A Just Conclusion to Israel's War

Discussing the Israelis' end game in Iran, First Things' editor R.R. Reno notes that since the end of WWII, most wars have ended very unsatisfactorily. Indeed, I can't think of any war since 1945 that's ended in unconditional surrender. Here's Reno:

War seldom ends according to a satisfying script. Unconditional surrender—the banner headline of 1945—is a historical rarity, the exception, not the rule. More often hostilities conclude in the gray zone of ceasefires, armistices, and grudging diplomatic arrangements.

Israel stands in that gray zone now. Its defensive campaign against Iran and the Iranian proxy network seems to have primarily met its battlefield objectives. From a military standpoint, Iran appears to be defeated.

The harder task is to translate that success into a durable peace—without stumbling into George W. Bush 2.0, the grandiose dream of regime change by force.

Hopefully, he's correct that Iran is defeated and doesn't have a military ace up its sleeve. Though if it did, it'd be very puzzling why it wouldn't have played it before now. Anyway, after recounting Israeli successes against Iranian proxies, Reno adds this:

The just war tradition demands prudence at the end of war as well as at the start. As I see it, a settlement, whether by formal treaty or tacit modus vivendi, must impose three conditions:

• No nuclear pathway. Centrifuges disabled, inspections enforced.
• No ballistic missile expansion. Delivery systems are inseparable from warheads.
• No proxy rearmament. Hezbollah and Hamas must remain shells of their former selves.

These conditions are not maximalist fantasies. They are the foundation on which Israeli security—and regional peace—can be built. The peace will not be celebrated widely in the region. It is likely to be grudgingly accepted. But it can be achieved.

Reno is correct that these three conditions are necessary for achieving a durable peace, but they're not sufficient. As long as the mullahs and their brutally oppressive apparatus is left in place, then all of what Israel has accomplished in the last week will amount to little more than kicking the can down the road.

Any deal that Israel and the U.S. agree to must ensure that the Iranian people have a fair chance to establish on their own a much freer society, a society in which people are able to speak, write, worship, and dress as they please without fear of imprisonment, torture, and execution. A society whose wealth is used to raise the quality of Iranian life and not to buy missiles, guns, and nuclear weapons to wage war against Israel and perpetrate acts of murder and terrorism against Americans.

It won't be easy, but as Reno states,

Because Iran’s theocrats may spurn any compromise that forecloses their revolutionary aspirations, the “deal” Israel seeks may be no deal at all, but rather something imposed by realities on the ground. Even so, diplomacy must finish the work that airstrikes began: reassure nervous Arab capitals, institutionalize new alignments, and clarify redlines that make further aggression too costly for Iran to contemplate.

We'll see over the coming months whether such a peace is achieveable.