The U.S. Middle East policy is lunacy. Since when are countries who are attacked—and Israel has been attacked on several fronts—told to show restraint?
Why would Biden and Obama feed the mullahs in Iran with billions, then be surprised by Iran’s terrorism, but then expect Israel to restrain itself.
According to this ‘logic’, if someone breaks into your home and is going to kill your wife and two children, well you should just show restraint.
The cavalry is not coming. Israel needs a strategy to secure its northern communities that does not rely on USA fire power or weapons. Biden's "don't" means Israel don't rock the boat.
Iran is seen as the destabilizing force in the Middle East by all the Sunni states. With some strategic creativity and resolve the U.S. and Israel with cooperation from those like minded states can resolve the problem of Iran. The time has passed to focus on Iran's proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Huothies. If Iran must suffer the consequences of their actions then they will not survive.
The regime in Iran is more fragile than perceived. We may take a lesson from the Cold War. The Soviets folded when confronted, as opposed to the losing strategies of Detante, containment and peaceful coexistence. The time is now.
we seriously need to start looking elsewhere based on combined interest against aggressive and well-funded neighbors. India, SK, Taiwan, SA/UAE/Bahrain. Argentina bc of it's size, natural resource production and heavy need for capital investment. Poland (I can't believe I'm typing this but they understand that Islamism is a threat and they are not having it). I am not a geo-political expert but since the United States is unlikely to be the world's police for too much longer bc of extreme lack of political will on either side of the aisle, we need to create a different regional map of alliances for ourselves.
The United States never supported preemptive attacks by Israel, not even in 1967 after Egypt militarized the Sinai or 1973 when war was imminent.
All that is at play is Biden's vanity to be known as a peacemaker before he exits the presidency and politics. In that regard, his reputation is still far behind Trump's.
We all know that you mean 1967, not 1973. Nasser died in 1970 and the Yom Kippur War was a surprise attack.
In the run up to the Six Day War, Nasser’s Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran to ships going to/from Israel. Not only was this a clear act of war but it was also a violation of the international guarantees of free shipping given Israel as part of the resolution to the 1956 Sinai campaign (the one where Britain and France colluded with Israel to undo Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal).
Prime Minister Eshkol appealed to LBJ to enforce the guarantee by sending an international flotilla to break the blockade. But the U.S. was focused on Vietnam and Britain and France were not interested in doing anything.
In fact, President De Gaulle warned Israel not to attack preemptively, lest they lose French support. At the time, France was Israel’s most important supplier of weapons and ammunition. After the war, De Gaulle made good on his threat, imposing an arms embargo on Israel and pivoting to a pro-Arab strategy (for which he was probably looking for an excuse to implement and, as a keen military strategist himself, he no doubt understood that preemption was Israel’s only viable strategy for survival).
Ironically, it was Israel’s success in 1967 that made the U.S. reconsider its policy toward Israel which up until then was to keep it at arms length, notwithstanding the support Israel had from a large section of the U.S. population since its rebirth. Now Israel was slowly being reimagined as a key regional player on the U.S. side of the Cold War - something that took final shape around the time of the atom Kippur War.
I am so tired of this silly American Imperialism nonsense and Israelis as colonizers. And, no, Obama is NOT a “dark state” dictator. When he was president, he wanted to stay out of the Middle East and concentrate on Asia. This is good advice all these years later.Obama s
I don't see anywhere in the article where it refers to Obama as a dictator. I agree that under Obama the US tried to pivot to Asia - and I think that is the right policy! Given the threat of China.
The issue is that Obama's plan to exit the ME -- a framework continued under the Biden admin with many of the same key personnel -- was by appeasing/arriving at a detente with Iran that leaves Iranian "assets" in place in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza. This has completely destabilized the region and undermined key allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia.
You are forgetting that there was four disastrous years of the Trump ‘bull in the china shop’ diplomacy in between. The Trump/Kirschner Abrahams Accords with moderate Sunnis completely ignored the existence of millions of Palestinians and the movement of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem enflamed religious sectarianism emboldening Iran and directly leading up to the Oct. 7 attacks.
The accusations that the U.S. has imperial ambitions in the region and conspiring with Iran is total nonsense. His is a Sunni vs. Shia religious war with the Israelis caught in the middle. But for supporting Israel’s right of existence, the U.S. is done with the whole sorry Muslim lot. We don’t need their oil and certainly don’t need their rabid religiosity. As I mentioned previously, the U.S. doesn’t have a dog in this fight other than Israel and their current right wing government is sorely testing that relationship.
President to be Harris has already signaled her desire to widen the distance between the U.S. and Israel refusing to be embroiled in an endless, senseless religious war. Until Islam institutes the reforms needed to join the 21st century, there is no realistic hope for any change.
The Abraham Accords were unequivocally good. Peace is peace. I fail to see how the Accords or the US embassy move had any causal impact on Oct. 7. A far more plausible explanation is (1) the Biden admin lifted sanctions on Iran and released tens of billions in sanctions waivers, emboldening Iran, (2) Iran acted to undermine the pending Saudi-Israel normalization (those dreaded Abraham Accords), and (3) Sinwar took advantage of internal Israeli division over the supreme court reforms.
The Obama vision for the Middle East - continued by Biden - is a Cold War scenario with a "balance of powers" between Iran on one side and Israel/Saudi on the other. It's no conspiracy...it's just a fundamentally flawed and dangerous worldview.
Why did Biden release $10B to Iran *after* Oct 7? Why did Biden remove the Houthis from the US terrorist list from 2020-2024? Why is the US paying the salaries of the Lebanese Armed Forces? Why does Biden keep putting red lines ("Don't") to Israel in public, erasing Israel ability to deter Iran and Hezbollah?
I agree that the big picture is a Sunni/Shia war. But reality is that the US has its fingers in a lot of pies on all sides of this conflict.
Yeah, "peace is peace" certainly worked out well in Afghanistan. "Peace" at the expense of rubbing Iran, Palestinian, and Lebanon's noses in it is a false peace and I would say is the trigger for the Oct. 7 attacks. The Saudi-Israel normalization was part of the Abrahams Accords process and is driving a wedge between the Sunnis and Shia driving Iran toward Russia and China's support.
Yes, we all are in a Cold War scenario attempting to shore up a stable balance of powers in the region. The alternative is a "hot war" of ethnic cleansing and genocide which Gaza is a preview. The U.S. provides Israel defensive military support but we have no stomach for involvement in offensive strikes unleashing ancient animosities and holy wars. The Saudis also don't have a military alliance with Israel so we're basically looking at Israel vs. the Muslim World. What could possibly go wrong?
As for your comments about lifting the sanctions on Iran, this was part of the UN JCPOA agreement that the U.S. abandoned under Trump. "No direct connection between sanctions relief and Iran's recent attack on Israel has been shown to date. Nevertheless, it is true that President Biden has repeatedly ordered the suspension of Iran sanctions. Here are a few examples:
In February 2022, Biden attempted to enable indirect US-Iranian negotiations aimed at reviving the 2015 JCPOA by issuing "sanctions waivers" for Russian, Chinese and European companies.
In July 2023, after a meeting with his Iraqi counterpart, Fuad Hussein, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the US would unblock Iranian assets in Iraq, allowing Baghdad to repay a portion of the billions it owed Tehran for natural gas supplies.
In August 2023, President Biden allowed Tehran access to some $6 billion (€5.58 billion) in oil assets frozen in South Korea in exchange for the release of five US hostages held in Iran.
This March, the US president allowed Iran access to another $10 billion in frozen assets. White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby justified the step in an April 15 press conference as follows: "And as for this — this unfreezing, that — none of that fund — none of those funds — funds set up in an account, by the way, by the previous administration — goes directly to the Supreme Leader of the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]. It can only be used for humanitarian purposes. And we're watching that account very, very closely to make sure that that's what happens." https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-joe-biden-weakening-iran-sanctions/a-68992276
One thing I think you have backwards; the media did not change it's view it was instructed to change it's view by Barack Obama. He is running the country. He decided to oust Biden. He decided to pick Walz and he still decides Middle East policy for the Dems.
It is inconceivable that Israel would premise its own security policy upon the U.S. whose track record as an ally is mixed, and whose reliability is subject to the fickle internal political winds blowing at any given moment.
The Biden Administration change of policy over the past ten months is very well documented here and coincides with the changing political winds in the US.
They say, "All politics are local." In Israel that translates into Netanyahu and Co still being in power ten months after the horrendous policy and security failures that enabled Oct 7, despite how utterly unfortunate that appears to outside observers. For the US in a fateful election year that translates into: 1) get the hostages back; 2) destroy Hamas's military capacity; 3) minimize civilian casualties; 4) do all of the above in a reasonable amount of time. The US has Israel's back, but it's not a blank check.
Best to expect nothing, and be pleasantly surprised if it becomes something. This administration abandoned billions of dollars of weapons to the Taliban. It would be irrational to expect them to behave rationally. Again, best to expect nothing and prepare accordingly.
So, the scenario is that the U.S. and Israel (both with dysfunctional governments) are to single handedly fight an all out Middle East war against Iran backed by Russia and China? What could possibly go wrong with this plan?
“Still, never in such a short period and under such pressing circumstances has American policy changed so fundamentally and radically. And never has an Israeli government been less equipped to adapt to those changes successfully.”
The hard facts as you hinted is the governments of both the U.S. and Israel are not focused on any coherent plan or end goal here. If Israel doesn’t have any plans for the “day after” in Gaza, what are the pans to occupy Iran and possibly Iraq after preemptively attacking? As Gen. Colin Powell warned us before the botched Iraq invasion: “If you break it, you bought it.” Is the assumption the U.S. taxpayer is going to pick up the tab? If so then some hesitation and discussion might be prudent. What’s the rush? Modern Israel has only been in existence for a few decades while the Sunni-Arab vs. Shiite Aryans (which this is what this is really about) has festered for 1500 years. Do we really want to release this ancient animosity in a Middle East tinderbox without a clear mission or a viable exit plan?
The U.S. dragged NATO allies into Iraq and Afghanistan and our reputation as a fickle ally is already set. Backing dysfunctional Israel in its quixotic cause is not likely to be popular and more likely to do more harm to America’s reputation than enhance it. The blunt truth is that as soon as the gas pump prices increase, the public’s support will wane.
As Biden wisely said: “Don’t!” That goes for everyone involved, U.S. included.
The U.S. Middle East policy is lunacy. Since when are countries who are attacked—and Israel has been attacked on several fronts—told to show restraint?
Why would Biden and Obama feed the mullahs in Iran with billions, then be surprised by Iran’s terrorism, but then expect Israel to restrain itself.
According to this ‘logic’, if someone breaks into your home and is going to kill your wife and two children, well you should just show restraint.
To understand why this is happening we need to look at the underlying ideology (Progressiveism, Cultural Marxism?)
"The issue is not the issue. The issue is The Revolution."
Saul Alinsky
The cavalry is not coming. Israel needs a strategy to secure its northern communities that does not rely on USA fire power or weapons. Biden's "don't" means Israel don't rock the boat.
Iran is seen as the destabilizing force in the Middle East by all the Sunni states. With some strategic creativity and resolve the U.S. and Israel with cooperation from those like minded states can resolve the problem of Iran. The time has passed to focus on Iran's proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Huothies. If Iran must suffer the consequences of their actions then they will not survive.
The regime in Iran is more fragile than perceived. We may take a lesson from the Cold War. The Soviets folded when confronted, as opposed to the losing strategies of Detante, containment and peaceful coexistence. The time is now.
we seriously need to start looking elsewhere based on combined interest against aggressive and well-funded neighbors. India, SK, Taiwan, SA/UAE/Bahrain. Argentina bc of it's size, natural resource production and heavy need for capital investment. Poland (I can't believe I'm typing this but they understand that Islamism is a threat and they are not having it). I am not a geo-political expert but since the United States is unlikely to be the world's police for too much longer bc of extreme lack of political will on either side of the aisle, we need to create a different regional map of alliances for ourselves.
The United States never supported preemptive attacks by Israel, not even in 1967 after Egypt militarized the Sinai or 1973 when war was imminent.
All that is at play is Biden's vanity to be known as a peacemaker before he exits the presidency and politics. In that regard, his reputation is still far behind Trump's.
In 1973. Nasser of Egypt blockaded the Red Sea from Israeli shipping. That was an act of war.
Indeed, but President Johnson warned Israel not to attack Egypt anyhow.
They’re always warning Israel.
We all know that you mean 1967, not 1973. Nasser died in 1970 and the Yom Kippur War was a surprise attack.
In the run up to the Six Day War, Nasser’s Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran to ships going to/from Israel. Not only was this a clear act of war but it was also a violation of the international guarantees of free shipping given Israel as part of the resolution to the 1956 Sinai campaign (the one where Britain and France colluded with Israel to undo Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal).
Prime Minister Eshkol appealed to LBJ to enforce the guarantee by sending an international flotilla to break the blockade. But the U.S. was focused on Vietnam and Britain and France were not interested in doing anything.
In fact, President De Gaulle warned Israel not to attack preemptively, lest they lose French support. At the time, France was Israel’s most important supplier of weapons and ammunition. After the war, De Gaulle made good on his threat, imposing an arms embargo on Israel and pivoting to a pro-Arab strategy (for which he was probably looking for an excuse to implement and, as a keen military strategist himself, he no doubt understood that preemption was Israel’s only viable strategy for survival).
Ironically, it was Israel’s success in 1967 that made the U.S. reconsider its policy toward Israel which up until then was to keep it at arms length, notwithstanding the support Israel had from a large section of the U.S. population since its rebirth. Now Israel was slowly being reimagined as a key regional player on the U.S. side of the Cold War - something that took final shape around the time of the atom Kippur War.
I meant 1967 of course. Sadat was in 73
Nasser was dead in 1973.....
Tony Badran explains the Obama/Biden vision for Israel, and it's chilling.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/ottoman-american-empire
Interesting read, ty for that. I am more informed.
I am so tired of this silly American Imperialism nonsense and Israelis as colonizers. And, no, Obama is NOT a “dark state” dictator. When he was president, he wanted to stay out of the Middle East and concentrate on Asia. This is good advice all these years later.Obama s
I don't see anywhere in the article where it refers to Obama as a dictator. I agree that under Obama the US tried to pivot to Asia - and I think that is the right policy! Given the threat of China.
The issue is that Obama's plan to exit the ME -- a framework continued under the Biden admin with many of the same key personnel -- was by appeasing/arriving at a detente with Iran that leaves Iranian "assets" in place in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza. This has completely destabilized the region and undermined key allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia.
You are forgetting that there was four disastrous years of the Trump ‘bull in the china shop’ diplomacy in between. The Trump/Kirschner Abrahams Accords with moderate Sunnis completely ignored the existence of millions of Palestinians and the movement of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem enflamed religious sectarianism emboldening Iran and directly leading up to the Oct. 7 attacks.
The accusations that the U.S. has imperial ambitions in the region and conspiring with Iran is total nonsense. His is a Sunni vs. Shia religious war with the Israelis caught in the middle. But for supporting Israel’s right of existence, the U.S. is done with the whole sorry Muslim lot. We don’t need their oil and certainly don’t need their rabid religiosity. As I mentioned previously, the U.S. doesn’t have a dog in this fight other than Israel and their current right wing government is sorely testing that relationship.
President to be Harris has already signaled her desire to widen the distance between the U.S. and Israel refusing to be embroiled in an endless, senseless religious war. Until Islam institutes the reforms needed to join the 21st century, there is no realistic hope for any change.
The Abraham Accords were unequivocally good. Peace is peace. I fail to see how the Accords or the US embassy move had any causal impact on Oct. 7. A far more plausible explanation is (1) the Biden admin lifted sanctions on Iran and released tens of billions in sanctions waivers, emboldening Iran, (2) Iran acted to undermine the pending Saudi-Israel normalization (those dreaded Abraham Accords), and (3) Sinwar took advantage of internal Israeli division over the supreme court reforms.
The Obama vision for the Middle East - continued by Biden - is a Cold War scenario with a "balance of powers" between Iran on one side and Israel/Saudi on the other. It's no conspiracy...it's just a fundamentally flawed and dangerous worldview.
Why did Biden release $10B to Iran *after* Oct 7? Why did Biden remove the Houthis from the US terrorist list from 2020-2024? Why is the US paying the salaries of the Lebanese Armed Forces? Why does Biden keep putting red lines ("Don't") to Israel in public, erasing Israel ability to deter Iran and Hezbollah?
I agree that the big picture is a Sunni/Shia war. But reality is that the US has its fingers in a lot of pies on all sides of this conflict.
Yeah, "peace is peace" certainly worked out well in Afghanistan. "Peace" at the expense of rubbing Iran, Palestinian, and Lebanon's noses in it is a false peace and I would say is the trigger for the Oct. 7 attacks. The Saudi-Israel normalization was part of the Abrahams Accords process and is driving a wedge between the Sunnis and Shia driving Iran toward Russia and China's support.
Yes, we all are in a Cold War scenario attempting to shore up a stable balance of powers in the region. The alternative is a "hot war" of ethnic cleansing and genocide which Gaza is a preview. The U.S. provides Israel defensive military support but we have no stomach for involvement in offensive strikes unleashing ancient animosities and holy wars. The Saudis also don't have a military alliance with Israel so we're basically looking at Israel vs. the Muslim World. What could possibly go wrong?
As for your comments about lifting the sanctions on Iran, this was part of the UN JCPOA agreement that the U.S. abandoned under Trump. "No direct connection between sanctions relief and Iran's recent attack on Israel has been shown to date. Nevertheless, it is true that President Biden has repeatedly ordered the suspension of Iran sanctions. Here are a few examples:
In February 2022, Biden attempted to enable indirect US-Iranian negotiations aimed at reviving the 2015 JCPOA by issuing "sanctions waivers" for Russian, Chinese and European companies.
In July 2023, after a meeting with his Iraqi counterpart, Fuad Hussein, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the US would unblock Iranian assets in Iraq, allowing Baghdad to repay a portion of the billions it owed Tehran for natural gas supplies.
In August 2023, President Biden allowed Tehran access to some $6 billion (€5.58 billion) in oil assets frozen in South Korea in exchange for the release of five US hostages held in Iran.
This March, the US president allowed Iran access to another $10 billion in frozen assets. White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby justified the step in an April 15 press conference as follows: "And as for this — this unfreezing, that — none of that fund — none of those funds — funds set up in an account, by the way, by the previous administration — goes directly to the Supreme Leader of the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]. It can only be used for humanitarian purposes. And we're watching that account very, very closely to make sure that that's what happens." https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-joe-biden-weakening-iran-sanctions/a-68992276
Yes, the U.S. through the UN has set up a fund to keep the Lebanese military and police forces functioning as the country's economy craters. Hezbollah is a paramilitary group separate from the Lebanese government forces. If the official military fails, it feeds the radical militant forces. Qatar is also providing funds in an attempt to avert chaos and violence. If this is the Cold War you disdain, the alternative is much, much worse. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/01/us-provide-72-million-salaries-lebanons-cash-strapped-army-police?token=eyJlbWFpbCI6ImpoYXJkbWFuMDAxQGdtYWlsLmNvbSIsIm5pZCI6IjU0ODUyIn0%3D&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Ungrouped%20transactional%20email&utm_content=Ungrouped%20transactional%20email+ID_607a6278-55c2-11ef-859d-cb0eaaea8564&utm_source=campmgr&utm_term=Access%20Article
One thing I think you have backwards; the media did not change it's view it was instructed to change it's view by Barack Obama. He is running the country. He decided to oust Biden. He decided to pick Walz and he still decides Middle East policy for the Dems.
All true.
Obama is on X today directing the Harris campaign.
Is it odd that we never see Bush or Clinton tweet about this stuff and only Obama ?
Tells me that Obama is deeply engaged and Bush / Clinton are doing what former Presidents should be doing: staying out of the din of battle.
It is inconceivable that Israel would premise its own security policy upon the U.S. whose track record as an ally is mixed, and whose reliability is subject to the fickle internal political winds blowing at any given moment.
Great essay !
The Biden Administration change of policy over the past ten months is very well documented here and coincides with the changing political winds in the US.
If Trump is elected, and inaugurated, and Israel can hold out until then, they will get all the help they need.
They say, "All politics are local." In Israel that translates into Netanyahu and Co still being in power ten months after the horrendous policy and security failures that enabled Oct 7, despite how utterly unfortunate that appears to outside observers. For the US in a fateful election year that translates into: 1) get the hostages back; 2) destroy Hamas's military capacity; 3) minimize civilian casualties; 4) do all of the above in a reasonable amount of time. The US has Israel's back, but it's not a blank check.
Best to expect nothing, and be pleasantly surprised if it becomes something. This administration abandoned billions of dollars of weapons to the Taliban. It would be irrational to expect them to behave rationally. Again, best to expect nothing and prepare accordingly.
So, the scenario is that the U.S. and Israel (both with dysfunctional governments) are to single handedly fight an all out Middle East war against Iran backed by Russia and China? What could possibly go wrong with this plan?
“Still, never in such a short period and under such pressing circumstances has American policy changed so fundamentally and radically. And never has an Israeli government been less equipped to adapt to those changes successfully.”
The hard facts as you hinted is the governments of both the U.S. and Israel are not focused on any coherent plan or end goal here. If Israel doesn’t have any plans for the “day after” in Gaza, what are the pans to occupy Iran and possibly Iraq after preemptively attacking? As Gen. Colin Powell warned us before the botched Iraq invasion: “If you break it, you bought it.” Is the assumption the U.S. taxpayer is going to pick up the tab? If so then some hesitation and discussion might be prudent. What’s the rush? Modern Israel has only been in existence for a few decades while the Sunni-Arab vs. Shiite Aryans (which this is what this is really about) has festered for 1500 years. Do we really want to release this ancient animosity in a Middle East tinderbox without a clear mission or a viable exit plan?
The U.S. dragged NATO allies into Iraq and Afghanistan and our reputation as a fickle ally is already set. Backing dysfunctional Israel in its quixotic cause is not likely to be popular and more likely to do more harm to America’s reputation than enhance it. The blunt truth is that as soon as the gas pump prices increase, the public’s support will wane.
As Biden wisely said: “Don’t!” That goes for everyone involved, U.S. included.
Michael: what purpose do you see having Gen. Erik Kurilla in the Kirya? Do you believe he has the time to waste?
Biden subsequently bent the knee to progressives. Strong Israel support is a Trump voter, so let’s reassess. Two faced democrats.
The United States has advisors to President Biden, who are pro Iranian. These advisors have the ear of the president, especially. Maher Bitar.