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It might end up failing. But Joe Biden’s Middle Eastern acrobatics last week would make Henry Kissinger blush. As long as there is no war between Israel and Iran, the American president can claim that it is working. But this involves frequent somersaults before breakfast.
A week ago, America and its allies helped Israel shoot down almost all of the nearly 300 missiles and drones arriving from Iran – the first time the Islamic republic had attacked Israel from its soil. Through Swiss and Turkish intermediaries, Iran actually informed Biden in advance of its actions (although the scale of its salvos surprised everyone).
Since then, Biden has vetoed a UN resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian state, while encouraging normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia that could result in precisely the two-state solution that He had just failed in New York, and urged Israel to “achieve victory” over Iran and avoid retaliating.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored the latest advice and launched an undeclared strike on an Iranian military facility in Isfahan on Friday. The limited Israeli response, which disappointed hard-liners in Netanyahu’s coalition, fell within the symbolic limits of what Biden advocates. It remains to be seen whether Iran feels compelled to continue this tit-for-tat approach, which could further risk sliding from a performative exchange into a war.
Washington suspects Netanyahu of wanting to keep the Iranian-Israeli situation just below the precipice, without it tipping towards a real war. But that requires a skill that he too – the Houdini of Israeli politics – might lack. For now, however, he has broadened the global perspective from the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza to the risks of full-blown regional conflict. Such a war would deal a major blow to Biden’s re-election prospects, which depend to some extent on controlling inflation. To contain global oil prices, the American president must succeed in containing Iran and Israel indefinitely.
This balancing act could become even trickier in the coming days. Despite Biden’s urgings, Israel says it is finalizing its plan to evacuate around a million Gazans from Rafah to pave the way for what Netanyahu presents as the final assault on Hamas. Biden has virtually drawn a red line around Rafah and privately threatened Netanyahu with unprecedented conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel if he moves forward.
But Netanyahu has systematically ignored Biden’s invisible lines. There is no reason to think that the next phase of its war against Hamas will be any different. Any further mass casualties, on top of the estimated 34,000 Gazans who have died over the past six months, would shift the focus back to the now-suspended Israeli Defense Forces ground operations. It would also jeopardize Israel’s recent promise to allow humanitarian trucks into the Palestinian enclave on a scale closer to that demanded by the world.
As always in the Middle East, the sequence of events – and the distribution of responsibility – depends on who you ask. The latest phase of Israel’s post-October 7 war to eliminate Hamas arguably began on March 14, when Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader and America’s top Jewish official, shocked Israel by calling for it to leave. of Netanyahu. Given Schumer’s historic support of the country to the end, his break with Netanyahu was a signal of the extent of the shift in sentiment in the United States, particularly among Democrats.
Over the next fortnight, Biden attempted, unsuccessfully, to persuade Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Then, on April 1, two dramatic and unrelated events took place. The first was Israel’s killing of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen – the global humanitarian charity created by José Andrés, who is a celebrity chef in Washington DC. Although around 200 aid workers have lost their lives since October, the WCK deaths have struck with unusual force in the US capital.
The same day, Israel struck an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing several senior Iranian commanders, including the former head of Iranian forces in Syria and Lebanon. Israel says it has long tracked the commanders’ movements. But the effect of the strike was to remind the world that the struggle between Israel and Hamas could easily escalate into something far more dangerous.
Biden’s short-term goal will be containment. As the US election approaches, the implications of a problem continue to mount. Within the left of his Democratic Party, the president is now openly accused of complicity in what they describe as a genocidal war. On the right, Donald Trump blames the entire crisis on Biden. “This wouldn’t have happened if we were in power,” Trump said after the Iranian attack on Israel.
On the positive side, it is entirely conceivable that this latest chapter in the tragic Israeli-Palestinian story could result in Biden’s goal of a two-state peace process. But before that, he must end a regional war, limit further casualties in Gaza and defeat Trump in November. This will require an almost continuous feat of acrobatics.