The U.S. must war-game an Israel-Turkey conflict – opinion

Given Erdoğan’s increasing belligerence toward the Jewish state, including calls for military action and violent jihad against it, and the terrorism Erdoğan sponsors, it is time to recognize the potential for a military conflict.

By Michael Rubin, Middle East Forum

War games are an important planning tool. Various military and political experts sit around tables or in separate rooms and role-play decision-making in different countries.

The decisions in the previous round are then played out in multiple rounds.

The goal is not for the teams to win or lose, but rather to force analysts to confront groupthink or plan for scenarios they had not previously considered.

Every so often, war games sponsored by Washington think tanks or even the U.S. government make headlines.

Would Iran target the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain to retaliate after an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites, even if the Pentagon had not been involved?

A recent Middle East Forum war game, for example, suggested the possibility that the Iranian regime could invite China to park its navy at the Kharg Oil Terminal to prevent any U.S. retaliation against Iran’s main outlet to export oil.

Other war games considered the possibility that China could strike at U.S. installations in Guam or naval aviation fuel depots in Singapore to neutralize them ahead of an invasion of Taiwan, or asked how much weaponry the North Atlantic Trade Organization could provide Ukraine before Russia might resort to nuclear weapons.

War games have another benefit: forcing diplomats and policymakers to eschew wishful thinking and confront reality.

President Donald Trump’s administration has bet big on Turkey, based not on the reality of the terror-sponsoring state but rather on the sweet nothings and potential business deals President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has whispered into the administration’s ears.

This leads to inconsistencies. It is not possible, for example, to be both pro-Turkey and anti-Hamas.

To support one is to embrace the other, especially as most Hamas terrorism now gets planned not in Tehran but in Istanbul, where Turkey has given haven and support to the group’s financiers and leaders.

Given Erdoğan’s increasing belligerence toward the Jewish state, including calls for military action and violent jihad against it, and the terrorism Erdoğan sponsors, it is time to recognize the potential for a military conflict.

The spark could be in Syria, especially now that Turkey effectively shares a border with Israel, as Erdoğan uses Hay’at Tahrir al Sham to transform Syria into a proxy as completely as Iran used Hezbollah to transform southern Lebanon into a de facto Iranian colony.

Or it could be a dispute over Turkey’s nuclear program as Erdoğan follows Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s path to use an ostensibly civilian program as a means to fulfill a long-held nuclear ambition.

The United States must recognize what once was unfathomable: a war between a NATO member and the Jewish state.

What would such a war look like? Would it involve missiles and drone swarms? Naval engagements in the Eastern Mediterranean? Aerial battles with both countries using U.S.-provided weaponry?

Would Turkey attempt a landing to cut Israel in two at its narrowest point, barely 8 miles between the Mediterranean and the West Bank?

In such a situation, how would the U.S. react? What would Israel’s neighbors do? Could King Abdullah II of Jordan, himself unpopular domestically, withstand the pressures from his own population that is fiercely antagonistic to Israel?

Would Turkey use Syrian jihadi mercenaries and Islamic State veterans, as Erdoğan did in support of Azerbaijan’s invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh?

With the Trump administration reviving a potential F-35 Joint Strike Fighter sale to Turkey, both the Pentagon and Congress should consider what effect those planes might have if Turkey used them against Israel.

Diplomats too often construct a cocoon of comfort and alternate realities. These may look good on paper, but they represent not a step toward peace, but rather gross negligence by refusing to address reality.

A war between Israel and Turkey is no longer a distant possibility but could easily occur within a decade.

The question now is whether Washington can prevent it, what effect military sales might have upon its outcome, and whom the United States wants to win.