How Biden's Middle East policy helped fuel a regional war

The Biden administration responded optimistically to Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Rafah on 17 October.

The White House immediately hailed his death as an “opportunity for a ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power” because Sinwar was an “insurmountable obstacle” to any political settlement in the enclave.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unsurprisingly vowed to continue Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. “The war, my dear ones, is not yet over,” he told Israelis on the day of Sinwar’s killing. “We have before us a great opportunity to stop the axis of evil.”

Israel’s leadership is now ever more confident in its war strategies and will continue waging death and destruction in Gaza.

Having ignored President Joe Biden’s ‘red line’ on Rafah only to invade the city in southern Gaza earlier this year, Netanyahu’s government feels vindicated given that this is where the Israelis killed the Hamas leader last week.

Meanwhile, international opinion seems to have no impact on the Israeli government’s decision-making as long as Washington’s support remains steadfast.

The consequences of no consequences for Israel

With the Biden administration ensuring that Israel faces no consequences for its killing sprees in the Middle East, Tel Aviv’s continual escalation can be taken for granted.

There is no denying that the Biden team’s talk of seeking de-escalation in the region contradicts its actual policies. Put simply, the White House’s actions (and inactions) have been directly fuelling the regionalisation and internationalisation of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Speaking of a “colossal foreign policy failure that’s still in the making” which might be “one of the worst foreign policy disasters in the post-Cold War era,” Dr Nader Hashemi, director of Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, fundamentally attributes blame for the expansion of the Gaza and Lebanon conflicts to the White House.

Dr Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, agrees. He speaks of the Biden administration’s foreign policy as an “abject failure”.

In an interview with The New Arab, Dr Kamrava pointed out that the White House’s “unconditional embrace” of the Israeli war on Gaza combined with the Biden team’s “absolute refusal to condemn Israel’s systematic conduct of genocide in Palestine through restrictions on weapons of event statements” have made the administration Tel Aviv’s “partner” in this carnage while leaving the Netanyahu government with the perception that its hands are “completely free” to wage these military campaigns.

“As months passed and the US refused to see anything wrong with Israel’s blatant violations of human rights, Netanyahu became more emboldened and more brazen in his carnage in Palestine and later in Lebanon also. By positioning itself squarely as Israel’s partner, the US lost any and all ability for manoeuvrability separately from the Israelis. The Biden administration has therefore rendered US foreign policy completely irrelevant and has made it an extension of Israel’s policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing,” explained Dr Kamrava.

“The Biden administration’s steadfast refusal or unwillingness to establish guardrails or redlines on Israel has led to the expansion of this war. It’s clear to me that Benjamin Netanyahu realises that he can do almost anything he wants and there will be no one to stop him,” Dr Hashemi told TNA.

Netanyahu’s address before a joint session of the US Congress on 24 July, in which he received 58 standing ovations, was an important moment. “It’s not a coincidence that a week later he escalated oppression in Gaza, assassinated a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon, and then assassinated Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. He came back from that meeting, where he met with Biden and he met with [Vice President Kamala] Harris, realising that has solid and unflinching support from the United States,” commented Dr Hashemi.

The Lebanese front

Israel’s military and Hezbollah have been fighting each other since the Lebanese group attacked the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms on 8 October 2023.

But recent weeks have witnessed major escalations with the killing of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September following the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, along with intense Israeli bombing of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, and Hezbollah operations against Haifa and elsewhere in Israel. More than 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced since last month.

Although the White House frequently spoke about its desire to see the Gaza war not expand into Lebanon, the Biden administration did nothing to prevent that outcome, even if initially it did not necessarily support the Gaza conflict’s spillover into Lebanon. Nonetheless, some seemingly credible reports claim that high-ranking officials in the White House encouraged Tel Aviv to escalate.

“The idea that Washington only learned of developments [regarding Israel’s military operations in Lebanon] after being informed by Israel is laughable. We are being asked to believe US intelligence had advanced knowledge of the Russian invasion of Ukraine etc., but no clue about the actions of a close ally with whom it has an intensive security and intelligence relationship,” Mouin Rabbani, a political analyst and co-editor of Jadaliyya, told TNA.

It is clear that Biden administration officials sense that Israel’s tactical gains in Lebanon - from the exploding telecommunication devices and the killings of Nasrallah along with other high-ranking Hezbollah figures - mean that the Lebanese group is being defeated.

This is an outcome that the White House welcomes and is pleased to see these perceived gains on Israel’s part, believing that they serve Washington’s interests too. Of course, the extent to which Hezbollah continues attacking Israel, and even Netanyahu-affiliated targets, speaks to how incorrect this assessment has proven.

“After assessing Israeli successes against Hezbollah, and probably coming to a similar conclusion that Hezbollah was collapsing and could be shattered, and that this could be leveraged to reshape the Middle East and North Africa’s strategic environment, I think Washington is now fully on board with the Israeli agenda,” commented Rabbani.

There is a high level of “enthusiasm and excitement” over Israeli conduct in Lebanon among Biden’s senior advisors because these individuals see it as a chance to “redraw the political landscape in the Middle East in the direction and in support of US interests,” holds Dr Hashemi.

“Here we have Israel basically doing things that the United States wished it could do itself, but Israel is effectively carrying out these operations on behalf of the United States,” he added.

A looming attack on Iran?

On 1 October, Iran waged a double-wave ballistic missile attack against Israel. As Kamrava told TNA, those strikes “turned out to be far more effective and costly than either the US or Israel anticipated and is bound to be even more so next time around”.

Now the world waits to see how Israel will retaliate. With 22 days having passed without an Israeli response, some analysts are wondering why Tel Aviv has not yet waged an attack against Iran. Could pressure from the White House be the reason?

On 6 October, Kan News (Israel’s public broadcaster) reported that the Biden administration offered Tel Aviv a “compensation package” if Israeli refrains from waging military strikes against certain targets in Iran.

Most likely there are several factors in play. The Biden administration views Israel’s military operations in several parts of the Middle East as a special opportunity to “reshape” the region in ways that can weaken Iran and the “Axis of Resistance” in line with Washington’s foreign policy interests.

But Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have their own interests in not coming out and openly supporting plans for bombing Iran with next month’s US presidential election only 13 days away.

“For Netanyahu, the continuation and expansion of the war is a matter of political survival. But, by having extensive military assets and bases throughout the Middle East, and considering Iranian pledges to hit back at anyone aiding Israel in an attack on Iran, the US is aware that its military bases, its personnel, and its military assets make easy targets for Iran. The US is therefore desperate to make sure that Iran is contained but is not dragged into a war with Israel,” said Dr Kamrava.

“If targets inside Iran are attacked, even if only by Israel and without direct American assistance, Iran is almost certain to be looking at the extensive American presence in the region as legitimate targets, as it did when General Qassem Soleimani was assassinated. The United States does not care if Palestinians or Lebanese are killed. But it does care if US personnel are killed and is therefore seeking to avoid such a possibility,” he added.

In other words, while the Biden team is extremely pleased to see Israel achieve tactical wins in terms of hitting Iran and its allies in the ‘Axis of Resistance’ in a way that significantly weakens Tehran’s hand, the White House wants to avoid circumstances that result in Washington being sucked into a much broader war in the Middle East. In sum, through arms transfers and other types of support, Washington might be seeking to incentivise Tel Aviv to make its attack against Iran in a calibrated manner deemed suitable to US interests.

Questions about how to achieve this are at the heart of an ongoing debate among officials in the Biden administration, according to Dr Hashemi, who believes that this explains why Israel has not yet responded to Iran’s missile attack on 1 October.

“Rather than reading Israel the Riot Act and telling them stop, the Biden administration is trying to effectively bribe the Netanyahu government with incentivise to reduce the number of military targets that they are going to hit in [Iran]. This simply highlights the fundamental incoherence of US Middle East policy, the fundamental weakness of the Biden administration, and how the Biden administration is strongly supportive of Israel in all that it’s doing in the Middle East today,” noted Dr Hashemi.

Other experts suggest that the Biden administration is fully supportive of Israel waging military strikes against Iran but wants some cover. “It's entirely possible that Washington has offered Israel a massive bribe to not hit certain targets, but it's also entirely possible this is just propaganda to allow Washington to distance itself from Israeli actions as it has been doing in Lebanon,” Rabbani told TNA.

Regardless of the Biden administration’s reported efforts to incentivise Netanyahu to make Israel’s military attack on Iran calibrated, the White House has proven unwilling to use American leverage to rein in Israel’s war machine.

“At the end of the day Israel knows it will not encounter significant US opposition to whatever it does, which means Washington has elected not to do anything meaningful to prevent what comes next,” explained Rabbani.

Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics

Follow him on Twitter: @GiorgioCafiero