The prime minister rallies Congress against the administration's attempts to reach an accommodation with Tehran.
(July 28, 2024 / JNS) The media mostly discussed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fourth speech before a joint session of the two houses of Congress in terms of performance, which even his detractors conceded was masterful. They did not ask, however, about Netanyahu’s aims, which they seemed to assume were self-evident. But they were not. The speech laid a major trap for the Biden administration. Since the trap was hiding in plain sight, it was easy to miss.
Everything seemed straightforward: Netanyahu defined the war with Hamas as one tributary of the larger struggle against Iran and called on the whole of Western civilization to unite around it. “This is not a clash of civilizations,” the PM said, alluding to the title of Samuel Huntington’s famous book. “It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.”
The speech also successfully linked American patriotism to the war against barbarism and Congress resoundingly agreed. Senators, representatives and guests alike responded to the portrayal of American patriots in direct opposition to Iran’s “useful idiots” with chants of “USA! USA! USA!”
The speech created the illusion of wide consensus around self-evident moral truths. But in reality, the Biden administration is not exactly part of such a consensus. In this light, the speech may be said to be highly provocative: Netanyahu portrayed the whole of the West as united in opposition to the Biden administration’s Middle East policy.
The designation of Iran as a common enemy of both the U.S. and Israel may strike many Americans as uncontroversial, even trivial. But in the current context, it is anything but. From day one, the Biden administration has been doing its best to ignore, deny and, when impossible, downplay Iran’s role in the war Israel is fighting against Tehran’s proxy in Gaza. The administration has done this to divert attention away from its own policy towards Iran, which has replaced deterrence with “de-escalation.”
President Joe Biden and his team like to point out that the president rushed to visit Israel just a few days after the war began to reassure Jerusalem that the U.S. has its back. No other American president has ever visited Israel amid a war, we are repeatedly reminded.
This is, of course, a fact. But there was also a less conspicuous agenda behind the visit: A stern warning to Israel not to use the opportunity to preempt Hezbollah, Iran’s largest proxy, menacingly perched on our northern border with a huge arsenal of drones and rockets. The Israeli press then reported that the Americans vetoed an Israeli suggestion for a joint statement by the prime minister and the president blaming Iran for the Hamas attack of Oct. 7.
This was not a marginal disagreement. From the moment it took office, the Biden administration has been signaling to Iran that, unlike the previous Trump administration, it is seeking accommodation, not confrontation. It dubbed this policy “regional integration.”
At first, Israelis failed to make the comparison between itself and another American ally: Saudi Arabia. They failed to see that the Biden administration has acted in the exact same way towards the Saudis. In both cases—Saudi Arabia vs. the Houthis and Israel vs. Hezbollah—the U.S. restrained its ally rather than deter Tehran’s proxy. One of the first acts of the Biden administration was to take the Houthis off of the list of designated terror organizations and then withhold from the Saudis weapons with which to wage war against them.
It then forced Israel to make concessions to Lebanon to the benefit of Hezbollah, which dominates the country, in a 2022 maritime border agreement that granted the Lebanese—and therefore Hezbollah—access to presumed underwater gas reservoirs in return for nothing more than vague half-promises.
All the while, the administration has loosened sanctions on Iran, filling the coffers of the mullahs with oil sales revenue, which they then used to boost their proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, West Iraq, Yemen, and Judea and Samaria.
All this was not a fit of absentmindedness, nor was it the product of lax will or weakness. It was a carefully planned—though seriously misguided—policy. “Regional integration” is a progressive, postcolonial version of an old State Department bias. It assumes that America’s allies, especially Israel but now also the Saudis, are an unnecessary burden.
These allies, the argument goes, abuse America’s friendship by forcing the U.S. to defend them from the consequences of their own aggression, which repeatedly pulls the U.S. into regional wars it has no business fighting. It follows that “de-escalating” tensions must begin with restraining allies and reaching out to adversaries to reassure them that the U.S. is not going to back them into a corner.
Based on these presuppositions, the U.S. set out to reach an accommodation with Iran based on a new regional order over the heads and behind the backs of America’s allies. As The New York Times reported back in March, direct negotiations have been taking place between Washington and Tehran over a deal in which the U.S. will pressure Israel for a ceasefire that will save Iran’s Gaza proxy Hamas from total destruction in return for the cessation of Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea.
So far, the U.S. has been unable to deliver, but not for lack of trying. The administration used a variety of methods—some conspicuous, others clandestine—to pressure Israel to stop its war short of victory. These included attempts to force a hostage deal that will include an Israeli commitment to end the war, slow-walking munition shipments, grooming possible moderate successors to Netanyahu, encouraging anti-Netanyahu protestors, sanctioning settlers, a wink and a nod to the political prosecution of Israel in The Hauge masquerading as “justice”—and much else.
But there’s a limit to what the administration can do because it can’t appear to the American public to be favoring Iran over Israel. The reactions to Netanyahu’s speech were a strong reminder of that fact. Most Americans, including Democratic voters, will not be happy to learn what their country’s Middle Eastern policy really is. They will not approve of throwing Israel under the bus to appease Iran and save Hamas.
The administration is therefore in no position to protest Netanyahu’s assertion, which Congress applauded, “Our enemies are your enemies, our fight is your fight and our victory will be your victory.” Netanyahu spoke as if there was no policy of appeasing Iran. He gave the administration accolades it did not deserve. But surely Biden’s team must worry that, if Israel finds its back to the wall, the prime minister may be more frank next time; as he was when he protested the slow-walking of munition shipments. Such frankness can become a problem for the Democrats in an election year.
But this is not all political maneuvering. Airing Netanyahu’s views on Iran in Congress had one more advantage: It is consistent with the truth. The failure of regional integration has already set the region on fire. More appeasement would just mean more fire. The administration should see the speech as a sound piece of advice from an experienced veteran leader in our rough neighborhood: Refusing to deter Iran will bring the very thing the U.S. has been trying to avoid—being sucked into another Middle East war.
The opinions and facts presented in this article are those of the author, and neither JNS nor its partners assume any responsibility for them.
Gadi Taub is a senior lecturer at Hebrew University’s Federmann School of Public Policy.
28/07/2024 by JNS
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