Six months into Israel’s war with Hamas, President Joe Biden is becoming ever more entangled in a foreign crisis that he cannot control but which is having deep consequences for US domestic politics and is weighing heavily on his reelection bid.
The omnipresent geopolitical risks of the war were thrown into high relief over the weekend with US officials warning of a potential retaliatory attack in the region by Iran after an Israeli strike on Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus, alongside pledges from Israel to escalate on the northern border with Lebanon – even as it continues its operations in Gaza to rout Hamas, the Tehran-backed group that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostage in its unprecedented October attacks. Talks are set to begin again in Cairo this week in the shadow of growing international upset over human consequences of the war, in which more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed.
US forces in the region and Israel were on high alert for possible attacks by Iran in reprisal for the killing of two senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers in Damascus last week in a strike the US attributes to Israel. Any action by the Islamic Republic, against Israel or US interests could spark the full-scale Middle East war the White House dreads. Even if Iran doesn’t hit back, lower-grade clashes are already simmering across the region. The US has struck Iranian clients in Yemen, the Red Sea, Syria and Iraq, while Israel’s northern border, where it regularly trades missile fire with Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, is become increasingly dangerous. Israel is facing what its former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told CNN on Sunday is an Iranian “octopus of terror.”
In another example of a drama any president would prefer to avoid in a reelection year, Biden is locked in a showdown with an Israeli prime…
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