With the unexpectedly prolonged fighting, it is increasingly clear that Israel and the United States underestimated Iran’s and Hezbollah’s capabilities, resolve, and strategic depth in the current conflict. This misjudgement goes beyond intelligence failures; it stems from flawed assumptions underestimating extreme ideological fervor, and wrongly presumed fragility of these regimes.

The broader problem: The intelligence failure by the United States and Israel is only part of a broader miscalculation: a deep philosophical gulf between the West’s liberal democratic worldview and that of Islamic fundamentalist regimes. What one side regards as “normal” political behavior does not apply to the other.

Democracies: In broad terms, the Western liberal model is built on several core principles: democratically elected governments, the sanctity of human life, independent courts and media, equal rights for women, tolerance of pluralism, and crucially, accountability.  While no democracy fully realizes these ideals, they remain the standards against which leaders are judged and the mechanisms through which power is constrained.

Accountability: Unfettered independent accountability is arguably the most consequential democratic principle. Western governments face three types of checks: media and judicial scrutiny, and electoral accountability. Leaders suspected of acting against the national interest can be criticized in the press, investigated in courts, and removed at the ballot. Regular party turnover in the United States and presidential term limits, illustrates how these mechanisms restrain power and sustain public legitimacy.

Jihad Fundamentalists: Not all Muslims are devout; not all devout Muslims are fundamentalists; and not all fundamentalists are Jihadists. Jihadism is a militant subset of Islamist movements that unapologetically endorses violence, including atrocities, to achieve political ends. Though small in number, Jihadists pose a disproportionate threat to Western security and stability.

Many Jihadist groups are outside of the Middle East and have no interface with Israel. Some (not all) examples include Al‑Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks in the US which killed nearly 3,000; ISIS whose caliphate perpetrated genocides and widely publicized atrocities;  the Taliban’s 2021 return to Afghanistan imposing draconian Sharia punishments and driving the country into a severe humanitarian crisis; and Boko Haram’s insurgency, including mass kidnappings such as Chibok inflicting extensive death, displacement, and economic devastation across the Lake Chad Basin.

Within the Middle East, the Jihadist fundamentalist groups include the Islamic regime in Iran, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

The ideological premises of Islamic fundamentalism starkly diverge from Western values. Key tenets include a overall view of Islam as a comprehensive system for politics, law, economy, and social life, the aim to establish Sharia as the supreme legal order and an explicit anti‑Western, anti‑secular orientation.  Authority is justified by religious mandate, revolutionary legitimacy and armed struggle against external adversaries and internal dissenters, including against fellow Muslims in to advance their aims. There is no independent accountability institution or process.

Fighting even when losing: The US and Israel underestimated the fanatical extent of Islamic fundamentalism thereby failing to predict that the Iranian regime and Hezbollah now, like Hamas and Hezbollah before, would dismissively show a willingness to sacrifice civilians, fighters, and even their own commanders and leaders to advance their inculcated ideological objectives, continuing offensive operations even when strategically disadvantaged.

The regimes are not the people: Aside from Gaza, where Jihadist influence is pervasive, Hezbollah does not represent the Lebanese people, nor does the Islamic Republic speak for all Iranians.

Corruption and nepotism: A notable common exception to the Islamic fundamentalist modest lifestyle is their permissive approach to personal and family enrichment and pursuit of lavish lifestyle among many leading fundamentalist families often in stark contrast to the poverty of the populations they claim to represent.

Hamas provides prominent examples: Khaled Mashal, the former head of Hamas abroad, and Mousa Abu Marzouk, deputy chair of the Hamas Political Bureau have been widely reported to live in luxury abroad and it is estimated that they have each amassed more than $2 billion, while ordinary Gazans face chronic deprivation. In Iran, the Aghazadeh phenomenon, children of elite officials who flaunt lavish lifestyles, has become a major source of public resentment. There are reports that a vast economic network amassed by the former Iranian leader and now controlled by his son, the present leader, is valued at tens of billions of dollars.

Short and long term; for an ideological agenda or the betterment of the citizens: Democracies prioritize short‑term, populist policies over long‑term strategic consistency. By contrast, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran have, over decades, consistently invested in vast, covert arsenals and military infrastructure aimed at striking Israel and the West, prioritizing those capabilities over their citizens’ welfare. This double mindset, long term and destructive, is difficult for Western policymakers to fully grasp. While democracies debate budgets and immediate public priorities, their adversaries quietly build forces intended for judgement day, planned years or even decades ahead.

Deaths on the battlefield: The ideological divide between democracies and Jihadist movements is also reflected starkly in how each treats military fatalities. Western societies typically regard a soldier’s death as a tragic sacrifice, an unavoidable cost in defense of freedom, democracy, or sovereignty. It is usually experienced by families as a total loss. Jihadist movements, by contrast, actively promote martyrdom (istishhād) as a religious ideal: death in battle is celebrated as a guaranteed path to forgiveness and paradise, conferring honor on the fallen and social prestige on their families. While its timing may be discretionary, democratic leaders generally go to war only if perceived as necessary, as in the current conflict initiated by the US and Israel. In contrast, Jihadists regard expansionist armed struggle as an ideological imperative. The result is a strategic asymmetry: one side who valorize martyrdom while democracies must contend with public grief and electoral accountability when weighing military options.

Dysfunctional regimes: A frequently under-reported feature by the West of Islamic‑fundamentalist rule are abysmal misgovernance. Islamic fundamentalist Jihadist regimes typically are run incompetently: resources, institutions, and human capital are diverted to sustain ideological projects rather than national development. The political economy is dominated by institutionalized corruption, land appropriation, asset seizure, persistent financial mismanagement, and patronage networks that displace meritocratic governance. Independent accountability institutions are non existent. These are not incidental failures but structural features of regimes where ideological imperatives and regime preservation override effective administration and public welfare.

Iran epitomizes this phenomenon, a diverse, well‑educated society with substantial natural resources whose developmental potential has been systematically squandered in service of a rigid ideological agenda.

In the oil rich regimes, the combination of Jihadist ideology and petro‑dollars is particularly corrosive, empowering their leaders to abuse the extensive oil revenue.

How some pundits view the conflict: A recurring pattern in Western commentary among political leaders, analysts, and media, is to over-criticize Israel coupled with downplaying the ideological extremism, internal repression and the routine use of violence by its adversaries. In parallel, they often invert causality, portraying Israeli measures isolated from reality or even as the primary cause of the conflict rather than as responses to sustained campaigns aimed at Israel’s destruction. The result is an analytical asymmetry: opponents’ deficiencies and provocations are glossed over while Israel’s conduct is scrutinized in isolation from the conditions that produce it.

Historical Precedent and the Failure to Recognize Early Warning Signs: Preoccupation with Israel’s shortcomings while ignoring the dangers Israel and the West face evoke the early Nazi Germany period, when persecution of Jews was misread as isolated discrimination rather than the preparatory phase of a far broader, ultimately catastrophic agenda that led to WWII. In retrospect, a more forceful, coordinated international response implemented early might have constrained the regime’s ambitions and altered the trajectory that culminated in a global conflict costing tens of millions of lives.

Contemporary Ideological Export and Strategic Implications: In the contemporary context, Jihadist movements are actively exporting their ideology through vulnerable Muslim immigrants in the West.  West European democracies along with Canada and Australia have largely failed to confront and act on this problem. Recognizing this as a strategic, ideological threat is essential to crafting policies that will defend democratic institutions and civil liberties in the future.

Summary: Though it may sound bombastic, the US and Israel are engaged in a war of civilizations, imperfect but liberal democratic institutions confronting a ruthless, anachronistic authoritarian destructive ideology. The conflict’s stakes extend far beyond American and Israeli interests or even oil markets: the Iranian Republic and Hezbollah regimes will continue to pursue their ideological agenda, and if left unchecked, the future for the liberal West will be bleak. Influential actors aside from the US and Israel should recognize the threat and act decisively before it is too late.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)