Is Israel Dragging Biden Into War With Iran, How Close Are We?

Despite the rhetoric coming from Washington, which suggests its opposition to a direct confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies throughout the region, the actions taken by the Biden administration tell another story. Although it does not appear that the US seeks a direct confrontation with Iran, the role it is playing in support of Israel’s war on Gaza suggests that a regional conflict is closer now than ever.

Although the US government claims it seeks to avert a regional war, throughout West Asia, as an expansion of the ongoing Gaza-Israel war, its actions reflect the very opposite approach. The US has refused to back down from its stance of “unconditional support” for Israel, even as their ally in Tel Aviv is perpetrating what the government of South Africa officially argues is a Genocide against the people of Gaza.

Long staining the US’ reputation across the Arab and Muslim World has been its unconditional support for the Israeli regime and its continual crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people. Although the nations in the Levant — Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan — began their quests for national independence and sovereignty with the intention of friendly relations with the United States government, viewing it as a much more viable option than the European colonial powers, France and Britain, this image has long dissipated into distant memory. When the Syrian Parliament of 1920 was first established, within which representatives from the four nations of the Levant — then known as Greater Syria — sought to establish a Democratic Syrian State, the effort was in part supported from within the US, yet was ultimately destroyed by France and Britain.

The US could have entered the region as neutral actor, seeking a peaceful outcome to all, yet inflicted a policy of aggression, support of a settler colonial entity [Israel], and pursuit of dominance over the indigenous populations of the region. It chose to back dictatorships, set up despots to rule over client states, and to violently remove any regional actor that sought the path of independence. Whether it be the hostile approach to Egypt’s Nasser, all the way through to the illegal invasion of Iraq, or NATO’s dismantlement of the Libyan State and destruction of Syria through a horrendous proxy war, the US government has chosen the path of violence throughout West Asia.

In 2003, the US military possessed the capabilities to simply dismantle an entire nation, as was carried out in Iraq, and to install puppet regimes, as it did in Afghanistan. Today, in 2024, the US is no longer capable of conducting its business in this manner. Although it is understood by defense officials that the pursuit of war, throughout what we call the Middle East, cannot be conducted as it was during the early-2000’s, or even the early twenty-teens, the same arrogance emanates from the White House.

The US’ puppet regime in Afghanistan has fallen, its dirty war on Syria has failed, its regime change operation in Iraq has birthed a new series of hostile militias that are hell bent on cleansing their country of Western influence, and the nation of Yemen, which has been starved and bombed to pieces since 2015, has emerged as a military power to be reckoned with. This, as Lebanese Hezbollah is a force now capable of inflicting a major military defeat on the Israeli army and there are serious fears of it capturing the Israeli-held Galilee in any full-scale war. Not only this, but the Palestinian armed groups based in the Gaza Strip have held out for 3 months against the Israeli military’s full-force, even with US support, preventing the Israelis from achieving a single objective in their offensive.

The people of the region are no longer afraid of the United States and Israel. The idea of deterrence, and that Arabs, Iranians, Afghans, Africans, and Muslims in general can be bombed into complicity, has disappeared. Aspiration for freedom has prospered, which has become a tangible future that West Asia can almost touch. With every set back and each massacre, the next generation only came through more energized and ready to fulfill their goals for liberation, with each iteration of the struggle emerging more radical, and thanks to the innovative minds in Iran, with better military ingenuity.

All of the above has to be noted, in order to understand the rough arch of US policy over the past 100 years and the region’s understanding of the American government. Washington is no longer the top dog in the region and despite this being a tough pill to swallow, it is the inescapable reality on the ground.

An Imminent Escalation Between The US and Iran?

With Israel’s first series of assassinations, stretching through Lebanon and Syria, targeting high-profiled Lebanese, Iranian, and Palestinian officials, it became clear that the war was being transferred from the Gazan front, to outside of occupied Palestine altogether. Israel launched strikes on Damascus, Syria, assassinating a senior advisor in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Seyyed Razi Mousavi, for which Iran launched retaliatory strikes on a Mossad headquarters and seven other sensitive locations in Northern Iraq. Tehran also launched ballistic missiles on Daesh and al-Qaeda targets, in tandem with its strikes on Israeli-linked targets in Iraq, at a distance of roughly 1250 kilometers; the distance between Iran and Tel Aviv.

Israel also carried out an extrajudicial killing of Hamas deputy politburo leader, Saleh al-Arouri, in an airstrike which had struck a building in the Southern suburb of Beirut called Dahiyeh. This escalation, which killed a total of 7 people, was the first time that Israeli fighter jets had struck the Lebanese Capital since 2006 and for which the response has always been understood to equal a strike on Tel Aviv. The Israeli regime then decided, shortly afterwards, to assassinate Wissam al-Taweel, a senior Hezbollah field-commander, in Southern Lebanon.

Although a heavy response was anticipated, Hezbollah chose to continue on the path of “conflict management” by striking sensitive Israeli military targets in the Mount Meron and Safad areas, refraining from launching strikes on cities such as Haifa or Tel Aviv. The reason for such a response, which could be interpreted as the group taking the weakest retaliatory option on the table, is very clearly in line with the group’s policy of preventing a war between Israel and Lebanon. If a war with Lebanon begins, then the focus on a political and humanitarian solution to the crisis in Gaza will be lost and the international fixation will shift from the Palestinian cause and be transferred over to the Lebanese issue instead. Thus, understanding this, it is reasonable that Hezbollah remain in a supporting role only, without entering the war as an equal player to Hamas and the other Palestinian armed factions. It is also apparent that if Hezbollah does go to all out war, the conflict will transform into a regional confrontation and such an explosion of violence into several arenas could result in unprecedented death tolls.

With a tactical and measured response, Hezbollah and Iran retaliated to Israel’s reckless aggression, which Israel didn’t officially announce due to the implications, under international law, these assassinations could possibly have. The US also pretended to see no evil in this case, denying any knowledge of what the Israeli Air Force had carried out. It is clear that Tel Aviv received a green-light from the US Biden administration — whether directly or through the weak stances of the American government on its escalatory assassination campaign — choosing to escalate once again. Late last week the Israeli Air Force carried out airstrikes on the Mezzeh neighborhood, in central Damascus, killing five members of the Iranian IRGC, in addition to civilians and Syrian soldiers, in yet another unprovoked attack. Iran has stated that it reserves the right to respond.

It is not only Israel that is escalating tensions, however, as the US has also been committing dangerous escalatory actions throughout the region. Beginning with the announcement of ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian‘ in the Red Sea area and culminating in strikes against Yemeni naval forces, killing 10, followed by at least 6 separate bombardments of targets throughout Yemen. The US also launched airstrikes in Iraq’s capital city, Baghdad, assassinating a prominent commander of the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU), which prompted calls from Iraq’s Prime Minister, Mohammed al-Sudani, to cut all relations with US forces and order them to leave the country.

We have now reached the point where Yemen’s Ansarallah is vowing to respond to the US-UK bombings of their country, which constituted acts of war and a violation of the nation’s sovereignty, while the Iraqi Resistance Forces are now using ballistic missiles against American personnel in Iraq. Over 146 attacks have been launched by Iraqi groups, in support of the Palestinian people, since the beginning of the Gaza-Israel war on October 7, with the US launching its own strikes against Iraqi forces in Syria and Iraq. However, the recent Iraqi attack on Ain al-Assad base — the largest military base hosting US forces in Iraq — with ballistic missiles, was a qualitative leap in the kinds of munitions that the groups are willing to use.

Right now, if the US government does not choose to pressure their rabid Israeli attack dogs from indiscriminately assaulting everyone in sight, they will be faced with a regional paroxysm. The coming explosion of violence will blow up in the US’ face and their fate in West Asia will be sealed. Either the US reigns in the Israelis and forces them to pursue diplomacy, or, this escalates into a situation that cannot be concealed. The regional forces, aligned with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza are not going to back down, and attacking them will only make their strikes sting more. The US cannot win a regional war, nor can Israel. The result is obvious, Israel and every US asset in the region will be eliminated in such a war, providing the Israeli-US aggressors with one final option, nuclear warfare. The Israelis and Americans will not benefit from what they are starting and an escalation is only designed to work in favor of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career, while the useless diplomats who run the US are completely bought and paid for — evidently not possessing enough collective brain power to understand the gravity of what they are facing.

A war with Iran seemed like a distant prospect around 4 months ago, today it is imminent. Unless the Israeli regime is forced to end its genocidal attack on Gaza, expect the collapse of the oil market, major issues with international trade, and thousands of US soldiers returning home in caskets.