Netanyahu's march to war against Iran

The Israeli leader has created an escalatory ladder that ends with a US-supported strike against Iran's nuclear facilities

Benjamin Netanyahu’s determined march towards all-out war with Iran has been a long-time in the planning. In power for more than 13 of the past 15 years, the Israeli prime minister has been nothing if not consistent. His premiership has been guided by three objectives. The first to maintain his personal grip on power whatever the cost, the second to bury any prospect of an independent Palestinian state, and the third to pull the United States into war against Iran.

In the pursuit of these objectives during the past year, Netanyahu has shown that he is indifferent to the fate of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, dismissive of the innocent Palestinian lives lost to the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, and unmoved by public reproaches from Israel’s allies in the west. In Netanyahu’s mind, power and righteousness are indistinguishable. So too are vengeance and national security.

Joe Biden knows more than most about the fixation with Tehran. Officials in Barack Obama’s administration would remark that war against Iran was the only thing Netanyahu wanted to talk about when he met the then US president. As vice-president, Biden was called on to deploy his longstanding pro-Israel credentials to help deflect the Israeli leader’s demands. 

Netanyahu’s plan then was for the US to join Israel in bombing Iran’s nuclear installations. The threat, he declared, was existential.  Obama preferred to join an international agreement to constrain Iranian progress towards a nuclear weapon. The so-called JCPOA accord, later repudiated by Donald Trump, was far from perfect. It was a lot better than all out war.

The Hamas attack on Gaza and the killing or capture of about nearly 1400 Israelis has been seized upon by Netanyahu as the opportunity to reopen the argument. No matter that his own foreign policy and security failures had left Israel vulnerable. Everything was to be blamed on Tehran and its proxies. The strategy has been clear. Waging war against the proxies is a prelude to the main event, The devastation first of Gaza, the attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the promised retaliatory bombing of targets in Iran represent deliberate steps on an escalatory ladder that ends with the US backing a strike against the nuclear sites. 

Biden and his foreign policy advisers are aware of the danger. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has travelled to the region a dozen times since the Hamas attacks last October. Mostly, he has been there to urge Israeli restraint - to point out that the right to self-defence does not confer blanket authority to kill and blockade countless Palestinian non-combatants. On each occasion Blinken’s calls for a ceasefire have been publicly rebuffed by Netanyahu. And the White House has bitten its lip.

One of the big geopolitical stories of the past couple of decades is often said to be America’s departure from the Middle East. The process that began with the costly military failures in Afghanistan and Iraq has been followed by diplomatic retreat. Obama decided the region would have to look after itself as the US confronted the challenge from China in the Indo-Pacific. Long time allies such as Saudi Arabia responded by deciding that they no longer had to seek permission from Washington to pursue their interests.

Yet much as it has partly withdrawn, the US remains the region’s pivotal power. Biden has endured Netanyahu’s scorn because he chooses to. The hard fact is that the Israeli prime minister could not fight his wars without Biden’s support. Washington has provided the billions in financial aid, the constant resupply of weapons and munitions and the diplomatic cover at the United Nations without which Israel would have long since been forced to the negotiating table.  

It’s tempting to conclude that Biden has been prepared to accept the humiliation visited on his presidency by Netanyahu because he considers the imperative is to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. There is probably something in that. But foreign policy types with close knowledge of the machinations in the Oval Office say the support is largely rooted in his deep personal conviction that it is America’s duty to stand by Israel - even, it seems, when its leader chooses to repeat the terrible mistake that the US made by invading Iraq. Each time his advisers have suggested turning off the military tap, Biden has over-ruled them.

The irony of course is that Netanyahu - in the company of Russia’s Vladimir Putin - wants nothing more than for Trump to defeat Kamala Harris on November 5. The calculation is that a president Trump could be led by the nose into the war against Iran the Israeli leader has so long craved. A former head of the Mossad described Netanyahu as a weak man trying to pose as a strong leader. We have learned during the past year that few things are more dangerous.