RollaD20

This, by the way, is the reason why Biden was so keen on keeping so many of the Trump administration’s policies towards the country, from the Jerusalem embassy to recognition of the Golan Heights to the so-called “Pompeo doctrine” recognizing West Bank settlements as legal. It’s also why his Middle Eastern policy for the two and a half years prior to October 7th was a straight continuation of Jared Kushner’s initiatives. Trump’s actions fit his worldview like a glove. There’s just functionally no difference between one president with a Likudnik administration and another administration who accepts the words of Likudniks as gospel.

It’s also for this reason that one of the seemingly bizarre recurring moments of the conflict—episodes where Netanyahu ignores Biden or does something he doesn’t like, Biden is reported to be “enraged” with him, and no U.S. policies end up changing—make perfect sense. Biden’s anger in these moments isn’t the anger of someone morally outraged or even just irked that their nation’s interests are being set back. It’s the anger of an advisor whose good-faith advice is being ignored by their superiors. He is setting U.S. policy and attempting to nudge Israel in the direction that he believes will most effectively enable them to accomplish their goals, whatever Netanyahu decides they may be. Netanyahu, of course, disagrees with him and ignores him, which sets Biden off. He probably really does think the Israeli prime minister is a pigheaded asshole. It’s hard not to. Still, none of that changes his fundamental alignment in Netanyahu’s direction. Since it would make no sense, from his perspective, to throw the baby out with the bathwater by cutting Netanyahu off just for refusing his tips, our support for the country has remained the same no matter how many times they have shown our officials the finger. At the end of the day, the president simply believes Israel is in its right to do so.

We all know how horrific this subservience has been from a humanitarian perspective. Simply because they told him it was necessary, Israel has been allowed by Biden to raze the entirety of Gaza to the ground. He refused to pressure them on something as basic as allowing in international aid his own country has paid for, choosing to go through with several expensive, ineffective, and conceptually laughable schemes instead. This would be a historic catastrophe if Israel’s sights were only aimed at the Gaza Strip, but their ambitions are far from limited to there. Ever since the start of the conflict, Israel has been ceaselessly escalatory towards their longtime enemies across the region. They reportedly came within an inch of starting in a war in Lebanon in early October. And the more their opponents have responded with restraint, the more Israel has escalated, leading all the way to the bombing of Iran’s embassy in Syria this week. With the survival of the current Israeli government hinging on continued conflict and a seeming once-in-a-lifetime opportunity provided by two staunchly subservient major-party nominees, you would have to be blind not to see the means, motive, and opportunity they have for a regional war.

I wish I could be less certain about what the Biden administration’s response to this would be. I wish I could weigh Biden’s insistence on following Israel’s orders against the full-spectrum calamity that an expansion of this conflict would be. I wish I could dissect the hints he made at conditioning aid he made after seven Western aid workers—seemingly the first casualties of the conflict he regards as fully human—were killed this week. The problem is that the Biden administration has already given away their stance towards a regional war, and it’s not an encouraging one.

This doesn’t require too much speculation. For starters, CNN reported last month that the administration views a war in Lebanon as inevitable, operating on the presumption that Israeli tanks are on track to roll across the northern border within the year. To see their attitude towards such a prospect, all you have to do is look at what they’ve done since then: making no efforts to reduce tensions while moving heaven and earth to give Israel the exact resources they would need for such a conflict. Even if you totally ignore this reporting, all it takes is a little reading between between the lines of the endless platitudes about peace constantly spouted out by the White House to see what their real stance is. The administration not only willing but possibly even desperate to shift the image of the war from endless slaughter in Gaza to a fight against Hezbollah and Iran. Don’t take my word for it. Just look at what Secretary of State Antony Blinken said to justify the massive $18 billion deal selling F-15s to the country with the country:

“It’s also about the threats posed to Israel by Hezbollah, by Iran, by various other actors in the region, each one of which has vowed one way or another to try to destroy Israel.”

Blatant failures can bring opportunities for change. Truly blatant ones often only result in retrenchment. To the extent that the administration recognizes things have gone wrong in the conflict, they have locked themselves in. Biden’s stance of letting the Israeli tail incessantly wag the American dog has been such an abject disaster that backing away from it raises more questions than his administration would like to answer. In every other respect, things are simply going as planned. As he followed Begin on the question of West Bank settlements 40 years ago, and as he followed Netanyahu on the question of Gaza six months ago, Biden is set to continue to follow Israel’s commands, from Yemen and Damascus to Lebanon and even possibly Iran. It will take true political courage for the president to admit the enormity of this lifetime of mistakes and change course. If Joe Biden ends up demonstrating such a thing, it will be a true first.