president. (That's not necessarily something that nestles within the point about the naval drill, but it's rattling around in my head regardless.) 

"NOTHING WOULD BE MORE DANGEROUS than treating a win for the Democrats as proof that the crisis of democracy is receding," says Wendy Brown in this Boston Review dialogue.

Second, Trump is symptom, not cause, of the “crisis of democracy.” Trump did not turn the nation in a hard-right direction, and if the liberal political establishment doesn’t ask what wind he caught in his sails, it will remain clueless about the wellsprings and fuel of contemporary antidemocratic thinking and practices. It will ignore the cratered prospects and anxiety of the working and middle classes wrought by neoliberalism and financialization; the unconscionable alignment of the Democratic Party with those forces for decades; a scandalously unaccountable and largely bought mainstream media and the challenges of siloed social media; neoliberalism’s direct and indirect assault on democratic principles and practices; degraded and denigrated public education; and mounting anxiety about constitutional democracy’s seeming inability to meet the greatest challenges of our time, especially but not only the climate catastrophe and the devastating global deformations and inequalities emanating from two centuries of Euro-Atlantic empire. Without facing these things, we will not develop democratic prospects for the coming century.

I agree, but to her litany, I'd add the deeply rooted legacy of white supremacy, and another real big causal factor!  

THIS +972 ESSAY FROM OREN YIFTACHEL is powerful: 

Looking forward, it is worth remembering that apartheid is not only a moral abyss and a crime against humanity; it is also an unstable regime, characterized by endless violence that spares no one, and far-reaching damage to the economy and the environment. 

TODAY IS THE LAST DAY to make sure your comic store reserves two comics you really want to read. The first is The Shadow Cabinet #1 by Joe Illidge, Darryl Banks, Atagun Ilhan, and Christopher Sotomayor. Joe is one of the people who made Milestone Comics special back in the 90s, and here he and his colleagues update perhaps its most overlooked franchise. The second is The Question: All Along The Watchtower #1 by Alex Segura, Cian Tormey and Romulo Fajardo. It's a Renee Montoya story that only a crime-thriller writer like Alex could tell. Tell your store you want them both—today! 

THE RESPONSE TO IRON MAN #1 is overwhelming—we're a hit! It's been great review after great review, whether it's AIPT grading the issue a 9 or Tim Rooney at The Beat calling it "a comic that taps into what makes Marvel Comics special. …a fantastic debut issue that, if I could put my [SPOILER REDACTED] money down on it, is about to produce two breakout creators." Oh, OK, one more: Quinn Hesters from Gate Crashers says it's "an incredible start for a new era of Iron Man." 

Who am I to disagree? You should probably check out the comic! 

Also, I've also done a lot of podcast interviews for IRON MAN in the past couple days/weeks/what-even-is-time, and the first one is just out, where I'm among the creators who talk to Battle of The Atom's Zach Jenkins. I would love to do your podcast to talk IRON MAN, so what's stopping you from asking? 

Finally, let me give huge thanks to everyone at Big Planet Comics in D.C.—especially Miranda, Nick, Elijah and Jared—for organizing an incredible signing that attracted way more people than I thought possible! If you're in D.C., Bethesda or Virginia, definitely shop there and talk to the highly knowledgeable staff about other great books to check out. They told me to check out Peter Warren, Francesco Mobili and Chris Chuckry's The Tin Can Society and The Hunger And The Dusk by G. Willow Wilson, Chris Wildgoose and Msassyk—and now I'm hooked! 

WALLER VS. WILDSTORM, the superhero spy thriller I co-wrote with my friend Evan Narcisse and which the masterful Jesús Merino illustrated, is available for purchase in a hardcover edition! If you don't have single issues of WVW and you want a four-issue set signed by me, they're going fast at Bulletproof Comics! 

No one is prouder of WVW than her older sibling, REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP, which is available now in hardcover, softcover, audiobook and Kindle edition. And on the way is a new addition to the family: THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN.