Josh Marshall on the weekend’s events in the middle east:
The U.S. telegraphed more or less exactly what Iran was going to do via extremely good intelligence (reminiscent of the lead up to the invasion of Ukraine). It undoubtedly played a huge role bringing Jordan, Saudi Arabia and likely other Arab states into active and public armed action in defense of Israel. It positioned and deployed U.S. anti-ballistic destroyers and aerial assets to itself shoot down roughly a hundred of the estimated 300+ aerial devices Iran launched at Israel. Together, Israel, the U.S. and various allied Arab states took down 99% or more of all those devices. Iran launched a massive aerial bombardment and virtually none of it got through. And now the U.S. has managed to get Israel not to launch an immediate and inevitably escalatory retaliation.
It goes without saying that no administration works on its own. It comes to the game with the world’s most powerful military and major power status. It’s operating with Arab allies who have been gravitating toward a de facto anti-Iran alliance with Israel for years. And yet, anyone who knows anything about foreign or defense policy knows that most of it is all the endless number of things that can wrong and the one or two ways they can go right. Navigating the last week to this point today is a tour de force of international crisis management for the Biden White House.
As Marshall says, we’re not out of the woods yet and anything can happen. But I’m inclined to agree that this was a very hairy moment that does appear to have been successfully “managed” so as not to trigger a regional war. Maybe the Biden administration had little to do with that but according to all the reporting they, in coordination with allies, were able to keep a lid on it for all the reasons Marshall lays out.
Biden’s Israel policy has been intensely frustrating and downright inexplicable when it comes to Gaza. I’m not sure he’ll ever be able to adequately account for America’s position as we have watched that mass suffering unfold. But it’s also the case that he’s dealing with a corrupt monster in Netanyahu who is motivated to keep the war going as long as possible who it’s clear is working hand in glove with the Republicans to sabotage Biden at every turn. This makes the risks of it expanding across the region very acute. That doesn’t excuse anything the US is or isn’t doing, of course. But it does provide some context which we saw displayed this weekend as we were on the precipice of a war that could hurtle out of control very, very quickly. It was a near thing.