Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
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?

UP NEXT

Millions of Americans Like Trump Better in Theory Than in Practice

Inside Trump’s Extraordinary Turnaround on Immigration Raids

5 hours ago

Trump Approval Steady at 42%, Support Weakens for His Immigration Policy, Reuters/Ipsos Poll Finds

5 hours ago

Madera County Wildfire Prompts Evacuation Warnings, Road Closures

A wildfire burning near Raymond Road and Avenue 16 in Madera County has prompted evacuation warnings and road closures, authorities said Mon...

3 hours ago

A wildfire near Raymond Road and Avenue 16 in Madera County has prompted evacuation warnings and road closures as officials urge residents to prepare to leave if threatened on Monday, June 16, 2025. (Madera County SO)
3 hours ago

Madera County Wildfire Prompts Evacuation Warnings, Road Closures

Sanger police are searching for Kaylani Thompson, 17, who went missing Saturday, June 14, 2025, after leaving her home and was last seen getting into a white sedan. (Sanger PD)
3 hours ago

Sanger Police Seek Public’s Help to Find Missing Teen

A view of the cityscape in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 16, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
4 hours ago

Trump Says Everyone Should Immediately Evacuate Tehran

5 hours ago

Inside Trump’s Extraordinary Turnaround on Immigration Raids

President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 12, 2025. (Reuters File)
5 hours ago

Trump Approval Steady at 42%, Support Weakens for His Immigration Policy, Reuters/Ipsos Poll Finds

A person was rescued from a Fresno canal Monday, June 16, 2025, near Dakota and Ninth Street, marking the third such incident in recent days, officials said. (Fresno FD)
5 hours ago

Person Rescued from Fresno Canal, Third Incident in Recent Days

5 hours ago

Arias Dodges Questions About His False Fresno ICE Raid Claim

7 hours ago

Iranian State TV Halts Live Broadcast After Israeli Strike

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

Search

Send this to a friend