Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Fresno City Gets Extension in Herndon 4-Story Apartment Case

23 hours ago

With Major Heat Risk Forecast, This Is a Good Weekend to Stay Indoors in Fresno

1 day ago

Trump Says Intel Has Agreed to Deal for US to Take 10% Equity Stake

1 day ago

Epstein Associate Maxwell Says She Never Saw Trump Behave Inappropriately

1 day ago

Pew: US Immigrant Population Declines for First Time in Nearly 60 Years

1 day ago

Powell, Citing Jobs Risk, Opens Door to Cuts but Doesn’t Commit

1 day ago

FBI Agents Search Ex-Trump Adviser Bolton’s Home, Source Says

1 day ago

Gaza City Officially in Famine, With Hunger Spreading, Says Global Hunger Monitor

1 day ago

Gavin Newsom’s Redistricting Plan Is on Its Way to Voters. What You Need to Know

2 days ago
By Caving to Israel, Biden Opens the Door to War With Iran
GV-Wire-1
By gvwire
Published 2 years ago on
February 25, 2023

Share

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The United States has a long history of actively preventing Israel from starting a war with Iran for obvious reasons. War with Iran will be disastrous for the region, for the United States — and for the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom and dignity. George W. Bush denied giving Israeli leaders the green light to bomb Iran in 2008. Obama went out of his way to stop the Israelis, even telling CNN that he is “absolutely not” giving Israel the green light to attack Iran.

Opinion

Trita Parsi

As all eyes were on Ukraine and Chinese balloons in the sky, the Joe Biden administration seemingly shifted America’s longstanding opposition to Israel starting a disastrous war with Iran. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Sunday that “Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with [in regards to Iran] and we’ve got their back” — a thinly veiled reference to military action.

These comments do not appear to be outliers. After Israel struck a defense compound in Iran on January 29, the Biden administration uncharacteristically hinted to reporters that the Israeli operation was part of a new joint effort by the U.S. and Israel to contain Tehran’s nuclear and military ambitions. When Secretary of State Tony Blinken was asked about it a day later, he offered no criticism and no concern for the destabilizing potential of the strikes, let alone a condemnation. Instead, he offered what amounts to a defense and justification of the Israeli strike: “[It is] very important that we continue to deal with and work against as necessary the various actions that Iran has engaged in throughout the region and beyond that threaten peace and security.”

Risk of Destabilized Middle East

A senior Biden administration official tells me that this does not signify a major shift in policy, but, without a public walk-back, such assurances leave much to be desired. From George W. Bush to Barack Obama to even Donald Trump, the U.S. government has sought to prevent Israel from bombing Iran since Washington risked getting sucked into that war — and the end result would most likely be a severely destabilized Middle East and an Iran with a nuclear weapon.

Bush Jr. refused to sell Israel specialized bunker-busting bombs and denied giving Israeli leaders a green light to bomb Iran in 2008, effectively blocking the Israeli plan. President Obama made his opposition to an Israeli strike public, telling CNN in 2009 that he is “absolutely not” giving Israel a green light to attack Iran. The fear of a surprise Israeli attack was so significant during the Obama years that a senior Pentagon official asked to have the moon cycle included in his daily intelligence brief since a unilateral Israeli attack was deemed more likely to occur during particular moon phases. At one point, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the unusual step of going to the podium in 2012 to condemn Israel’s assassination of an Iranian scientist due to its potentially destabilizing consequences.

And when the Israelis pushed American presidents to take military action, various elements of the U.S. government pushed back — even under Donald Trump. According to Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Trump to strike against Iran after he had lost the 2020 election. Milley resisted, telling Trump at one point that “If you do this, you’re gonna have a fucking war.

A lot has clearly changed in the past years and months. Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement, and, while Biden promised to return to it, the deal is still in limbo. Power in Iran, in turn, shifted back to the conservative hardliners, who fumbled the nuclear talks while increasing the regime’s repression of the Iranian people. This then led to widespread protests and the most significant challenge to the clerical regime in more than a decade.

War With Iran Would be Disastrous

One thing hasn’t changed, however: War with Iran will be disastrous for the region, for the United States — and for the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom and dignity.

Yet, this appears to be the direction in which the Biden team is going — perhaps inadvertently — by caving to Israel’s longstanding position to deal with Iran’s nuclear program militarily rather than diplomatically. (Incidentally, Netanyahu has been caught on tape boasting that it was he who  convinced Trump to quit the Iran nuclear deal.)

This does fit a pattern, however, in which the one area where Biden has most consistently followed Trump’s Middle East policy has been on Israel. Biden has refused to reverse almost all major policy shifts in favor of Israel that Trump put in place – from moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, to recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights (which exposes the blatant double standard in Biden asserting that Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory threatens the “rules-based order”), to embracing and seeking to expand the Abraham Accords, a measure that put the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution by explicitly “moving beyond” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than seeking to resolve it.

Despite this Trump-like deference to Israel — or perhaps precisely because of it — Israel’s Minister of Diaspora affairs did not mince his words slamming the United States when U.S. Ambassador Nides issued a benign criticism of ongoing plans to weaken Israel’s justice system. “Mind your own business,” Amichai Chikli told the U.S. representative via Israeli radio. He later tweeted it as well, just to make sure the message was received by Washington.

Ironically, that is good advice. An America that minds its own business — and by extension prioritizes its own interests — would not only stop undermining its own credibility by condemning Russian illegal annexations while enabling Israeli ones, but it would also block any Israeli attempt to drag America into a disastrous war in the Middle East.

The United States already has its hands full with international crises. Between seeking to defeat Russia in Ukraine and battling China by strangling its high-tech industries, America simply doesn’t have the bandwidth for an Israeli-initiated war with Iran. As Harvard professor and Quincy Institute Distinguished Fellow Stephen Walt told me in an email, “This is lunacy.”

Perhaps Biden should take to heart the true meaning of Minister Chikli’s dismissive advice.

About the Author 

Trita Parsi is an award-winning author and the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign politics, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He is the author of Losing an Enemy – Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy

This article was originally published by Responsible Statecraft

[activecampaign form=19] 

 

RELATED TOPICS:

DON'T MISS

What Are Fresno Real Estate Experts Predicting for 2025 and Beyond?

DON'T MISS

First California EV Mandates Hit Automakers This Year. Most Are Not Even Close

DON'T MISS

Hegseth Authorizes Troops in DC to Carry Weapons

DON'T MISS

Texas, Florida Seek to Join Legal Challenge to Abortion Pill

DON'T MISS

Wrongly Deported Migrant Abrego Released, May Be Detained Again

DON'T MISS

Judge Blocks Trump From Withholding Funds From Los Angeles, Other Sanctuary Cities

DON'T MISS

Lyle Menendez Denied Parole After 35 Years in Prison for Parents’ Shotgun Murders

DON'T MISS

California Cities Lack Unified Response On Homeless Encampments

DON'T MISS

Trump Crime Crackdown Deploys Troops in Washington’s Safest Sites

DON'T MISS

California Voters Still Support High-Speed Rail, Even If It Never Gets Done

DON'T MISS

Turkish First Lady Urges Melania Trump to Speak out on Gaza

DON'T MISS

Fresno Crash Sends Car Into Building After Running Red Light

UP NEXT

My Friend Joseph Castro, Former Fresno State President and CSU Chancellor, Is Receiving Hospice Care

UP NEXT

California’s Finances Face a Perfect Storm. It Could Eventually Lead to Another Tax Hike

UP NEXT

What Trump Is Really Up to With the Military Occupation of DC

UP NEXT

Immigrant Students Shape California’s Future. Don’t Close the Door on Them

UP NEXT

Trump’s Domestic Deployments Are Dangerous. For the Military

UP NEXT

How Do We Bridge America’s New Segregation?

UP NEXT

California Legislature’s Final Weeks Could Decide Delta Water Tunnel’s Fate

UP NEXT

Outside Lands 2025: Where Music, Love, and Community Collide

UP NEXT

California Was a Model for Transparency. Now the Capitol Operates in the Dark

UP NEXT

It’s Not Too Late for Islas and Levine to ‘Get in Good Trouble’

Judge Blocks Trump From Withholding Funds From Los Angeles, Other Sanctuary Cities

7 hours ago

Lyle Menendez Denied Parole After 35 Years in Prison for Parents’ Shotgun Murders

7 hours ago

California Cities Lack Unified Response On Homeless Encampments

7 hours ago

Trump Crime Crackdown Deploys Troops in Washington’s Safest Sites

7 hours ago

California Voters Still Support High-Speed Rail, Even If It Never Gets Done

7 hours ago

Turkish First Lady Urges Melania Trump to Speak out on Gaza

7 hours ago

Fresno Crash Sends Car Into Building After Running Red Light

23 hours ago

Fresno City Gets Extension in Herndon 4-Story Apartment Case

23 hours ago

Atwater Prison Inmate Charged for Threatening to Kill Prosecutor’s Family

1 day ago

Multiple Passengers Are Killed After Bus Crashes in Western New York

1 day ago

Hegseth Authorizes Troops in DC to Carry Weapons

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has authorized National Guard troops deployed to Washington to bring their weapons with them on ...

5 hours ago

Soldiers with the 30th Armored Combat Brigade from the South Carolina National Guard at Union Station in Washington, Aug. 20, 2025. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has authorized National Guard troops deployed to Washington to bring their weapons with them on their mission. (Kenny Holston/The New York Times)
5 hours ago

Hegseth Authorizes Troops in DC to Carry Weapons

A patient prepares to take Mifepristone, the first pill in a medical abortion, at Alamo Women's Clinic in Carbondale, Illinois, U.S., April 9, 2024. (Reuters File)
6 hours ago

Texas, Florida Seek to Join Legal Challenge to Abortion Pill

Kilmar Abrego Garcia walks, after he has been released from the Putnam County Jail in Cookville, Tennessee, U.S., August 22, 2025. (Reuters/Seth Herald)
6 hours ago

Wrongly Deported Migrant Abrego Released, May Be Detained Again

U.S. flag and Judge gavel are seen in this illustration taken, August 6, 2024. (Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration)
7 hours ago

Judge Blocks Trump From Withholding Funds From Los Angeles, Other Sanctuary Cities

Lyle Menendez attends his Board of Parole hearing online from the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, California, U.S., August 22, 2025, that could lead to freedom after decades in prison for the 1989 shotgun murders of his parents. The final decision will rest with the governor, who can either accept or reject the board's recommendation. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation/Handout via REUTERS
7 hours ago

Lyle Menendez Denied Parole After 35 Years in Prison for Parents’ Shotgun Murders

7 hours ago

California Cities Lack Unified Response On Homeless Encampments

Members of the Mississippi National Guard eat ice cream and boba tea on the National Mall after U.S. President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard and ordered an increased presence of federal law enforcement to assist in crime prevention, in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 21, 2025. (Reuters/Al Drago)
7 hours ago

Trump Crime Crackdown Deploys Troops in Washington’s Safest Sites

7 hours ago

California Voters Still Support High-Speed Rail, Even If It Never Gets Done

Search

Help continue the work that gets you the news that matters most.

Send this to a friend