On Psychological Warfare, Negotiations, and What Lies Between

After the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of Qatar tweeted the question: “How can negotiations take place when one side is killing those on the other side of the negotiation table?”

This tweet, in my view, encapsulates the difference between negotiations in the Western world and the Arab world.

Written in English, the tweet was intended for Western ears to frame the message accordingly, and indeed it reached President Biden, who remarked that Haniyeh’s assassination did not help in reaching a ceasefire. However, this tweet in Arabic, intended for Arab ears, should be met with laughter, as it has been known since the dawn of Arab tribal history that deceit, manipulation, and killing are tools of negotiation. As the Koran narrates, 30 Jewish leaders were killed when they arrived for negotiations in Khaybar, and the rest is known. But we will have more to say on negotiations.

The assassination of Fuad Shukr in the heart of the Dahiyeh neighborhood in Beirut, followed by Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran, undoubtedly represents an operational and intelligence achievement of the highest order. But no less, and even greater, is the psychological-warfare achievement.

First, the message to Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah is that Israel still knows how to play in the “Middle Eastern bazaar”; it provided assessments and messages that it would not strike in Dahiyeh, and then struck at its heart. Israelis, too, like “the Arabs, are early and late; they add and subtract, but they do not intend to lie.”¹

The resulting sense of helplessness caused Nasrallah to lie in his televised address and deny the Hizbullah missile strike in Majdal Shams: “If it was a mistake, we would have the courage to admit it.” Here, he lied out of shame, fearing the Druze in Lebanon and that Israel would have the legitimacy to respond; more on this below.

Regarding Ismail Haniyeh, it has indeed been ambiguously attributed to Israel, but the psychological message to Iran is clear: “We can eliminate the octopus’s arms so close to its head.” This time the target was Ismail Haniyeh in the heart of Iran, in a Revolutionary Guards facility—but next time the target could be someone else, an Iranian. Significant too, of course, was another attack attributed to Israel on the S-300 battery in Isfahan in April.

The question is whether there was an intention to put Iran in a state of shame in a society that ascribes so much importance to shame that the only way to deal with it is through revenge, by killing the shaming entity. Nasrallah emphasized in his speech that Israel had injured the honor of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is contrary to a Western society where the discourse is about guilt, not shame, and the response to wrongdoing is punishment or forgiveness.²

In my view, if the risk assessment aimed to put Iran in a state of shame before all its enemies, its proxies, and the Iranian people, then there should have been an additional, proactive move indicating the intelligence penetration of Iran. Although this was demonstrated in the case of Haniyeh, this additional move should have shown Israeli capabilities and the fact that the Iranians have not yet seen even a fraction of those capabilities, forcing the Iranians to change their threat assessment, adjust their counterattack preparations and, most of all, inducing fear and panic among the Iranian people.

Such an attack must target Iran’s National Oil Company’s oil and gas fields. Significant damage to Iran’s central economic artery will harm terror financing. But in addition, in light of Iran’s economic crisis, the number of Afghan immigrants, the ethnic diversity, and the Iranian people’s discontent with the regime’s financial support for terrorist organizations and “Palestine,” it might lead them to the streets. It would be appropriate to force Iran to deal with its internal problems.

The situation in Lebanon is similar: a severe economic crisis, sectarian division, and a Shiite terrorist organization that has taken over the state and its ability to function as such. Therefore, if the intent was to put the Lebanese proxy child in a state of shame by assassinating Fuad Shukr in the heart of Dahiyeh, then the Iranian father as well comes into play: revenge in Islam is familial. This means an offensive blow against Hizbullah was needed, not a declaration of defensive passivity. The Lebanese people are in fear of a war that will deal the final blow to their economy, and clear messages should be conveyed to them. The conclusions of the UNIFIL committee should be reiterated in an appeal to the Lebanese Druze: the attack on the Druze in Majdal Shams is Hizbullah’s responsibility. Hizbullah, like Iran, should have to deal with internal problems.

It should be emphasized that the Iranians did not significantly respond to the assassination of Qasem Soleimani (apart from a limited attack on American air force bases in Iraq, which Trump claimed was preagreed).³ Why? Because they feared Trump and the expected response. This means that in the Middle East, if the strong are perceived as strong and behave strongly, they deter even the most crucial revenges by the humiliated side. Some claim that Khamenei, at Haniyeh’s funeral, was surrounded by bodyguards and looked to the sky several times, perhaps fearing his own assassination—further emphasizing the need for Israeli offensive activity instead of merely awaiting a response, with declarations by official government sources that Israel is not interested in war.

Another point regarding Iran is the possibility that the Shiite leadership will do everything to hasten the revelation of the Mahdi, primarily through wars leading to great disasters.⁴ Therefore, it is of utmost importance for Israel to defy the U.S. position on the Iranian nuclear issue, acting not alone but along with the coalition of moderate Sunni countries. The Iranians, knowing they are militarily inferior and cannot rely on manpower dominance,⁵ instead resort to cunning by presenting the new moderate president who purportedly seeks a nuclear agreement with the United States, while at the same time Iran races toward a nuclear capability. Such a capability is not only a threat to Israel but also to moderate Sunni countries and the entire world.

The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh sends a clear message to Sinwar: “The rope tightens around your neck.” In addition to Haniyeh, there are the cases of Rouhi Mushtaha (a senior Hamas official who was close to Sinwar, reportedly eliminated by Israel) and Muhammad Deif. This is an “Arabic” message and an important one in negotiation. It must be remembered that we are negotiating with those whose ultimate goal is jihad, and in jihad, there can be pauses and negotiations only when you are at a disadvantage and have an “interest.” In my view, Sinwar’s interest in a ceasefire whose price is the return of hostages increased after Haniyeh’s assassination and currently outweighs the “shame” and “honor,” but this must be exploited immediately and not delayed. Instability is the most stable factor in this equation. The return of the hostages, beyond being an absolute moral imperative, is of the greatest importance for Israel’s internal and international resilience.

Israel must also take account of the enemy’s strategy and understand that a ceasefire is for the purpose of rescuing hostages, and like any agreement in the Middle East is only temporary. A declaration by Israel of its desire for a ceasefire and a hostage deal might forestall the anticipated retaliatory attack by the axis of evil and perhaps affect its intensity or timing. Nasrallah’s public declarations regarding the Gaza ceasefire might allow him to temporarily “climb down from the tree” with the help of mediators. Hizbullah, Hamas, and Iran need the ceasefire to preserve their offensive advantage, but this time it is also in Israel’s interest; the ceasefire is needed to carry out a reassessment in the north.

A final word is in order regarding Israel’s domestic resilience, apart from the political context. Tendentious messages in Israeli media channels by former senior military officials, statesmen, and commentators, who ostensibly offer a situational assessment but actually want to express their stance against the government and its head, should be presented with the understanding that the enemy listens and sees and makes extensive use of such statements. Journalists in Arab media in various countries, and especially in Qatari media and channels linked to Hizbullah like al-Manar and Mayadeen, exploit this phenomenon extensively and describe a situation where “Israel is collapsing from within, and there are profound social divisions within Israeli society.”⁶ They do not interpret the phenomenon to mean that Israel is a healthy democracy where former generals and politicians express their views; they see it as weakness, and magnify it to fit their agenda.

It is all a matter of balance in how things are said, and while it is clear that I will not change anything with this statement, I would like perhaps only to emphasize that the enemy has coordinated means of state-level psychological warfare but Israel does not, and we are in a psychological war no less than a kinetic one.

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Notes