Biden should not follow Netanyahu into war with Iran
The US and Israel have been raising the alarm of a possible Iranian retaliatory strike in response to last week’s Israeli attack on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus. The president once again pledged “ironclad” US support for Israel in the event of an Iranian response, and the head of Central Command, Gen. Erik Kurilla, was reportedly headed to Israel Thursday to coordinate with Israeli leaders ahead of the expected strike. The administration is moving in the wrong direction. The US ought to be distancing itself from Israel’s illegal attack, but instead, the Biden administration is moving to shield Israel from the consequences of its own actions.
By Daniel Larison
Columnist
Israeli forces have routinely struck Iranian and other targets in Syria for more than a decade, but the attack on the consulate in Damascus was a major escalation both in terms of the location and the rank of the Iranian officers that were killed. The Israeli cabinet appears to want to goad Iran into a military response to divert attention from the slaughter and famine in Gaza and to trap the US into joining the fight. The president has made it that much easier for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by volunteering to walk into the trap.
The US is at considerable risk of becoming involved in a direct conflict with Iran thanks to the reckless actions of the Netanyahu cabinet and the president’s lockstep support. This does not serve legitimate US security interests. The US cannot afford another conflict in the Middle East, and siding with Israel exposes US forces to significant unnecessary dangers. The US is under no obligation to come to Israel’s defense if Iran retaliates against an Israeli strike, and the president has no authority to commit the US to fight a war for another entity, especially when that entity is not a treaty ally.
President Biden said this week that the US would do “all we can to protect Israel’s security,” but this knee-jerk response is the wrong one under the circumstances. Why is the US putting itself on the hook to protect Israel, which is more than capable of fending for itself? It is an unnecessary commitment, and it is unwise. It risks fueling a regional war that the administration has said it wants to avoid, and it rewards Netanyahu for his rogue behavior.
American troops have already come under attack because of our government’s support for the war in Gaza. The administration’s response to the war over the last six months has already been detrimental to US interests and harmful to America’s reputation. This latest commitment to protect Israel while the war in Gaza continues compounds these earlier errors and does even more damage to our country’s global image.
US intelligence has reportedly warned that an Iranian response is “imminent”. It remains unclear exactly what form Iranian retaliation might take, but it seems very unlikely that the Iranian government will choose not to answer a direct attack as brazen as this one was. The response could involve missile launches from Iranian territory, as we saw in the response to the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani in 2020, or it could be some combination of missile and drone attacks from various Iranian-backed groups. Whatever shape the response takes, the US should steer clear of the ensuing conflict. The US should not lift a finger to assist an Israeli cabinet that went out of its way to provoke this fight.
The war in Gaza has been a wake-up call for the United States that its “ironclad” relationship with Israel is a serious liability for American interests. Jon Hoffman of the Cato Institute recently laid out the case against continuing the “special relationship” with Israel: “A special relationship with Israel does virtually nothing for the United States while actively undermining US strategic interests and often doing violence to the values that Washington claims to stand for.” Given how little the US benefits from this relationship, the automatic and “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s security that Biden endorses makes no sense.
Perhaps there was a time when extensive US support for Israel made some sort of strategic sense, but that time is long gone. Today, this support makes the US complicit in Israeli violations of international law, exposes the US to intense regional hostility, and puts US forces at greater risk in exchange for very little. When the Israeli cabinet isn’t actively undermining US diplomacy with states in the region, it is openly ignoring Washington’s preferences and defying Washington’s requests. The US gets all the headaches and costs that come with foreign entanglement without gaining a reliable, constructive partner.
US officials have often called the relationship with Israel “unshakeable” and several presidents have taken pride in ensuring that there is no “daylight” between the US and Israel in public, and that is why the relationship has become such a bad, dysfunctional one. In practice, preventing any “daylight” between our cabinets has meant catering to the Israeli cabinet’s preferences at the expense of our own position. The “unshakeable” relationship has remained that way largely because the US keeps indulging its client regardless of the consequences. It isn’t possible to have a balanced, respectful relationship with any entity when the other cabinet expects and receives such extraordinary deference. Instead, it creates a toxic relationship in which one cabinet always takes advantage of the other.
Reflexive US backing for Israel has not only enabled the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza and implicated the US in war crimes, but it has also encouraged dangerous Israeli behavior in the wider region for years. Unconditional US support for the war in Gaza has led the Israeli cabinet to believe that it can keep pushing its luck with more provocative actions against regional states as well. Now, the Israeli cabinet is potentially facing some real blowback, and the US should want no part of it.
US and Israeli interests have been diverging for decades, but US policy has failed to keep up. The president remains wedded to a version of the relationship from the previous century with an entity that no longer exists. We need to bring US policy up to date and to bring it into line with the current realities of the Middle East, and to do that the US has to give up this idea of an “ironclad” commitment to Israel.
The full article first appeared on Responsible Statecraft.