Biden’s Strategy of Containment Is Failing

Yesterday, Iran launched a massive missile attack against Israel, which Tehran billed as a response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel now appears to be mulling a retaliation that could push the sides into all-out war.

When Israel and Iran narrowly avoided a full-blown conflict in April, I warned that we shouldn’t let President Joe Biden’s help in averting escalation overshadow his broader, strategic failure to prevent such a dangerous moment from ever arising. Had the United States used its considerable leverage with Israel to end its war in Gaza, the region would not have found itself on the edge of a disastrous war in April; six months later, the Middle East is back at the brink of disaster.

Iran has made it clear that it does not want a regional conflict; Tehran doesn’t seem to believe it can afford such a war. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly thinks it’s in his interest to ramp up conflict right now, as Washington stands frozen — a month out from an election and with a lame duck president who seems incapable of telling Israel “no,” no matter the costs for American security.

One must hope that somehow, further escalation is avoided. But the risk of just such an outcome is enormous, and if the United States finds itself in a new forever war in the Middle East, the buck will stop with Biden. This White House has repeatedly chosen to keep the United States on the precipice of war, rather than restrain Israel’s military as its expanding wars killed more and more civilians in Gaza and now Lebanon. The Biden administration has helped bring about this extraordinarily dangerous moment by providing Israel with the weapons, political protection, diplomatic support and money it requires to pursue the exact escalation that the Biden administration professes it does not want.

Biden’s strategy has been to put enormous effort into deterring Iran and its partners from retaliating against Israel, while doing virtually nothing to discourage Israel from escalating in the first place. This lopsided approach has in fact been a recipe for escalation, repeatedly proving to Netanyahu that Washington has no intention of bringing pressure to bear on Israel, no matter its actions.

If Biden enables further escalation from Israel, this could very well lead to a direct U.S.-Iran military confrontation that would be profoundly destabilizing in the region. The consequences for U.S. national security of such a war are hard to quantify — but it’s easy to imagine consequences on par with the disastrous military adventurism that George W. Bush’s administration pursued in the Middle East.

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.

Joe Biden came into office promising to end the era of forever wars and the quixotic, costly efforts to transform the Middle East. Now, Biden appears to have fallen into the trap of thinking that U.S. military force will transform the region for good. It is stunning that Washington appears not to have learned this lesson yet.