The barrage of Iranian attacks on Israel is a stark reminder of how the United States has been unable to ease tensions in the Middle East and contain the ongoing conflict in Gaza, a national security expert and in foreign policy.
Iran launched missiles and drones against Israel on Saturday in what Iranian officials described as retaliation for the airstrike on the country’s consulate in Syria almost two weeks ago. The airstrike killed two Iranian generals and five officers, the Associated Press reported.
The United States expected Iran to retaliate, but the question was only when and how. President Joe Biden told reporters Friday that he expects Iran to attack Israel “sooner rather than later.”
The president also reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel and delivered a simple, brief message to Iran: “Don’t do it.”
Iran’s brazen rejection of Biden’s warning may be the result of a series of inconsistent strategic moves of the United States in its handling of the war between Israel and Gaza, Sean McFate, a national security and foreign policy expert at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University, told Business Insider.
“No strategic skills”
McFate told BI that Iran’s retaliation was a way of showing the international stage that the country had a backbone after the Israeli airstrike in Damascus. But, more broadly, Saturday’s attack shows how effective Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7 was in stoking chaos in the Middle East, McFate said.
Hamas “launched this operation as a way to disrupt thawing relations between Israel and the Gulf states,” McFate said, referring to the way diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab countries were thawing before the war. Biden also said Hamas was trying to disrupt his administration’s efforts to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as other countries in the region, the Washington Post reported.
With the war in Gaza, the United States has been stuck in the battle and has so far sent mixed messages to the world through its military support for Israel and its simultaneous humanitarian aid to Gaza, leaving the Gulf countries as l Iran will feel more defensive, the expert said. .
“The fact that the Biden administration is both arming Israel and sending aid to Gaza shows the world that the Biden team has no strategic competence,” McFate said. “They’ve already lost control.”
McFate cited the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine as another example of one of the Biden administration’s strategic failures.
Throughout the 2024 election cycle, Biden has said the United States must maintain its support for Ukraine against Russian aggression. But the president’s support for Israel runs counter to why he said the United States should support Ukraine.
“The administration wants to be the firefighters in a raging house fire,” McFate said. “But I think to achieve that, they need to increase their influence over the Israeli government by conditioning additional military support. Israel has basically said, ‘Put down your ammunition. Don’t answer the door. Go,’ like your Uber driver. I think the administration has been a little too timid in its dealings with Israel.”
In recent weeks, U.S. support for Israel has shown signs of faltering as Biden called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the White House.
In a statement Saturday after the Iranian strikes, Biden condemned the attacks and said he spoke on the phone with Netanyahu to tell him that the United States remained steadfast in its support for Israel.
“I just spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu to reaffirm America’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security,” Biden said. “I told him that Israel had demonstrated a remarkable ability to defend itself and defeat even unprecedented attacks – sending a clear message to its enemies that they could not effectively threaten Israel’s security.”
However, in the same call, Biden told the prime minister that the United States would oppose a counterattack on Iran, a senior White House official told CNN.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
businessinsider
