US wary as Israel plans retaliation against Iran
US Israel relations at ‘rock bottom’ as Israel PM Netanyahu blocks Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant from traveling to Washington for consultations on Iran.
When US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, NSC Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk and a half dozen other top Biden advisors arrived at the Israeli embassy Monday afternoon for a memorial event to mark the one year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks, the optics were of close American Israeli solidarity. But there were signs too of the tremendous strain that the relationship between the highest levels of the two governments is under at the current moment.
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog, speaking at the memorial event, referred to “disagreements” between the American and Israeli governments, saying he told Sullivan when they arose that Israel considered itself in the wake of the October 7 Hamas carnage to be facing an “existential” threat.
“For us Israelis, this is an existential challenge,” Herzog said. “And Mr. Sullivan, we met more than once during this war. And whenever there were disagreements, I would always tell you that they emanate from the fact that for us, this is existential war.”
Sullivan grew emotional in his remarks, speaking of President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden having recited a Jewish mourning prayer and lit a Yahrzeit candle in the White House residence that morning to honor the 1,200 Israelis brutally killed by Hamas a year earlier, and over 250 people taken hostage.
But one sensed that along with Sullivan’s evident grief for the victims of the Hamas massacres and anguish for the hostages and their families, was also considerable frustration with the lack of transparency, even underhandedness of Netanyahu and his entourage. Frustration both that the US administration has not been able to get the Israeli government and Hamas to agree to a deal to release the over 100 hostages, including seven Americans, still held by Hamas in exchange for an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza; and frustration that the Biden administration has done such an extraordinary amount to support Israel militarily and diplomatically over the past year, at no small cost, including twice deploying American military assets to shoot down drones and ballistic missiles launched by Iran at Israel over the past six months.
And the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded by repeatedly failing to notify the Biden administration of escalatory military actions it was about to take that could blowback on US forces deployed to the region to help protect Israel and which risk expanding the Israel Gaza conflict into a regional war; seemingly dragged its feet on making a deal to secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas; was cavalier about the massive humanitarian and civilian toll of its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza that has to date killed over 40,000 Palestinians, displaced virtually the entire population and turned most of Gaza into rubble; last month assassinated the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in massive bunker buster bombing of the Iranian-backed group’s headquarters in southern Beirut without first notifying the United States (this, two days after the US, after close consultation with the Israeli government, called for a 21-day Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire).
And now—less than a month before the U.S. presidential elections-- Israel potentially threatens to try to drag the US into a war that Israel has partly provoked with Iran with a series of escalatory actions and Israeli assassinations, including of Nasrallah, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was in the Iranian capital in July to attend the inauguration of the new Iranian president.
“I was with [President Biden] this past Tuesday,” Sullivan told the audience of a few hundred people at the Israeli embassy memorial event Monday. “He was in the Situation Room, where, for the second time in five months, he ordered the US military to take action to defend Israel from a significant attack by Iran. Side by side, U.S. naval destroyers joined Israeli air defense units in again intercepting a rainfall of inbound missiles, ballistic missiles from Iran.”
Sullivan hinted at US frustration that Israel has to date refused to agree to any “day after” plan for stabilizing post-war Gaza, while Israel is now expanding the war to Israel’s northern front against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and is expected to soon strike back at targets in Iran.
“Israel has demonstrated its remarkable capacity, including through impressive operations that kill terrorists,” Sullivan said. “The challenge going forward is to turn tactical wins in battle into a strategy that secures Israel's people and its future. That takes real discipline…to match the conduct of war to a clear and sustainable set of objectives and to turn tactical advantage into enduring strategic gains.”
Or, as President Biden put it to Netanyahu during an April phone call, according to reported excerpts of a forthcoming book by journalist Bob Woodward: “What’s your strategy, man? … Bibi, you’ve got no strategy.”
‘That son of a bitch’
“That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy,” Biden told an associate in the spring of 2024, Woodward wrote, according to CNN.
“He’s a fucking liar,” Biden said of the Israeli leader, after Israel went into Rafah in May.
It is not hard to understand why Biden and his aides might feel betrayed and backstabbed by Netanyahu.
“The United States has moved heaven and earth for Israel,” Jon Alterman, vice president and director of the Middle East program at the Center for Security and International Studies (CSIS), said, noting that over the past year Washington “has gotten more weapons more quickly to an ally under threat than… any time in my lifetime.”
“And you have an Israeli prime minister who seems intent on pocketing every single thing the President gives him, and then complains that the United States is trying to badger and sandbag Israel into doing things that are contrary to Israeli national security,” he said.
Netanyahu “is better at both rebuffing Biden’s pressure, and putting pressure on Biden, than vice versa,” Alterman said. “And every time that Biden has thought that he’s nailed something down with Netanyahu, it feels like Netanyahu manages to move to the adjacent space.”
“My take on the Netanyahu mindset is, for the last six months, I have been willing to take risks that everybody else has asserted are reckless, and they’ve all paid off,” Alterman said. “So he feels like a gambler with a hot hand, and how is not the time to stop.”
Bibi blocks Gallant trip
In the latest Netanyahu maneuver seemingly to try to pressure Washington, and those within his own government that are trying to harmonize with the U.S. government, Netanyahu today blocked Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant from traveling to Washington for scheduled meetings with Sullivan and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. According to Israeli media reports, Netanyahu reportedly demanded that before Gallant travel to Washington, that Biden call him, and that the Israeli cabinet approve what military action Israel will take against Iran.
The Pentagon has acknowledged that Austin was extremely upset when Israel did not notify the United States in advance before it targeted Nasrallah in a massive bombing of Hezbollah headquarters in Lebanon last month, because of the risk that the action could trigger blowback attacks against some of the 43,000 US forces now deployed in the Middle East. The lack of notification prevented the Pentagon from having time to take measures to protect US forces deployed in the region, in large part to try to defend Israel. Gallant reportedly told Austin that Netanyahu had forbidden him from notifying Washington in advance, Axios reported.
The Pentagon, saying today that it had been notified that Gallant’s trip had been postponed, publicly sought to downplay any impact of the postponed consultations—sort of.
“The Secretary has a great relationship with Minister Gallant,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists at the Pentagon briefing today. “I think they've now spoken probably over 80 times, ballpark…They remain in constant communication.”
But US officials, after being repeatedly blindsided, acknowledged in recent days that they have minimal trust in the Israeli leadership, and cannot be sure how much Israel will take US concerns into account when it retaliates against Iran, and how much notification it will have.
“We are talking to them about their response,” Singh said. “I wouldn't read too much into that, other than that's all I'm going to be able to say at this moment.”
We don’t trust them at all right now, a person familiar with the US government view of the Israeli government said this week.
"We face the very real danger of a further regional escalation of conflict," CIA Director Bill Burns, speaking at a forum hosted by the intelligence publication Cipher Brief said Monday, CBS’s Olivia Gazis reported. Though, Burns continued, "we don't assess" that either the Iranian or Israeli leadership is looking for "all-out conflict."
The Israeli leadership is “weighing very carefully” how it will respond to Iran’s Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack, Burns said, CBS reported. But he warned of potential “misjudgments.”
"You can see the potential for inadvertent collisions, misunderstandings...actions that take on a life of their own,” he said.
US Israeli relations ‘at rock bottom’
“I think we're at a critical juncture in terms of the loss of US influence,” Linda Robinson, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said on a joint CFR/Brookings zoom on the Middle East today. “Israeli and US relations are at… absolute rock bottom.”
“There's been a lack of notification of key strikes by Israel, including the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, and very little exercising of the US leverage that is represented by its massive aid to Israel,” she said.
“So I think we're really at a point to ask, what is the US going to do,” she said. “And while it's going to stand by Israel in the defense of Israel, what do defensive actions constitute, versus this incredible escalation that we've seen… under the presumption that there is a military solution and Israel is going for that.”
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