cialist economy with free market reforms that ultimately led Israel to become the Silicon Valley of the Middle East. Netanyahu’s opposition to the U.S.-led


Continued from page 66


founder and chairman of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, a nongovernmental think tank. Avivi believes this is why the Egyptians are “doing everything they can to prevent the ground incur- sion.” The next front in the Isra-


el-Iran war is likely to be Leb- anon, as Israeli leaders have expressed increasing frustra- tion at their inability to curb Hezbollah attacks on Israel with limited counterstrikes. Touring Israeli units along


the Lebanese border on May 1, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Is- rael’s military chief, revealed, “We are preparing for an at- tack in the north.” Assaf Orion, a retired Is-


raeli brigadier general, told Reuters that an Israeli move on Lebanon could be 10 times greater than in Gaza. “Gaza will look like a walk in the park compared to that level of fighting,” he said. The elephant in the room


is Iran’s nuclear weapons pro- gram. Despite calls from many in


Israel to hit Iranian nuclear facilities in response to the Iranian missile and drone strikes on Israel, the IDF hit air defense radar at a nuclear enrichment plant in Natanz and not the facility itself, al- lowing the Iranians to claim the destruction had been caused by local elements. This came after a senior commander in Iran’s Revo- lutionary Guard warned that


68 NEWSMAX | JUNE 2024


Iran would “reconsider” its nuclear policy if its nuclear facilities were attacked, and the former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization told reporters that Iran had produced “all the pieces” of nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders continue


to threaten Israel and the United States with additional missile strikes, but since the Israeli counterstrike, they have refrained from massive escalation. While Israel currently


stands at the epicenter of this wider war by the Iranian regime and its proxies, the United States and our allies are also directly involved. Iranian-backed militias in


Iraq have launched over 150 attacks on U.S. bases in Syria and Iraq since October, ac- cording to a daily tally kept by the American Enterprise In- stitute’s Critical Threats Proj- ect. Their goal, according to militia leader Qais al-Khazali, is to force the expulsion of U.S. forces from Iraq “if diplo- matic efforts fail.” One of the strategic goals


of the Islamic regime since its founding in 1979 has been to expel the U.S. military from the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East. Iran’s at- tack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, which I witnessed firsthand, was the first step in that plan, fol- lowed by the attack that killed 241 U.S. Marines at the Beirut airport that October. Iran now believes it is close to achieving that goal.


peace process earned him the ire of Presi- dent Bill Clinton, who dispatched Demo- crat campaign consultant James Carville to Israel in 1999 to mastermind the suc- cessful bid by Labor Party leader Ehud Barak to replace him. Netanyahu spent the next 10 years in


the political wilderness. I first met Netanyahu in a bomb shelter


in Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel, when I was covering the 2006 Lebanon war for Newsmax. At the time, he was leader of the opposi-


tion to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and northern Israel had been evacuated be- cause they had no defense against relent- less Hezbollah rocket attacks. Olmert was vacillating over whether he


should mobilize large numbers of troops to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon. Netanyahu’s message to Newsmax at the time: “Finish the job.” In 2009, he began his longest stint as


prime minister, remaining in power until 2021, during which time Israel developed the Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling antimissile systems that have protected Is- raeli citizens so successfully. Since June 2021, a series of inconclu-


sive elections saw Netanyahu alternate as prime minister with Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz until December 2022, when his co- alition with national religious parties came to power with a 64-vote majority in the 120- seat Knesset. Former President Donald Trump told


Time Magazine on April 30 that Netan- yahu has been “rightfully criticized” for the Oct. 7 attacks because “a lot of people knew about it, thousands and thousands of people knew about it, but Israel didn’t know about it.” Trump also revealed that Netanyahu


had been planning to join the U.S. drone strike that took out Qassem Soleimani, chief officer of Iran’s Islamic Revolution- ary Guard Corps, on Jan. 3, 2020, but pulled out at the last minute. “I was not happy about that. That was something I never forgot. And it showed me something,” he said. — K.T.


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