As an American-Israeli, few events have impacted the trajectory of my life like the September 11 attacks. It’s shocking to me that it’s been 20 years since that horrific day that forever changed the way I see world events. And yet despite all that has occurred, it seems that after 20 years we are closer than ever to exactly where we were on September 10, 2001.
When 9/11 occurred, Israel was already experienced in dealing with the threat of terrorism. In fact, in the months leading up to 9/11, Israel provided advance warnings to the United States of a potential upcoming attack. Yet despite the close alliance between Israel and the US, the US did not feel a need to adopt such vigilant counter-terrorism policies. Airports had virtually no security, so much so that the hijackers were permitted to carry a knife onto the plane, a knife that they used to kill one of the pilots on that fateful day.
Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but it isn’t as if the US was a stranger to the concept of plane hijackings. Dozens of hijackings had already occurred on US flights, and many flights had been hijacked with a terrorist agenda throughout the world. Why then did the US not learn from the painful lessons of its greatest ally, Israel?
In addition to seeing the threats from abroad, the CIA and the intelligence community received advance warnings that al-Qaeda was planning an imminent attack and that their purpose was the destruction of the United States.
In 2001, two senior Mossad officials traveled to Washington to issue an urgent warning to the US on confirmed evidence they had obtained of an imminent attack, including the names of some of the 9/11 terrorists. On July 10, 2001, the CIA made clear to the Bush Administration that sufficient evidence from multiple sources indicated a major al-Qaeda attack was planned. Still, nothing happened.
I don’t mention these intelligence failures to criticize the US for not acting prior to 9/11, but rather to point out that it’s difficult not to see history repeating itself today.
For years, Israel has been providing proof of Iran’s illicit nuclear program and their funding of global terrorism – including against US troops in Iraq. In 2018, Israel provided indisputable evidence that Iran had lied about nuclear weapons programs in the lead-up to the Iran deal. Yet now, instead of US (and EU) taking necessary action, they’ve made it a political game and given Iran more time, through bad decisions like the Iran deal.
The US does not feel the full impact of Iran’s terrorist activity because it occurs far from home, but if the US thinks Iran doesn’t seek to carry out acts similar to 9/11, they aren’t living in reality. Have we learned nothing from the intelligence failures pre-9/11?
While we should be creating a long-term strategy for withdrawal from Afghanistan that prevents from coming to power the very terror groups that assisted in 9/11, the US is instead betraying Afghanistan and leaving millions to die while literally arming that same terrorist organization.
While we should be sanctioning Iran and demanding they end terrorist activity and military action against Israel and the US – as well as maintaining a zero-tolerance approach to their nuclear program – the US is instead discussing re-entering the nuclear deal. No one wants war, but the Biden administration’s approach is shockingly naive.
None of this means that the US should be launching a full-scale war against Iran today, but it does mean that the US is not taking the Iranian threat seriously, and the ramifications could be deadly. The US took its security for granted ahead of 9/11 due to geographic proximity and global strength. They refused to learn from the experience of others, like Israel. As both an American and an Israeli, I know we can’t afford to make the same mistake again.