Lockstep US Support Fuels Conflict

The Iranian retaliation in response to Israel’s April 1 attack on their consulate in Damascus was unprecedented. It was the first direct attack on Israeli territory from Iran, and it was reportedly the largest drone attack on record.

The attack was also one of the most telegraphed military responses of all time. After almost two weeks of warnings that a response was coming, the Iranian government gave advance warning to Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq several days before the attack, and they gave Israel, the U.S. and other regional states hours to prepare. Tehran wanted to make a point without doing so much damage that it would be guaranteed to trigger a wider conflict. The response could easily have been worse and more destructive than it was.

The Biden administration is reportedly urging Israel not to escalate things further, but it is questionable whether Netanyahu will follow the U.S. lead on this when he has ignored Biden so many other times. According to The Economist, “Israel has already informed the Americans and governments in the region that its response is inevitable.” If Israel launches more attacks on Iranian targets, the conflict that they started will likely spread and get out of control. U.S. indulgence and Israeli recklessness created this mess, and continued U.S. backing could encourage Netanyahu to take even more risks.

Netanyahu might gamble that he can push his luck, plunge the region into a larger war, and the U.S. will still come to the rescue out of a misguided sense of obligation. Biden has given him every reason to think that there is nothing he can do that will put U.S. support at risk, and as long as he can hide behind U.S. protection Netanyahu could become even more reckless. Biden’s “ironclad” commitment encourages the worst in a very bad client government.

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Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.