US in the Middle East: Déjà Vu All Over Again

The air strike on April 19 by Israel’s military inside central Iran in tit-for-tat retaliation for a barrage of missiles and drones launched against Israel last weekend, in tit-for-tat retaliation for Israel’s blowing up the Iranian embassy in Syria, is a depressing indication that the retaliations are not going to stop, and that the United States is little more than a passenger on this ship without any adequate public discussion about how or why.

That Israel had a right to defend itself in the wake of the horrendous October 7 attack on defenseless civilians is a given. But with at least 34,012 now dead in Gaza and tens of thousands of women and children starving – and 604 dead Israeli soldiers in addition to the 1200 civilian dead – this is more than that. This is Old Testament revenge as when God told Joshua to tear down the altars, smash the sacred pillars, hew down the Asherim and burn the graven images with fire of the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. Israel and its implacable Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have a dubious right, given US strategic aims in the Middle East, to involve the US in this blood feud.

Instead, America’s entanglement in the Middle East, while ineffectually shouting whoa, thus appears to be taking place right on schedule. The result seems inevitable despite months of warning and tut-tut-tutting since it began with the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians last October 7. There is almost certainly going to be a wider war amid voices among the US right wing, including influential Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, egging them on.

This conflict can now be said to involve as many as 16 countries despite protestations that there is no broader war. The US acknowledges that US Navy ships and aircraft brought down more than 80 drones and three ballistic missiles in the Iranian attack on Israel on April 13, Central Command said in a release. The UAVs were launched from Iran and Yemen. The US is said to have flown aircraft and launched air defense missiles from at least eight countries, while Iran and its proxies fired weapons from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. With 16 nations involved, it means the heavily armed Iranians – Shiites who believe the prophet Mohamad appointed his son-in-law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor, wouldn’t at all mind taking a shot at the heavily armed Saudis, who believe Abu Bakr was the successor and vice versa if it came to that. There are several such combinations in the Middle East, all involving tactical and strategic peril. Eventually, they are going to hit something.

There seems to be a certain amount of Kabuki theatre involved in all this, heavily stylized performances on all sides. After the Israelis killed one of Iran’s favorite generals in its Syria attack, and let it be known that it might have been a miscalculation, the Iranians sent 300 missiles and drones into Israeli air space so that the US and Israel, with help from the Saudis, the Jordanians and other could shoot them down without killing anybody. Now the Israelis have retaliated with an air strike into the Iranian desert near, but not too near, an air base and also research facilities associated with Iran’s nuclear research program. Now the world is waiting to see if the Iranians will retaliate with their own ‘harmless” strike, a little nearer, but not too much nearer, either Israel’s, or possibly the US’s huge military presence in the Middle East. The Kabuki part may be about to close.

“I think we‘re rapidly growing out of that phase and that the escalation ladder is going to get harder and harder to control and the messaging phase is perhaps over,” said former CIA Director James Clapper on CNN yesterday. “I take the Iranian officials, notably the foreign minister, at their word and I don‘t think they‘re going to respond in kind. But they‘re going to respond with a larger attack that in their minds would be more effective than the first one.”

Israel appears to be spoiling for more war. It is recognition that, as US President Joe Biden says, America has Israel’s back, which has justifiably been described as moral hazard. Unconditionally arming Israel encourages the Israeli Defense Forces to use them. The IDF has continued to deploy more forces in areas adjacent to Rafah, where a million Palestinians are holed up, and destroyed agricultural land in the eastern areas of the district even as the US fruitlessly calls for restraint – while at the same time exercising its power in the United Nations Security Council against any restraint on its client state, most lately blocking Palestine’s bid for full UN membership and apparently, according to media, being in opposition to a two-state solution while advocating it in public, a move the Palestinian presidency says is “unfair, unethical and unjustifiable.”

As late as mid-December, the US had 19 warships in the region – seven in the eastern Mediterranean and 12 more stretched down the Red Sea, across the Arabian Sea, and up into the Persian Gulf. The USS Gerald R Ford carrier strike force has since pulled back. But there are four roll-on roll-off USAV ships each capable of carrying 15 Abrams tanks as well as a wide array of other vessels vulnerable to attack not only by the Iranians but a variety of client guerrilla operations that Iran can direct to cause mischief. US Army Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) surface-to-air missile batteries have been deployed in Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and at the secretive Site 512 base in Israel, according to the investigative website The Intercept. The United Kingdom is also intimately tied into the regional war network, while additional countries such as Bahrain have purchased Patriot missiles to be part of the network.

Despite this display of military might, the attacks by US and British forces on Houthi combatants targeting vessels in the Red Sea and launching missiles and drones at Israel itself has had no practical effect, as expected. While the initial airstrikes were believed to have dented Houthi capabilities, US officials have acknowledged that locating many Houthi weaponry storage targets has proved challenging. In the meantime, shipping through the area has fallen sharply. US and UK warships have come under attack from ballistic missiles and suicide drones, following airstrikes, forcing them to conduct interceptions. Shipping through the Red Sea has fallen sharply.

As Asia Sentinel pointed out on January 11, more than 45,000 troops are on the ground in 11 countries throughout the Middle East. Once again, with no proper debate and with desultory calls from Congress complaining about the escalation, the US – and now its allies – is more and more likely to be drawn deeper into a conflict generated by Israeli imperatives for vengeance. These are all big targets. There is a growing certainty that troop engagements with hostile forces will increase. The US is exposed both on land and sea and with little evidence that planners are considering the potential consequences.

The Israelis have fought wars with various Arab forces out to destroy them in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and 2006. President Biden seems determined to join them in 2024 in fighting another one. The troops in the Middle East are not expected to serve in combat roles, the White House said. They are already in combat roles, as the deaths of the three in Jordan and the injuries to 20 more have demonstrated.

For years, there has been talk of a two-state solution but there has been scant pressure on Israel to accept this, and long-serving Prime Minister Netanyahu now rejects it. In practical fact, there is not a functional second state to work with. But there remain thousands of youth who are being radicalized to take up the fight. That is a recipe for endless wars in a region where memories are long, exacerbated by religious extremism on all sides. The danger for the US is being sucked further into marginal conflict zones without a clear and achievable goal. It also runs the danger that the US is losing its focus on other parts of the world, including in Asia, where its vital interests are being endangered.