Will we continue to let the tail wag the dog?
By Herbert Rothschild
Last week, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, a special envoy of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told Newsweek that a large-scale confrontation with Iran was “inevitable” and called on President Joe Biden to take direct action against the Islamic Republic sooner than later. Actually, the only thing that’s inevitable is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued effort to persuade the Biden administration to attack Iran.
He’s been at it for years, but now that his only chance to remain in office and avoid prosecution for corruption is to prolong and expand his war in the Middle East, he’s rather desperate to bring about a U.S.-Iran war. Twice since Hamas broke through the prison fence around Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, and murdered and captured Israelis, Netanyahu has provoked Iran into striking back at him, counting on the U.S. to feel obligated to defend him and, especially, to make war on an enemy too powerful for Israel to take on by itself.
His first provocation was on April 1, when an Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus killed seven officers from its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Biden administration didn’t condemn Israel’s aggression but rather Iran’s retaliation, which it helped Israel render fairly harmless.
The second provocation was on July 31, when an Israeli bomb killed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief, while he was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezehkian. Our government didn’t condemn that action either. Instead, according to a report from Agence France Presse that was carried in Barron’s, an unnamed U.S. official warned last Friday that Iran would face “cataclysmic” consequences if it retaliated. We have quickly ramped up our military forces in the region to help Israel defend against the very attack it intentionally provoked.
Biden did manage to say that the killing of Haniyeh had “not helped” the prospects of reaching a deal between Israel and Hamas. Hey, Joe, did it cross your mind that scuttling the talks was precisely why Netanyahu ordered the strike? That, and getting the U.S. into a war with Iran. If these motives are obvious to me, they must be obvious to you and your foreign policy team.
Surely they are. We aren’t led by stupid people. We may, however, be led by foolish people, people who will let Israel lead us into another and even more disastrous Middle East war. Under Donald Trump’s presidency the U.S. military developed a CONPLAN (Contingency Plan) for war with Iran code-named Support Sentry. Under Biden, the U.S. has been conducting joint military exercises with Israel, at least one of which was specifically designed as an attack on Iran.
In 2021, the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet conducted several exercises with Israeli naval forces, and for the first time participated in a joint naval patrol of the Persian Gulf. Next, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, in January 2023 the U.S. and Israel conducted their largest joint military exercise in history, called Juniper Oak. Six thousand four hundred American troops and 1,500 Israeli troops participated in the training exercise, which involved more than 140 aircraft, an aircraft carrier and the firing of more than 180,000 pounds of live munitions.
Most tellingly, Juniper Oak involved exercises in which American aircraft provided midair refueling services to Israeli fighter aircraft — a key capability Israel lacks and without which its aircraft cannot reach Iranian targets — and drills involving American B-52 bombers dropping bunker-buster bombs on targets designed to resemble Iranian nuclear sites.
Trita Parsi, the former president of the National Iranian American Council and now president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said at that time in a phone interview with the Intercept, “Any one of these steps may feel small, but in the aggregate it’s a serious escalation.” Their intention, he said, was “to signal to Iran that even if Washington doesn’t have an appetite for war, we’re willing to support Israel, which does.”
On Aug. 1, the day after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Parsi published a short piece in Time.com about the prospect of war with Iran. He confirmed my assertion that Netanyahu launched the strike to derail any cease-fire in Gaza and to drag us into such a war. He added that it was also meant to foreclose any U.S. diplomatic initiatives with Iran’s new and more moderate government. Parsi concluded, “Today the U.S. can still stop the region from descending into chaos, but only if it is willing to put clear and public red lines in front of Netanyahu.”
I wish I were confident that Biden has or will.
Hassan-Nahoum also told Newsweek that Arab states “are increasingly on board with a plan to take down the Islamic Republic, even if Israel’s ally, the U.S., was not. ‘I don’t think America has understood that the ultimate goal here has to be regime change in Iran,’ Hassan-Nahoum said.”
Ah, so we’re supposed to get with the program or feel left out. As if Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are foolish enough to start a war with Iran absent U.S. forces. In the early 1980s Iran successfully repelled an invasion by Iraq, which borders Iran and is far larger than the countries Hassan-Nahoum claimed are ready to go.
As for regime change as a goal, the Shia population of Iran is certainly not going to let Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia dictate its choice of government. And given our history of thwarting democracy on behalf of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi’s tyranny prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and our military support of Saddam Hussein’s invasion shortly after it, the U.S. is the very last country Iranians would regard as their liberator.
Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected].
