Did Iran Just Give Netanyahu a Win or….

 

“It is clear that Israel will respond.” 

Unnamed Israeli Official, April 14th.

As Israel’s defensive shield, with some help from US and UK efforts, stopped 99% of the approximately 300 missiles, rockets and drones unleashed by Iran on April 13th, the question is whether that alone counted as a major Israeli victory… without more. Iran has gone from being a saber-rattling, regional terrorist-supporting menace – fomenting its proxies to implement military hostilities against Israel, the West and its local enemies – to becoming a direct combatant against Israel. But Israel did provoke that attack. An Israeli airstrike that demolished Iran’s consulate in Syria on April 1st – which under international law is deemed to be Iranian soil – and killed two Iranian generals and five officers, according to Iranian officials. Iran promised retaliation, which explains the April 13th attack.

Does Israel counter the counter? Does the Israeli war cabinet mount a massive strike on Iran as the rightwing demands, something less or simply accept that its successful defense that appropriately humiliated Iran and sent a message to any prospective attacker than an air offensive against Israel is unlikely to succeed? Israel could implement its “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon” pledge and implement a limited but strategic assault on Iran’s nuclear program or, as some believe, put this Iranian assault in its “justification to hit directly at Iran… someday” file for the future?

Ah, but remembering that Netanyahu is a canny politician who has ignored and defied Joe Biden, is an unabashed supporter of Donald Trump and needed a distraction to rally his nation to his side, did the April 1st attack accomplish a lot more than meets the eye? In a simple response: YES. Just as Iran knew that a Hamas murderous attack on Israel (the events of October 7th) would provoke Israeli overkill that would isolate Israel and the US from global support, Netanyahu knew Iran would have to do something dramatic in response to that IDF (Israeli Defense Force) attack on its consulate in Damascus. That result would redirect international attention away from the bloodbath in Gaza, diffuse anti-Netanyahu protesters in Israel and perhaps even draw the United States into an unwanted war directly with Iran… which would most probably lead to Biden’s defeat in November, Israeli leaders may have hoped.

Remembering that a vast portion of the weapons used to date in Gaza and even the satellite assistance that provided military guidance for the IDF in all of its operations came from the United States, Biden’s post-April 13th statement that the United States would not support any IDF counterattack against Iran came with a grain of salt. While this array of defensive superlatives carries a wider warning – like to China as it eyes taking Taiwan – there is little doubt that this Middle Eastern tension just escalated for everyone. As Tehran has suggested that this April 13th attack was enough to settle the score, as the Biden administration admonished Israel to accept its wildly successful defense as victory without more back-and-forth retaliation, noting that the US would not support a counter-counterattack.

While Iran’s seems powerless, that is not really true. Tehran could mine the Strait of Hormuz, sending global oil prices soaring, bringing European economies down a huge notch. But that would make Iran more of a global pariah as economies everywhere would suffer. Iran has become the focal point for a new “Axis of Resistance” (see my April 8th The Axis of Resistance blog for a more detailed analysis), and while its main target seems to be Israel, its most significant enemy is “The Great Satan,” the United States. With Biden suffering a revolt in part of his constituency (like progressives, particularly among Gen Z because of Gaza) and facing both Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s threats to take Taiwan by force, the newly escalated conflict between Iran and Israel brings on new complications for him.

Indeed, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen just returned from her second to China in nine months to address escalating trade disputes between the world’s largest economies as the two sides try to stabilize relations following a summit between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last November. The Biden administration is trying to create a modus vivendi with the Peoples’ Republic to diffuse tensions with the only other superpower on earth. China has been Russia’s trading lifeline during the Ukraine war and has served as North Korea’s nexus to the world. But both China and Russia have sided with Iran and Syria as regional tensions have moved from simmering to boiling.

And where the United States had once used its then-tenuous relations with China and Russia in the past to achieve global peace – as with the 2015 six-party UN-sponsored Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to contain Iran’s nuclear weapons plans (Trump pulled the US out of that treaty in 2018, and Iran immediately resumed its nuclear program) – that kind of cooperation seems doubtful today in deescalating the Iran-Israel conflict. If either Russia or China were to intervene, that probably would produce a result that would make those nations the heroes and show the United States as increasingly impotent in the region. If that occurred in the immediate future, Biden’s candidacy would be hit hard. Netanyahu would have triumph in his effort to reinstall his buddy, Donald Trump.

As a trilateral visit by the leaders of Japan and the Philippines to the White House just before this Iranian strike occurred illustrates, the United States takes containing Chinese ambitions very seriously. But that same containment effort also impacts if and how the Middle East can be re-stabilized. The world is watching. Congress may finally address aid to Ukraine and Israel, but the MAGA influence remains strong. Only Biden truly sees the merit in having strong regional allies to contain raw authoritarian efforts at global control and territorial expansion, a clear benefit to the United States in every arena from economic prosperity to global influence. Yet Netanyahu knows exactly what will make Biden look like a failure; he needs Trump in his effort to retain power… and like Trump… to escape a criminal conviction.

I’m Peter Dekom, and this not a simple conundrum for US foreign policymakers; there are malign forces hoping to unravel the US as a democracy and push an autocrat sympathizer into the American presidency… to knock us down so that they can rise.