Lockstep U.S. Support Fuels Conflict

Biden’s “ironclad” commitment encourages the worst in a very bad client government.

The Iranian retaliation in response to Israel’s April 1 attack on their consulate in Damascus was unprecedented. It was the first direct attack on Israeli territory from Iran, and it was reportedly the largest drone attack on record. The attack was also one of the most telegraphed military responses of all time. After almost two weeks of warnings that a response was coming, the Iranian government gave advance warning to Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq several days before the attack, and they gave Israel, the U.S. and other regional states hours to prepare. Tehran wanted to make a point without doing so much damage that it would be guaranteed to trigger a wider conflict. The response could easily have been worse and more destructive than it was.

The Biden administration is reportedly urging Israel not to escalate things further, but it is questionable whether Netanyahu will follow the U.S. lead on this when he has ignored Biden so many other times. According to The Economist, “Israel has already informed the Americans and governments in the region that its response is inevitable.” If Israel launches more attacks on Iranian targets, the conflict that they started will likely spread and get out of control. U.S. indulgence and Israeli recklessness created this mess, and continued U.S. backing could encourage Netanyahu to take even more risks.

Netanyahu might gamble that he can push his luck, plunge the region into a larger war, and the U.S. will still come to the rescue out of a misguided sense of obligation. Biden has given him every reason to think that there is nothing he can do that will put U.S. support at risk, and as long as he can hide behind U.S. protection Netanyahu could become even more reckless. Biden’s “ironclad” commitment encourages the worst in a very bad client government.

We should not forget how things got to this point. Unconditional U.S. backing for an atrocious Israeli military campaign in Gaza encouraged Netanyahu to engage in more lawless and dangerous behavior, and repeated Israeli attacks on Iranian targets finally provoked a significant response when they crossed the line with an illegal attack on a consulate. Netanyahu and his coalition are chiefly responsible for all this, but they would not have been able to create so much wreckage and devastation without lockstep U.S. support.

The catastrophe in Gaza has not lessened. The administration has done practically nothing to contain the famine that is already happening. The people of Gaza are still being starved to death. Despite the administration’s big show of pressuring Netanyahu after the murder of the World Central Kitchen aid workers, the flow of aid into Gaza remains extremely limited. According to the U.N., the amount of aid coming in is much less than Israel claims. There needs to be a flood of humanitarian relief to stop the famine from getting worse, and only a small trickle is being let in.

The solution to worsening regional tensions and the catastrophe in Gaza remains the same as it has been for months: an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an emergency relief effort for the starving people. Anything less than that will not end the crisis. If there is not a major change in policy to address the starvation in Gaza, there will be tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the next few months. The U.S. has the leverage to prevent an even greater disaster, but it has to use it.