How Biden's Israel policy led us to the brink of war with Iran
On Tuesday, Iran fired about 180 missiles at Israel in response to the latter’s recent assassinations of leaders of the Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah and Hamas.
There are conflicting reports about how many of the missiles struck their targets and whether there were any deaths. But Israel is now considering a counterattack that could propel it into an all-out war with Iran, with the US in tow.
For years, Iran has been trying to avoid such a war. That’s why it signed the 2015 nuclear deal with the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and the EU.
Former US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew his country from the deal in 2018, and despite President Joe Biden’s much-touted differences with Trump, he failed to restore American compliance.
Instead, he tried to use Trump’s violation of the treaty as leverage to demand further concessions from Iran. This served only to aggravate the schism between the US and Iran, which have had no diplomatic relations since 1980.
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Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees his long-awaited chance to draw the US into a war with Iran. By killing Iranian military leaders and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil, as well as attacking Iran’s allies in Lebanon and Yemen, Netanyahu provoked a military response from Iran that has given him an excuse to widen the conflict even further.
Tragically, there are warmongering US officials who would welcome a war on Iran - and many more who would blindly go along with it.
Iranian restraint
Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, campaigned on a platform of reconciling with the West. When he came to New York to speak at the UN General Assembly last week, he was accompanied by three members of the negotiating team that worked on Iran’s nuclear deal: former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi.
Pezeshkian’s message was conciliatory. With Zarif and Araghchi at his side, he spoke at a news conference of peace and of reviving the dormant nuclear agreement: “We said 100 times we are willing to live up to our agreements. We do hope we can sit at the table and hold discussions.”
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On the crisis in the Middle East, Pezeshkian said that Iran wanted peace and had exercised restraint in the face of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its assassinations of resistance leaders and Iranian officials, and its war on its neighbours.
“Let’s create a situation where we can co-exist,” he said. “Let’s try to resolve tensions through dialogue … We are willing to put all of our weapons aside so long as Israel will do the same.” He added that Iran is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, while Israel is not, and that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is a serious threat to Iran.
The US response to Iran's restraint throughout this crisis has been to keep sending destructive weapons to Israel, with which it has devastated Gaza
Pezeshkian also reiterated Iran’s desire for peace in his speech at the UN General Assembly.
“I am the president of a country that has endured threats, war, occupation, and sanctions throughout its modern history,” he said. “Others have neither come to our assistance nor respected our declared neutrality. Global powers have even sided with aggressors. We have learned that we can only rely on our own people and our own indigenous capabilities.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to safeguard its own security, not to create insecurity for others. We want peace for all and seek no war or quarrel with anyone.”
The US response to Iran’s restraint throughout this crisis has been to keep sending destructive weapons to Israel, with which it has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of people, bombed neighbouring countries, and beefed up the forces it would need to attack Iran.
That includes a new order for 50 F-15EX long-range bombers, with 750-gallon fuel tanks for the long journey to Iran. That arms deal still has to pass the Senate, where Senator Bernie Sanders is leading the opposition.
Negotiations hijacked
On the diplomatic front, the US has vetoed successive ceasefire resolutions at the UN Security Council and hijacked negotiations led by Qatar and Egypt, providing diplomatic cover for Israel’s unrestricted genocide.
Military leaders in the US and Israel appear to be arguing against war on Iran, as they have in the past. Even former President George W Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney baulked at launching another catastrophic war based on lies against Iran, as the CIA publicly admitted in its 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.
When Trump threatened to attack Iran, politician Tulsi Gabbard warned that a US war on Iran would be so catastrophic that it would make the war on Iraq look like the “cakewalk” the neocons had promised it would be.
But neither US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin nor Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant can control their countries’ war policies, which are in the hands of leaders with political agendas. Netanyahu has spent many years trying to draw the US into a war with Iran, and has kept escalating the Gaza crisis for a year, at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent lives, with that goal clearly in mind.
Biden has been out of his depth throughout this crisis, relying on political instincts from an era when acting tough and blindly supporting Israel were politically safe positions for American politicians. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rose to power through the National Security Council and as a Senate staffer, not as a diplomat, riding Biden’s coattails into a senior position where he is as out of his depth as his boss.
Meanwhile, pro-Iran armed groups in Iraq have warned that, if the US joins in strikes on Iran, they will target American bases in Iraq and the region.
So we are careening towards a catastrophic war with Iran, with no US diplomatic leadership, and only Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris waiting in the wings. As analyst Trita Parsi wrote in Responsible Statecraft: “If U.S. service members find themselves in the line of fire in an expanding Iran-Israel conflict, it will be a direct result of this administration’s failure to use U.S. leverage to pursue America’s most core security interest here - avoiding war.”
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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