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Biden would rather defend Israeli impunity than stop a regional war [1]
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Date: 2024-09-27 16:11:31+00:00
As Israel was intensifying its deadly attacks on Lebanon, the United States decided to move more troops to the Middle East. The number of soldiers was not announced, but the force was said to be small.
The stated purpose was to protect Americans stationed in the region, but the more likely reason was to send a message to Iran, Ansarallah, and other allies of Hezbollah that the United States would protect Israel in the event of escalation, regardless of who was responsible for that escalation.
U.S. President Joe Biden might hope that such a message would deter escalation, but his decision to communicate it by increasing the U.S. military presence rather than acting to restrain Israel demonstrates that, just as with Gaza, Biden’s priority is not to avoid escalation, but to ensure that Israel has full impunity to act as it wants.
Confronting Iran is Israel’s endgame
In fact, this response plays right into the tactics Israel is pursuing in its attack on Lebanon. The Israeli right doesn’t have a real strategy, but it has long clung to an ideological belief that Israel should throw off the “restraints” placed on it by the United States and Europe and fully exercise its military might to utterly destroy its enemies.
This is what has played out in Gaza since last October. The genocidal campaign is meant not to destroy Hamas, but rather to destroy the Palestinian national movement. That’s why it was inevitable that the genocide would expand to the West Bank, despite the fact that there were virtually no Palestinian actions there in response to the horror in Gaza.
The Israeli right believes it must decisively defeat Iran, not merely deter it. Israel’s provocative actions such as its bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria and assassinating Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran were meant to force a response from Iran that would escalate regional tensions. Iran didn’t take the bait, despite the fact that its lack of response to Israel’s activities invites more and greater provocative Israeli actions.
All of Israel’s strategy comes back to finding a way to create a regional confrontation with Iran that includes the United States.
The latest Israeli escalation indicates that Israel is making good on its promise to shift its attention from Gaza to Lebanon. That won’t mean the slaughter in Gaza will stop, but it will mean that Israel will focus its forces more in the north once it feels it is ready to engage Hezbollah on the ground, an eventuality its current activities are an attempt at paving the path toward.
Both Israeli and American military leaders are less enthusiastic about escalation with Lebanon. While Hezbollah has upgraded its own technological and missile capabilities considerably since 2006, Israel still holds massive advantages in those categories. Hezbollah is limited in its ability to shield its territory, and therefore the civilians of Lebanon, from Israeli attacks. Israel has far greater ability to intercept Hezbollah missiles and drones. Hezbollah can thwart this only by launching a massive attack, overwhelming Israel’s defenses, and that is not a sustainable tactic.
But on the ground, the situation changes. Israel learned how difficult it is to fight Hezbollah on the ground during its occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 1999. The lesson was reinforced in the war of 2006. In both cases, Lebanon suffered enormous harm, but Hezbollah was able to withstand Israel’s offensives and drive the Israelis back.
Many Israelis remember that. The current government understands it, but sees fighting Hezbollah as part of engaging Iran, which would mean bringing the U.S. in. All of Israel’s strategy comes back to finding a way to create a regional confrontation with Iran that includes the United States.
A potential Iranian diplomatic response
Iran has been an obsession for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from his earliest days in the public eye. Few in Israel disagree with that obsession, but past governments had significant internal dissent from the idea of provoking a conflict with the Islamic Republic.
This government is much more willing to take bold steps to provoke that confrontation. Worse, successive American administrations have raised Israeli hopes that they can get the support from Washington that they would need to effectively fight Iran.
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have departed radically from the ideas of the past, when Iran was seen as a player that could be engaged or contained. Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran was not an end in itself, but an attempt to shift the strategy of confrontation with Iran to a long term project where Iran was not only engaged but eventually brought into a regional circle of cooperation.
That would have taken many years, but it’s the right idea, and it appealed to moderate, mainstream sentiments in Iran, sentiments that are very much still alive there today. Hopes for restoring regional diplomacy have been renewed by the election in Iran of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
In his trip to the United Nations General Assembly this week, Pezeshkian used his entourage to send a message of conciliation to western powers. His party was notable for the orientation of the figures that made it up. They included former Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, a special advisor to Pezeshkian as well as current Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Ravanchi, both of whom were key aides to Zarif during the nuclear talks a decade ago.
Pezeshkian was making it clear that there is a real opportunity for work to begin on building a new status quo in the Middle East. It’s an opportunity the Israeli government fears, and the United States seems intent on refusing.
Pezeshkian reiterated Iran’s willingness to re-enter the nuclear deal if the western powers would reciprocate and also said, “We are willing to put all of our weapons aside so long as Israel will do the same,” echoing Iran’s long-stated position.
Pezeshkian was making it clear that there is a real opportunity for work to begin on building a new status quo in the Middle East. Of course, any such grand vision would take decades to realize. But the building blocks are there for a foundation of a different future. It’s an opportunity the Israeli government fears, and the United States seems intent on refusing.
During Obama’s second term, he had to overcome not only Israeli but also Saudi fury at the prospect of an agreement with Iran. While Saudi Arabia didn’t agitate as publicly and dramatically as Netanyahu did against the deal, they were quite clear in their objections to it.
But now, faced with the very real prospect of a regional war, we have seen Saudi Arabia work to re-establish communications with Iran. Since then, economic ties between the two erstwhile enemies have begun to bud. Pezeshkian last week talked about visiting Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia is not by any means committed to this course of peaceful action. It is hedging its bets, expanding rapprochement with Iran while continuing to pursue a massive weapons and defense agreement with Washington.
But Saudi Arabia has been staring at the possibility of a disastrous regional war for nearly a year now, and they know they don’t want it to happen. That is a sharp difference from the regional playing field Obama faced.
American rejectionism and embrace of Israeli aggression
But neither Biden nor Kamala Harris has given any indication they see these openings for diplomacy, let alone any sign they are inclined to pursue it. Certainly Donald Trump’s violent history with Iran precludes any hope that he would pursue diplomacy if elected.
That is not to say that the Biden administration wants a regional war. Such a war is in no one’s interest, including Israel’s, despite the current Israeli government failing to understand that basic truth. But, returning to a recurring theme over the past year, Biden and Harris are unwilling to do what it takes to pursue that course.
It begins, of course, with ending Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Despite appearances, the Biden administration knows full well that ending that genocide—especially if it ends because of American or Western action—will also end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and the harassment of ships in the Red Sea by Ansaralllah. There are also enough former Obama officials in this administration that some must grasp the potential that a revived agreement with Iran has for defusing regional tensions. Hawkish blather aside, it is obvious to anyone who actually looks at the region that tensions have mushroomed since Donald Trump unilaterally, and without cause, abrogated the nuclear deal.
But of course, for any of this to happen, the United States must use the tools it has at its disposal—chiefly a cessation of the flow of weapons—to stop Israel’s aggression. Even if Biden or Harris was inclined to do such a thing (and there is no evidence to suggest they are, but plenty to the contrary), they are too afraid of the reaction it would provoke domestically.
Republicans would immediately accuse them of abandoning Israel and leaving it “at the mercy of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas,” or similar nonsense. And those Republicans would certainly be joined by more than a few Democrats. That the rockets would all stop falling and people would no longer be dying or seeking refuge in bomb shelters would not matter to them.
This is what is preventing real progress in the Middle East: political cowardice. Yes, the criticism would abound at first, but within days people would notice that the killing and destruction had stopped on all sides. Soon, discussions would begin on rebuilding Gaza and southern Lebanon (again), Israelis would return to homes in the north and rebuilt areas in the south. A deal with Iran would be restored, and this time it could be built upon rather than torn down from day one as was the case with the nuclear deal in 2015, even before Obama was out of office.
None of this would be easy. Even if Israel could be reined in and a deal with Iran revived, ending Israel’s occupation, and all the huge questions of accountability, of Palestinian refugees, of Zionism, of settlements, and so many other issues would remain. There would still be many regional issues to be addressed that don’t involve Palestine. Plenty of opportunities would arise for bad faith actors to sabotage any goodwill that was created.
But the region, and by extension, the whole world, would be on a path away from conflict and toward a better, more just future. The opportunity at this moment to change course is clearer and more tantalizing than ever before.
But it depends on Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or, even more absurdly, Donald Trump seizing an opportunity they have all refused to even see, let alone consider. And all because their hatred of Palestinians, their political cowardice, and their embrace of the worst kind of Zionism, forbids them from pursuing an obviously better course for everyone concerned. Well, everyone except Benjamin Netanyahu and the extreme Israeli right wing.
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[1] Url:
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/09/biden-would-rather-defend-israeli-impunity-than-stop-a-regional-war/
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