For the past year, as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, eviscerated one US-imposed “red line” after another in Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, Joe Biden and his feckless administration insisted that they did not want the conflict to spread to neighboring Lebanon and beyond. But over the past month, Netanyahu and his government launched an all-out war against Lebanon, with intensive airstrikes throughout the country and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. More than 1 million people have been displaced, as Israel expands its assault on what it claims are Hezbollah “strongholds”.
And how has Biden responded to Netanyahu’s latest obstinacy and constant humiliation of the US administration? Biden keeps sending more US weapons and military support to Israel. On Sunday, the Pentagon announced that it was deploying one of its most advanced missile defense systems to Israel, along with about 100 American troops to operate it. This will be the first time that Washington has openly deployed US forces to Israel since Netanyahu’s government launched its war on Gaza after last October’s attack by Hamas militants.
Biden is sending US forces into a foreign conflict three weeks before a US presidential election, where his vice-president and Democratic successor, Kamala Harris, is facing the former president Donald Trump, who has made gains with swing state voters by pledging to scale back US military involvement overseas. By deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, and its crew to Israel, Biden is embroiling the US more deeply in a regional conflict that Netanyahu has largely instigated over the past year. The system is designed to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, and it’s intended to help Israel defend against potential Iranian missile attacks.
It’s the latest example of Biden failing to impose any consequences on Netanyahu as he expands the Gaza war into a regional one – with an invasion of Lebanon and a new confrontation with Iran. On 1 October, Iran launched a barrage of more than 180 ballistic missiles against Israel, with Tehran saying it was retaliating for a series of devastating Israeli attacks on Hezbollah, the linchpin of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” and the most powerful militia and political party in Lebanon. Israel killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike on southern Beirut on 27 September.
Israel vowed to retaliate for the recent Iranian missile strike, risking a wider regional war that could draw the US into a direct conflict with Iran and its network of allied militias in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The Biden administration has tried to impose new “red lines” on Netanyahu and his rightwing government, urging Israel not to attack Iran’s oil production or nuclear enrichment sites, which could trigger a harsh Iranian response and spiral into a larger confrontation. Israeli officials reportedly told the US that they would avoid targeting Iran’s oil, infrastructure and nuclear sites.
But over the past year, Netanyahu has broken multiple promises to Biden to restrain Israeli attacks on Gaza, and more recently in Lebanon. The Israeli premier repeatedly sabotaged negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas in Gaza, and backed out of an agreement last month with the US and France for a temporary ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Pentagon’s decision to deploy its THAAD missile defense system, along with US troops, in Israel could embolden Netanyahu to yet again undermine the Biden administration with an extensive Israeli attack on Iran. Despite insisting he doesn’t want a wider war, Biden keeps rewarding Netanyahu for broadening the conflict and assuring him that the US will bail out Israel no matter what it does.
The costs of US military support for Israel since last October are staggering – and have been largely shielded from public scrutiny as the Biden administration used various methods to speed up arms shipments and avoid review by members of Congress. Washington has sent Israel nearly $18bn in weapons and other assistance over the past year, according to a report compiled by Brown University’s “Costs of War” project. On top of direct aid to Israel, the US has incurred $4.8bn in additional military spending in the Middle East due to the conflict.
That the Biden administration has spent at least $22.7bn in its efforts to bolster Netanyahu’s government might surprise many US taxpayers who are footing the bill at a time when Washington is struggling to tame inflation – and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) lacks enough funding to make it through the rest of this year’s hurricane season. By far, Washington is the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, providing at least $3.8bn in military aid per year. Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of American foreign aid in the world, having received about $310bn (adjusted for inflation) since the Jewish state was founded in 1948.
After last year’s Hamas attack, Biden declared his absolute support for Israel and its leaders. But it quickly became apparent that Biden’s “bear hug” strategy – where the US president hoped to influence Netanyahu behind the scenes – would fail spectacularly, as the Israeli leader undermined and humiliated Biden at every opportunity. For most of that time, Biden avoided the most direct path to averting a wider conflict: using US weapons transfers to pressure Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly 90% of the population.
But Biden consistently refused to use the leverage he had over Netanyahu – and when you don’t use leverage, you lose it. Biden allowed Netanyahu to checkmate him ahead of a US presidential election, and to seize on unconditional US support to launch a devastating war against Lebanon in an effort to destroy Hezbollah. Israel is using the same playbook it has used in Gaza to wreak havoc on Lebanon, a country smaller than Connecticut: large-scale aerial bombardment and displacement of civilians, followed by a ground invasion.
A day after last October’s attack by Hamas, Hezbollah began firing rockets and drones into northern Israel, in what the group’s leaders described as an effort to lend support for Palestinians and divert Israeli military resources from Gaza. Israel retaliated with heavy airstrikes and artillery shelling across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, largely Shia Muslim areas where Hezbollah draws its base of support. While the near daily exchange of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border ebbed and flowed, Hezbollah tried to calibrate its attacks to avoid instigating a wider conflict with a far more powerful and technologically advanced Israeli military.
But Hezbollah’s leaders, including the assassinated Nasrallah, miscalculated the Israeli government’s appetite to take advantage of Biden’s blank check and expand the Gaza war into Lebanon. Last month, Israel set off a series of explosions over two days, detonating thousands of pagers and hand-held radios of Hezbollah members, killing dozens and wounding more than 3,000 people. The indiscriminate attacks, which went off in hospitals, grocery stores and on crowded sidewalks, spread fear and terror throughout Lebanon.
And they marked the opening of Israel’s latest war on Lebanon – supported by a US administration that insists it doesn’t want a regional conflict but continues sending the weapons that make it deeply complicit in Israel’s actions.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University
