Unwavering military and political support for Israel means US is embroiled in war – even if it doesn’t want to be
By Paul Rogers. Published 10-11-2024 by openDemocracy
One year into the devastating war in Gaza, and the conflict has spread far beyond Gaza itself, including not only Iran, Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East region – but also, arguably the US, given its unwavering support – both verbally and materially – for Israel and its actions.
While much of Gaza lies in ruins with most houses, universities and hospitals destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced multiple times and an official death toll of 42,000 – there is now scarcely a whisper about even a pause in the fighting, yet alone a ceasefire.
Indeed, in the past month, this has largely been overshadowed by a rapid increase in Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) attacks into southern Lebanon as far north as Beirut and the Beqaa Valley. The aim has been to make Hezbollah halt its rocket attacks into northern Israel that have forced the evacuation of some 60,000 Israelis.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s statements are uncompromising, and he has warned the Lebanese: “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza”. The IDF has moved elements of four army divisions totalling 15,000 troops into southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu can do this partly because of a surge in public support within Israel with the extension of the war into Lebanon, with this adding to his determination to carry on with the war aided further by the support he is getting from the extreme religious nationalists and messianic Zionists within his coalition.
But will Israel be able to successfully defeat Hezbollah? Following the shock Hamas assault into southern Israel a year ago, the Netanyahu government threatened a massive military response to destroy Hamas, calling them “human animals”. At the time, I warned that this was a fundamental mistake. Such a reaction had been the US-led response to 9/11, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, but it was not an argument that the Israelis could take and the war started almost immediately.
While Hamas may be a paramilitary movement, it also represents an idea and one result of this attempted destruction has been to reinforce resistance to Israel. Although it may have lost many of its leaders and thousands of its fighters over the past year, it does persist as an active paramilitary force and the IDF have once again had to put ground troops back into areas supposedly ‘cleared’ of Hamas. The same now could be said of Hezbollah in attempting to rid the region of them.
Ultimately though much of what happens next will depend on US attitudes to the war. While it is certainly true that Biden could pull the plug on the war by banning all arms sales, that is even less likely than a month ago, partly because of electoral uncertainty in the US, and the fear that any change in the US position may affect the result and let Trump in.
But perhaps most importantly, the US has become so heavily embroiled in this war on a day-to-day basis that it would be hard to put a sudden stop to it, with a record $17 billion worth of military support pumped into Israel in the past year alone.
Meanwhile, US military units are directly engaged in the fighting, with US Navy guided missile destroyers intercepting missiles aimed at Israel, with two warships currently in the Eastern Mediterranean engaged in this.
And direct US support extends beyond Israel itself. The US Navy has been engaged for months in intercepting anti-ship missiles launched by Houthi forces in Yemen and just five days ago extended that to the direct bombing of targets in the Yemeni capital city of Sanaa, the main port of Hodeidah and targets elsewhere in the provinces of Dhamar and Bayda.
Beyond that, US military units continue to be active against paramilitaries in Syria and Iraq, maintain a permanent military presence in Israel running a long-range X-band radar system in the Negev and have over 30,000 military personnel across the region.
Perhaps more significant is the strong desire among hawkish elements in the US military and right-wing political circles to finally ‘do something’ about Iran. That is a view certainly shared in Israel, the belief being that now is the time to do huge damage to the Iranian regime and not just to the military. Crippling the Iranian economy that is already facing damaging sanctions would alter the balance of power across the Middle East in the direction of the US and its allies.
But it goes without saying that this confrontation with Iran is dangerous and far more likely to lead to further conflict. The Biden Administration may well be deeply reluctant to be involved at that level, but it’s not going to be easy to back out now, having accepted every stage of escalation over the past twelve months.
And then there’s Trump, of course, even more likely to welcome an escalation with Iran – making the outcome of next month’s US election even more deadly.
This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.