Obviously there has been a massive escalation of the war with Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Iran’s missile attacks.
How is this going to play out? There will clearly be a big retaliation by Israel and then counter-retaliation by Iran. What’s the end game? Will the US also attack Iran?
What will be the political impact? I suspect this issue is going to dominate the rest of the election and it will help Trump, possibly decisively.
Overall in the long run I think is going to be a disaster for the US and Biden is the ultimately the person who bears the biggest blame. The US has had enormous leverage but have completely failed to use it to contain the situation. They have pretty much given Netanyahu the green light on everything with some token verbal pushback for public consumption.
This situation is likely to escalate and drag on in all sorts of unpredictable ways. There could be terrorist attacks on US soil. There could be extremist revolutions in one or more Arab countries. US bases and embassies in the whole region could come under threat. It’s going to be a nightmare.
The only way Trump could spin this would be to promise “No more Middle East wars if I am elected! We’re sick of wars in that region of the world!” And he may indeed get some voting boost from that.
Since it’s always easy for the person who’s not president to promise such things.
Except Trump has to stand behind Netanyahu and Israel or risk losing many of his MAGA supporters who are evangelical. More likely he will blame the war on Biden for being too weak and ineffective.
I believe Netanyahu is escalating this to maintain his position and power in Israel! The crisis is the only reason he has his seat so why should he make a deal?
I just don’t see how that follows. Barring the introduction of a nuclear weapon, Iran does not represent an existential threat to Israel. A nasty, bothersome one. But not an existential one. Iran is well over a 1,000 kilometers away, separated by multiple intervening countries. It cannot invade and couldn’t win if it did. About all it can do is lob missiles. Which sucks mightily for Israel, but as they have already proven they have good air defenses. That and sponsor terrorism, which Iran does already. Iran can attack, Israel will retaliate and it will be ugly. But no reason for the U.S. to get involved.
It really doesn’t. It has some leverage, but not an enormous amount. I’m pretty sure if the U.S. said tomorrow “alright, we’re cutting off all aid”, Netanyahu will just say “okay, fuck you” and Israel will limp along doing their own thing regardless. The U.S. can help steer things, but Israel doesn’t need the U.S., so much as benefits significantly from the relationship.
Trump will as candidate, bluster. As president? Hard to know. Odds are he’d default to asking Putin for advice …
Reality right now is that Iran is very vulnerable and weak and is desperate to find a way to get out of this with some face saved. Their proxies are defanged. Their huge investments in building them up literally blown up. Israel is not giving them option of holding up their proxies as shields. Maybe they’ve base their show, Israel can give a calibrated response and to be listening to American calls for restraint, and everyone backs down in more lasting ways?
Biden actually has the chops to help facilitate that. Hard though with the parties involved and their audiences. Both sides need to come off looking tough.
Tamerlane,
I certainly hope the US doesn’t get directly involved but if for example Iranian proxies attack a US base or embassy, the pressure to retaliate will be enormous.
As for leverage over Israel I have to disagree. Israel’s capacity to fight long wars is extremely limited. If the US threatened to withdraw all aid they would not fight a multi-front war against Gaza, Lebanon, the Yemenis and Iran at the same time. They would have continued some military operations in Gaza but on a much smaller scale. There is no way the war would have gotten so big and lasted so long without US support.
That’s not a multi-front war. That’s a multi-front counter-insurgency campaign. I agree Israel cannot indefinitely fight a really prolonged conventional war against a comparable army, if for no other reason than the massive munitions requirements. But Israel has no comparable foes to worry about. The closest cognates to comparable (and they aren’t, really), like Egypt and Jordan, are not going to go to war.
The Houthis aren’t exactly a major threat. It’s ~2500 kilometers from San’a to Tel Aviv (stupid Mercator projections make everything appear closer than they actually are) and they can’t exactly project much power beyond northern Yemen and the Red Sea gulf. Iran we’ve discussed. Hamas in Gaza can’t really do shit beyond your normal terrorism, which we can see based on the fact they haven’t really done shit except get mauled. Hezbollah is the only one both on the border and with something approaching experienced light infantry troops courtesy of the Syrian civil war, but they’re still hopelessly outclassed by Israel in every respect (including having no air force to speak of).
I think the key leverage point would be Iron Dome batteries and missiles which if Israel runs out of, Hezbollah’s rockets become a lot more dangerous to say nothing of Iran’s ballistic missiles.
Any way just to add to my point about leverage three posts back, the US has a lot of leverage because of the Israeli economy. Already it is in some trouble with deficits of 8% of GDP, rising inflation, bond downgrades and some capital flight. All this would be much worse without US aid which has been enormous, for example $8.7 billion in the last package.
On the political impacts, I think it will be minimal, barring something crazy like a nuclear attack. I think most Americans are mostly bored and/or numb regarding the present round of violence, and those who aren’t have already made up their minds and won’t be further swayed either way.
Netanyahu might do something nuts to try and help Trump politically, but I’m not sure what that could be.
I don’t agree that the US has any leverage here. I don’t think there are any promises, threats or requests that would make Israel do anything differently and I think this would be largely true even if Netanyahu wasn’t in the picture (but particularly true because he is in the picture). So if there is no possible path to getting what the US wants, why blame Biden for failing to do the impossible?
As for Trump, remember how transactional he is. Remember how he “runs” NATO like a protection racket. Remember how he sold Ukraine out because they wouldn’t lie for him and make up some dirt on Biden. At some point he’s going to realize that a lot of money and weapons are flowing to Israel and a whole lot of nothing is flowing back. Maybe he’s already getting ready for that. You know, sprinkling his speeches with specific references to how if he loses it will be the fault of “the Jews”. Far be it from me to speak on behalf of Jews or Israelis but I think he should be absolutely terrifying to both. He’s Chaotic Evil who has a fascination with nukes and who never met an anti-Semitic trope that he didn’t adore. He can only make the situation worse and if given the chance, he will.
It will be interesting to see to what extent Israel launches a ground invasion of Lebanon. I suspect that after their successful attacks on Hezbollah’s leadership they are overconfident but it would be a serious mistake to believe that Hezbollah is finished or even seriously weakened as a guerilla fighting force. If anything their fighters are going to be extra motivated to fight any Israeli incursions. Also Lebanon isn’t Gaza and can be easily supplied from several countries through Syria. It will be a magnet for militants from Iraq,Iran and other countries.
There are already some early,unconfirmed reports that Israel is struggling with its ground attacks. My guess is they will try some ground incursions, meet with ferocious resistance and then mostly go back to what they do best: bomb buildings and kill civilians.