Contributor
Exactly one year ago, Iran International published an article featuring Middle East expert Yigal Carmon’s prediction that an Iranian regime-backed terrorist group would attack Israel in the fall of 2023.
The Iran International report titled “Will Iranian Proxies Target Israel In September Or October?” was the only open source news report prior to October 7 that defined a specific time period in which the Islamic Republic’s proxy Hamas would unleash its massacre in southern Israel.
A little over four weeks after publication of the Iran International article, the horrific violence of the US-designated terrorist movement Hamas produced mass rape, the murder of nearly 1,200 people and the abduction of over 250 people in southern Israel.
Iran International sat down with Carmon to revisit his article and hear his current thoughts about the Iranian regime-animated conflict that has engulfed the Middle East.
“It will not end as long as America stands by its enemies and not its allies,” Carmon said in his typically blunt fashion.
He continued, “The Obama administration sought to promote Iran’s role in the Muslim world. The policy has not really changed despite the fact that Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, Houthis, in addition to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are actively fighting the United States.”
Carmon observed, “To add insult to injury, Qatari authorities have repeatedly stated they would not permit the US to launch any attack on Iran from the CENTCOM base at Al Udeid Air Base. This reflects the administration’s broader Middle East policy of distancing itself from its allies while appeasing its adversaries."
For Carmon, America’s allies in the region are the anti-Iran regime opposition within Iran, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan and Israel.
Carmon, who speaks fluent Arabic and served as the counter-terrorism advisor to two Israeli prime ministers, has long had a singularity of purpose about exposing the world’s worst state-sponsor of terrorism—the clerical regime in Iran—and its Islamist strategic partners, including the Sunni regime in Qatar.
In January, the The Wall Street Journal wrote about Carmon and his institution in an article titled “When Terrorists Talk, They Listen. Memri, the Middle East Media Research Institute, fights Hamas by telling the world what its leaders are saying.”
The roots of Carmon’s forecast about the Hamas-Iran-Qatar troika invasion of Israel can be found as early as 2018 in his essay titled Is Gaza In Need Of Qatar's Aid?
In it, he wrote regarding Qatar’s funding of Hamas “the destructive results of which are bound to come sooner or later.”
While many Mideast experts could not envision an alliance between a Sunni Islamist state like Qatar with the revolutionary Shi’ite regime in Tehran, Carmon laid out in plain terms that “Islamist ideology” serves as the common denominator for the rogue regimes across the region. Religious ideology matters greatly when it comes to what drives human and state behavior.
“Qatar is a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and the Islamic Movement in Israel, and an ally of Turkey, which considers itself an enemy of Israel and which under President Erdoğan adheres to the Islamist ideology that seeks to annihilate it, as well as an ally of Iran,” he wrote in his 2018 essay.
Carmon said regarding the October 7 attack that “Iran provided the training, tactics and weapons. Everything that has to do with the actual attack.”
When asked about the reactions to his analysis before October 7, Carmon said, “Generally, it was not taken seriously. It was contrary to everything they heard from intelligence to the media, from research institutes and think tanks in Israel headed by former chiefs of intelligence.”
He said his article went “contrary to the NGOs, who visited Gaza and told them Gaza is like the Brazilian favelas or worse while in reality Gaza was a thriving Mediterranean city developing immensely.” MEMRI ran a series of articles with video footage in January and February this year that debunked the notion that Hamas-controlled Gaza was immersed in a “Suffocating occupation” and a “Humanitarian disaster” prior to October 7. Carmon noted that Gaza Strip contained “institutes of higher education, malls, towers, five-star hotels, luxury restaurants, water parks, hospitals, automobile dealers for luxury cars, zoos and a musical center.”
He stressed that his warning contrasted with the views of the Israel Defense Forces. “The military told everybody that they [Hamas] were deterred. So it was perceived as a political attack rather than a professional assessment based on evident material from open sources that everyone can see.”
When asked who listened to his analysis, he said the people in MEMRI and Iran International. Carmon said the strengths of his analysis “is taking open sources seriously. And here I have to say something very important. And the arguments against it were primarily racist. The argument goes as follows: Arabs just talk and are not to be taken seriously. Arabs are for sale. We are buying them. Arabs are fools. We can help them [in Gaza] to be a counter to the Palestinian Authority.”
Regarding the Hamas psyche, he said, “It is not hard for me to go into the heart of a killer.”
Carmon seems to have insight into human psychology—a sort of sixth sense—that he attributes to his understanding of empathy.
In short, he jumps into the heads of the Islamist enemies of the West.
He said the consensus racist argument also pooh-poohed Arab military capabilities: “They can’t operate mobilized units because they are primitive.”
Carmon said, “Now we know they attacked with 6,000 people [on October 7].”
“I took them seriously and I believe they mean it. I believe this group of extremists is not for sale. I believe they are not stupid. They have advanced capabilities. I could see it in the videos.”
Carmon asks: “Is it necessary to know Arabic? No. But it is always good to know languages” and, he stresses, “to have an open heart” about out-of-box thinking that goes against mainstream beliefs.
Jerry Coyne, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Ecology and Evolution, Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago, met with Carmon and this writer in September 2023. He would, in January 2024, blog about the meeting, Carmon’s prediction and the Iran International article.
Coyne issued his own early warning for the West in his piece: “If intelligence officials in the West aren’t reading MEMRI on a regular basis, they’re making a mistake. As you see, even the Biden administration has been gulled by the Middle East, and this happens pretty regularly. [Secretary of State] Antony Blinken is an especially notable victim, and he passes his gullibility on to [President Joe] Biden.”
