
Source: Financial Times
Aug 2, 2024
What the US should do on Iran-Israel — and what it should not
For all its power, American influence is decidedly limited. But limited is not the same as non-existent
The writer is a senior counsellor at Centerview Partners, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former US diplomat The Middle East has reached a point where it is increasingly difficult — if not impossible — to distinguish between action and reaction. After what was almost certainly an errant Hizbollah attack on a Druze village in the occupied Golan Heights last week, Israel responded with an air strike that killed a senior Hizbollah commander.
Then came the assassination in Iran of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader and its chief negotiator in the Gaza ceasefire talks. Days before, there had also been a military back and forth between Israel and the Houthis, a third organisation backed by Iran.
All of this after months of military exchanges along the Israel-Lebanon border that have forced the evacuation of some 60,000 Israelis and at least as many Lebanese from their homes. The question is what comes next?
And what should the US do about it? It is hard to imagine the Gaza talks succeeding at this point. Even before the assassinations, the two sides did not agree on the extent of any cessation of hostilities or the acceptability of the continued Israeli military presence in Gaza.
It is quite possible that the most that will be achieved for now is an ongoing conflict in Gaza of much reduced intensity. It is unclear whether a massive escalation between Israel and Hizbollah can be avoided. What might be an even bigger question is whether direct conflict can be prevented between Israel and Iran.
The two countries narrowly escaped going to war in April when, in the wake of another Israeli assassination, Iran attacked Israeli territory with more than 300 drones and missiles. Israel — in no small part at US urging — opted for a measured response that seemed designed to demonstrate its ability to penetrate Iranian defences rather than cause significant damage.
A critical question now may be what the US can do to tamp things down. For all its power, American influence is decidedly limited. But limited is not the same as non-existent. Washington ought to focus on four things. First, the Biden administration should not back away from calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Obviously, achieving one will be more difficult than ever. But Israel increasingly lacks a military rationale for continuing the war. It also has a renewed incentive to refocus its troops and equipment on other fronts, and there is significant domestic pressure to get its hostages released. So the effort would not be futile.
Second, the US ought to press Israel to remain open to a diplomatic approach to the situation in southern Lebanon. It is hard to see how war with Hizbollah would leave Israel better off given the more than 100,000 rockets in Hizbollah’s arsenal — rockets capable of reaching Israeli population centres and badly hurting its already weakened economy.
Meanwhile, history demonstrates that an Israeli occupation in Lebanon will be unlikely to yield positive results. The goal ought to be to make it possible for the residents of northern Israel to return home. Some mutual pullback of forces might be possible. Third, it is inevitable that Iran will respond to the humiliation of Haniyeh’s assassination on its soil, mere hours after he met Iran’s new president and its supreme leader.
It makes sense to press China (which is meaningfully dependent on Iranian oil) to weigh in to encourage a limited response on Iran’s part. Then, as in April, the US could advocate for a limited response from Israel. Fourth, the US should not give up on the larger, longer-term goal of generating a political alternative to Hamas — one willing to address reasonable Palestinian political aims and live in peace with Israel.
Saudi Arabia remains a natural partner here. Its willingness to normalise relations with Israel could have real impact on the Israeli political debate. There is also something the US should resist doing. There will be those arguing that Washington should cut off arms to Israel. To be sure, there was a strong case for denying selective munitions that cause widespread civilian casualties in Gaza.
One could also argue for political and economic sanctions relating to Israeli settlement activity. And there is more than a little reason to be frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who did not alert the US before Haniyeh’s assassination despite his centrality to the effort to negotiate a ceasefire and hostage return.
But the focus has now shifted away from Gaza (where military operations have wound down from their winter peak) and towards reducing the chance of major new fronts opening between Israel and Hizbollah or Israel and Iran. In this changed context, it is critical that Iran understands that US backing for Israel is strong and that armed escalation on its part, or that of its proxies, will not achieve the desired ends.
One final point. There is also the possibility that providing Israel with arms could increase US influence over how it uses them. The Biden administration has been reluctant to go down this path during the Gaza crisis, and has largely looked the other way as Israel took actions contrary to America’s interests — and at times arguably its own.
The US may want to rethink this position given it could soon find itself supporting another war, or even fighting one, at a time it is already stretched thin.