Nothing To Lose vs. No Alternative

Iran vs. Israel in the battle of wills

There is a crucial difference, one that shapes not just military strategy but the soul of a nation, between having nothing to lose and no alternative. Since Israel’s attack on Iran began last week, Iran, in its pursuit of regional hegemony and apocalyptic ideology, is now behaving as though it has nothing to lose. Israel, on the other hand, has always acted from a place of ein brera - no alternative.

This difference reveals many different values, motivations, and consequences.

To be a martyr

As we have seen play out over the last 20 months with the Gaza War and Hamas, when you have nothing to lose, destruction isn’t a deterrent; it’s a dare. Iran’s regime, and its various tentacles, including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, all operate with something of an apocalyptic appetite. Martyrdom is not the cost but rather the goal. Survival is not the mission; sacrifice is, along with the destruction of Israel. The Iranian doctrine therefore does not seek balance or prosperity; it seeks purification through fire, the burning away of the infidel, including the West and the Jew. There’s no other way to justify how much money Iran has spent on exporting its terror to Arab lands.

This is the terrifying psychology of the arsonist. An entity with nothing to lose is not afraid of consequences, sanctions, or isolation. These only prove its righteousness in suffering. It can endure ruin, because ruin is part of the plan. And so, the Islamic Republic (note: not the people, but the government) can risk everything: its economy, its people, its cultural legacy, all somehow sacrificed at the altar of its twisted eschatology.

That’s why nuclear deterrence doesn’t work the same way here. Mutually Assured Destruction (aptly, MAD) only works when both sides are mutually dissuaded by destruction. But if one side views destruction as deliverance, the whole equation collapses. That’s Iran. It doesn’t fear devastation. Former Iranian President Rafsanjani even once noted that it would not be a problem if there was a nuclear war between Iran and Israel, as a Zionist nuclear weapon could take out part of Islam (or Iran) but an Iranian nuke could take out all of Israel. That’s mad, not MAD.

The sobriety of survival

And then, there is Israel. A state that has lived its entire life with a knife at her throat. A sword dangling over her head. From its founding in 1948, it has fought war after war, not for land or glory, but for the simple, non-negotiable right to exist. Israel doesn’t move like a conqueror: she moves like someone standing on the edge of a cliff, balancing history, trauma, and necessity.

Golda Meir once famously noted that in Israel’s war with the Arab armies, she has a secret weapon: ein brera - no alternative. That phrase is not defeatist. It is defiant. It does not say, “we are out of options.” It says, “we will create an option, because the other choice is death.” And no country has been better in the last 77 years of creating new options for her survival and ability to thrive.

Golda Meir

This philosophy doesn’t make Israel reckless either. The opposite. It makes her cautious, moral, strategic to a fault. When your back is against the wall, you calculate every single move with the weight of generations behind you. You don’t burn down the house. You reinforce it.

Having no alternative does not make you love war. It makes you dread it. But it also makes you willing to fight, because when there’s no alternative, fighting becomes the only way to live.

The current landscape

Now consider how each attitude informs morality. Those with nothing to lose often excuse barbarism because the future is already abandoned. But those with no alternative must cling to their humanity. If Israel gives up her moral compass, what’s left? A tiny strip of land, a few kilometres wide at some points, surrounded by enemies, unrecognizable to the very Jewish values that birthed it?

And so, Israel drops leaflets before bombing Hamas targets. It builds field hospitals for enemy civilians. It holds itself to standards no other nation would even pretend to aspire to under similar existential threats. Not because it's easy, but because there is no alternative. Not just to war, but to moral survival. She needs to look at herself in the mirror the next day.

Prime Minister Netanyahu visits an IDF field hospital in the Golan Heights in 2014 where people wounded in the fighting in Syria were being treated by Israel (Photo: Kobi Gideon)

The psychology of action

In our world, these two attitudes play themselves out all the time.

The person with nothing to lose may quit their job, burn their bridges, lash out, and/or implode. There’s a certain freedom to that, sure, but it’s a destructive one. It’s the freedom of the dying man who doesn’t care who he takes down with him.

But the person with no alternative, for example the single mom with no family, the soldier on the front line, the nation surrounded, doesn’t have the luxury of collapse. That person becomes stronger, sharper, more focused. They adapt. They improvise. They endure. They aren’t driven by despair but they are rather fueled by resolve.

And make no mistake: the Jewish people, and Israel in particular, have always been powered by “no alternative.” There was no alternative when they sailed ships through British blockades in the 1930s and 1940s. No alternative when they farmed malaria-soaked swamps. No alternative when six hundred thousand Jews declared statehood while five Arab armies surrounded them.

There is no alternative now, when Iran encircles the country with terror, dreaming of Tel Aviv in flames. And we have seen that dream become reality, sadly, over the last few nights.

A warning

As the media struggles to capture the essence of this battle between Israel versus Iran, the West versus Radical Islam, and Good versus Bad (somehow they struggle to understand that Israel = good and Ayatollah = bad), the global community misunderstands this difference at its peril.

Western diplomats treat Iran and Israel as two belligerents locked in symmetrical hostility, both bearing blame for this conflict. But this is a false equivalence of the highest order. Iran dreams of erasing a people and a state. Remember: they haven’t just attacked Israel in Israel, but they’ve attacked Jews abroad, like in Buenos Aires, for example. Whereas Israel dreams of living in peace with Iran (again), Iran risks its own people to strike ours. Israel risks its own soldiers to spare enemy civilians. Israel strategically strikes military targets, whereas Iran indiscriminately targets our civilian centres.

Iran has nothing to lose. Israel has no alternative.

Diplomatic engagement with Iran must start from that psychological truth. Appeasement won’t work. Threats won’t work. What might work, maybe, are consequences so dire that even a regime drunk on martyrdom begins to feel the hangover. But that assumes we treat the regime honestly and stop pretending it plays by the same rules of self-preservation.

Meanwhile, Israel must continue to embrace her doctrine of necessity. Not out of fear, but out of vision. That phrase “ein brera” has led to some of Israel’s most decisive and legendary actions: the preemptive strikes that began the Six Day War, crossing the Suez Canal in ‘73, the Entebbe rescue, the Osirak reactor strike, destroying Syria’s nuclear reactor, the development of Iron Dome, the Hezbollah pager operation, and most recently, her readiness for a confrontation with Iran itself.

Return of hostages from Entebbe, Uganda July 1976

This is not bravado. It is bravery. The quiet kind. The kind that acts not because it wants to but because it must.

Iran’s Ayatollah at this point may believe he and his government have nothing to lose. So many of the leadership has already been killed, and perhaps the writing is already on the wall. But Israel knows exactly what she stands to lose: every child in a bomb shelter, every Sderot or Tel Aviv apartment building struck by a rocket, every kibbutz rebuilt from ashes, every prayer whispered at the Kotel, every page of Jewish history preserved in blood and defiance.

That is why the difference matters.

Because those with nothing to lose are dangerous. But those with no alternative are unstoppable.

And history has shown us over and over: when faced with annihilation, the Jewish people do not disappear. We dig in. We rise up. We survive. And we win, not because we seek war, but because we believe in life. That’s not a weakness, it is our secret weapon. When life is at stake, there is no alternative.