Max Boot
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has become notorious for ignoring President Biden’s advice on dealing with the Palestinians. Israel was so slow to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza, the United States felt compelled to deliver its own assistance by air and sea. And Netanyahu has made it clear that, despite White House importuning, he will not allow the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after Hamas is gone. As for the West Bank, Netanyahu’s government gave the Biden administration the back of its hand in March by announcing the largest annexation of Palestinian land in decades while Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting Israel.
This highhanded behavior has bewildered and enraged observers who wonder why Biden keeps providing arms and ammunition to Israel and vetoing anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations Security Council. Part of the explanation is that Biden is an emotionally committed Zionist who believes Israel has a right to defend itself, even if it abuses that privilege in Gaza. Another reason is that Biden is an experienced foreign policy hand who understands that U.S. aid to Israel gives him leverage to slow the rush to a regional war that would surely drag in the United States and damage its economy in an election year.
We saw the payoff from Biden’s “bear hug” of Israel when Israel launched a pinprick retaliation early Friday for Iran’s massive attack last Saturday night on Israel. The risk of a regional conflagration had risen dramatically when Iran, responding to an earlier Israeli attack that flattened the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed three Iranian generals, launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel. This was the first time in the 45-year shadow war between the two countries that Iran had directly attacked Israel; it had always preferred to act through proxy groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
If the Iranian attack had caused massive damage, Israel would have been forced to respond in kind, and conflict would have engulfed the region — with U.S. forces trapped in the midst. Rather than allow that, Biden committed the U.S. military to help Israel defend itself in coordination with Britain, France and Jordan. Even Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states apparently assisted with intelligence. U.S. F-15s and F-16s shot down at least 70 Iranian drones, a U.S. Patriot battery in northern Iraq shot down an Iranian ballistic missile and two U.S. warships in the eastern Mediterranean shot down four to six ballistic missiles. In the end, according to Israel, 99 percent of the Iranian projectiles were intercepted, and the damage inflicted was minimal.
In the days since, Biden and his aides have been lobbying Israel to “take the win” and refrain from retaliation that could lead to the brink of a wider war. This pressure made an impression on the Israeli public: A Hebrew University poll published Tuesday found that 74 percent of Israelis opposed a counterstrike on Iran “if it undermines Israel’s security alliance with its allies.”
Netanyahu and the Israeli war cabinet felt they could not simply do nothing, but they disregarded the advice of hard-liners who wanted to launch a massive retaliation. According to the Wall Street Journal, Netanyahu told ministers from his Likud party that the Israeli response would be “sensible and not something irresponsible.”
Netanyahu was as good as his word early Friday. Israel conducted only a minimal attack on a military air base near the city of Isfahan. Iran claimed this was mounted by drones, but it was probably missiles fired from F-15s flying over Syrian airspace. In any case, the damage was minimal by design, and Israel was careful not to claim credit so that Iran had room to stand down.
Israel signaled that it can hit targets inside Iran — its air force is superior to Iran’s, and Iran’s air defenses are inferior to Israel’s. That Isfahan is home to a major Iranian nuclear facility is no coincidence: The Israelis were showing that they could bomb Iran’s nuclear program if they choose to. Now, the Iranians are signaling that they want to avoid an escalation.
So chalk up a small victory for Biden, and give credit also to Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister has earned international opprobrium over the past six months for the civilian casualties inflicted by his forces in Gaza, but Hamas forced that war on Israel with its Oct. 7 attack. During his nearly two decades in power, Netanyahu has actually been cautious about the use of force. He has often threatened to bomb the Iranian nuclear program but has never actually done so. And in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, he disregarded his own defense minister’s advice to launch a second front against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Although a regional war has been averted for now, the danger still looms that Iran and Israel have crossed a red line by directly attacking each other’s soil. It will take active, continued U.S. involvement to keep hostilities from spinning out of control. It is particularly important that Israel and Saudi Arabia return to their negotiations on normalizing relations that were interrupted by the Gaza war.
So much for Biden’s hopes — which echo those of his two predecessors — to pivot from the Middle East toward great-power competition with Russia and China. The region remains too important and too volatile to ignore. But the events of the past week show that with patient, steady, determined leadership, Washington can still help guide the region away from war.
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