In a recent episode of “In Conversation with David Frum,” Frum and The Hub’s editor-at-large Sean Speer marked the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel by discussing the current state of the conflict, including recent Iranian missile attacks, how Canada and the United States have responded, and what may be in store for Israel and the broader region moving forward.
Five key takeaways from that conversation are set out below. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.
1. This has always been a regional war
“We hear a lot about escalation and regional conflict. What do those terms mean? We have just had, twice in one year, a massive barrage from Iran across the airspace of Iraq and Jordan into Israel of hundreds of ballistic missiles–and other technologies too, drones, cruise missiles–with light injuries, mercifully. Then you hear people say, ‘We must avoid a regional war. We must avoid escalation.’ Well, if the largest back-to-back ballistic missile attacks in history—ones that go from one country to another across two other states’ airspace— doesn’t mean we have not already escalated, what do those terms mean?
“I think one thing we have learned as we near this anniversary, is that it was always a regional war. This, from the beginning, was not a territorial dispute of what should be the exact borders of Gaza. This was always internationally funded, internationally based, internationally supported terrorist groups attacking, across borders, the sovereign state of Israel. I think we have more clarity on that. I wonder if one of the lessons of the past year was that the escalation is going to happen, whether you want it or not, so maybe take control of it and try to get to the end of it, rather than prolonging the nightmare.”
2. Iran must pay a heavy price
“At this point, the Iranians are making a habit of this. This is like every six months. They have to pay a significant price. Iran used to conduct a lot of terrorist operations on European and Western Hemisphere soil: two terrible, atrocious bombings in Argentina in the early 1990s, an assassination in Berlin. At the culmination of this wave, Western governments did something. I don’t know exactly what it was, but it must have hurt, because the Iranians abruptly stopped. They stop when they pay a price. They don’t stop when they pay no price. So they need to pay a price, and something that is important to them must be taken away from them.
“How the different governments coordinate that—whether it’s something visible, like the oil refineries or the nuclear program, or something less visible, like their presence in Syria—they have to pay a price or this will continue. They are not doing good risk calculation, so someone must help them with the math.”
3. The isolationists are wrong. America must support its allies in times of crisis
“I hear this [isolationist] argument. To me it sounds like: ‘I really want to assure the bank that I’m going to be able to meet my mortgage obligations. So what I’m going to do is default on the electric bill, default on the water bill, default on the credit card bill, and hoard all the money so the bank can see that I’m really ready to pay the mortgage.’ The bank wants to see that you are meeting your obligations, all of them.
“It is a decreasingly large planet, and it is interconnected. So the idea that you can somehow muster the force to meet the Chinese in Asia while betraying allies all over the place—the line of policy that is recommended by this school of thought—teaches the Chinese the lesson that, under pressure, the Americans abandoned their friends. They’ve abandoned their friends in Europe. They’ve abandoned their friends in the Middle East. Put some more pressure on them, they’ll abandon their friends in Asia, too.”
“As to American leadership in the world, I mean, we are just reminded how indispensable it is. This idea that the United States can withdraw from here but be credible over there—the planet isn’t that big, and the United States is that big. So the United States has global responsibilities. Obviously, it doesn’t have infinite resources. It has to have priorities, more here, less there. But it needs to think of global politics as a global system. Not as a set of rooms, one of which you can go into and one of which you can exit from.”
4. Canada’s response has been woefully inadequate
“I think on this, the Trudeau government looks ridiculous and pathetic. I mean, it looks like a lab rat that is getting zapped from two contradictory currents and is just scurrying around saying, ‘We condemn the violence against Israel.’ Zap. ‘Okay, okay, but we also condemn [Israel’s self-defence].’ Why are they bothering?
“At this point, the Trudeau government has brought Canada’s foreign policy standing to such a low point that I’m not sure that anyone in the region even notices what Canada says about this or that. So maybe just give up the whole thing until you’ve built some equities where Canada has something useful to contribute. The Trudeau foreign policy is very clear. You do or say whatever is necessary to affect polls in swing ridings in the next 12 hours, and you don’t worry if any of your statements are in any way consistent with or contradictory to those statements you made 12 hours ago for your last set of immediate polling needs.
“Where Canada ought to be is first regenerating its capacity to be a good citizen in international terms, to be a respected ally, to have its voice heard in the council of nations. And then it needs a foreign policy that is driven by international security concerns, not the swing-riding needs of a decaying government.”
5. There are no good outcomes to this war
“There are no good outcomes here. It’s just a terrible tragedy. The suffering on the Palestinian side will be intense. Gaza will not be rebuilt fast. The loss of potential opportunity for everybody is just terrible. There are no good outcomes here. I mean, it’s just a tragic, wasteful, horrible, no-exit predicament. The things you hear in Washington from the Biden administration, they have this vision that we’ll stand up some kind of substitute authority in Gaza, it’ll be somehow linked to a reformed and de-corrupted Palestinian Authority, and then the Arab states will pay for it. Well, if they can pull it off, good luck to them.
“But it sounds like a lot of wishful thinking. The best outcome here is that Iran gets the lesson of its life, and that without massive force, the Iranian nuclear program is halted in its tracks, and that we get some kind of stability between Israelis and Palestinians and some kind of security system and some kind of humanitarian (aid). But it’s not going to be good. What Hamas did on October 7 committed Palestinians, Israelis, everybody, to a path of tragedy from which I don’t see any good escape.”
“From the beginning, I saw this as just something that had no good outcomes. It was just pure loss. I think that now. But I mean, Israel has in the past week successfully damaged the power of Hezbollah, successfully damaged the credibility of the Iranian regime. That is a plus I suppose, and not just for Israel, but for everyone in the region who is terrorised by Hezbollah and fearful of Iran. That’s something snatched from this colossal human ruin.”