The US is caught in an escalation spiral in the Middle East | Opinion

Right now, the US runs the real risk of being drawn into a conflict with Iran, against its own national interests. National security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed earlier this month that the US will work with Israel to ensure that Iran suffers “grave consequences” for its missile attack this month, which resulted in no casualties. The hawks are already choosing targets – perhaps Iran’s oil industry, perhaps its nuclear facilities – for a coordinated retaliatory strike.

Climbing would be crazy, but as far as risks go, it’s not unprecedented.

What’s happening now is a classic alliance problem called the chain cluster effect. The interests of allies sometimes diverge and problems arise when one ally wants to do something in its own interest that hurts the interests of the other – or even drags it into the conflict, as is the case now with Israel and the United States.

A major Israeli war in Lebanon is not in the US interest at all, because it would trigger increasing pressures that would be very difficult to resist. Pressure is already mounting on the US to launch airstrikes against Iran following Tehran’s attack on Israel.

This is a terrible idea. No, we don’t like the Iranian regime, but we also don’t want to destabilize a huge, ethnically fractured country. We do not want to transform Iran from a viable (albeit bad) centralized state into a failed state that spawns new militant groups like ISIS and settles into yet another intractable conflict. Remember, this is exactly what happened after the United States attacked Iraq and helped destabilize the regimes in Syria and Libya.

We also do not want a failed state in Lebanon, which has barely held together since its civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990. The situation there is terrible. Around 1 million Lebanese, out of a population of 5.5 million, have already been displaced from their homes.

Whenever there is instability in the Middle East, there is pressure on the US to intervene, even in the absence of a clear endgame or exit strategy. But the pressure is much worse in this case, because unlike the invasion of Iraq – an unforced error by the US – we have an ally, Israel, that really wants the US to be kinetic. In this way, it is more like the case of Libya in 2011, where the Europeans dragged a reluctant Obama administration into airstrikes that toppled the country and left it in a total mess.

Washington needs to make it absolutely clear that while it can defend Israel from Iranian attacks, it is completely against US interests to attack or destabilize Iran in any other way. The US should use whatever influence it has over Israel to stop Benjamin Netanyahu from attacking Iran.

Unfortunately, judging by its failure to prevent Israel’s escalation in Lebanon, it is unlikely that Washington will dissuade the Israelis from attacking Iran. However, even if the United States were to avoid such an attack, the opportunities for the United States to be drawn in only if will multiply as Israel’s war in Lebanon progresses.

Frighteningly, the US has no idea what surprises may lie ahead. Israel did not inform the US in advance of its pager attack on Hezbollah operatives or the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. The Israelis reportedly told Washington that they are only planning a limited invasion of southern Lebanon, but that was the same thing they said last year when they invaded northern Gaza. What started as “just” an invasion in the north turned into an operation in central Gaza, then south Gaza, and all the way to the Egyptian border.

The US wants to limit escalation, but Israel may be “salami-slicing” US resolve by gradually increasing its war aims, slice by slice, rather than making its more maximalist objectives clear from the outset. If the Israeli government had said in Gaza last October: “Let’s go to Egypt and stay here for a year,” Washington would have freaked out. Then, of course, it said something else.

The objectives of the Israeli war in Lebanon could be, or could evolve to be, much broader than a limited incursion. Do the Israelis “just” plan to invade and occupy a small buffer zone on the Lebanese border to prevent an October 7th-style ground attack by Hezbollah in the north? Or are they really committed to ending Hezbollah’s rocket and missile threat so that the 60,000 displaced Israelis in the north can return home, as the Israeli war cabinet recently stated? This last objective could pressure Israel to go as far as Beirut or even further north, because Hezbollah’s medium- and long-range arsenal can reach Israel from basically anywhere in Lebanon.

Regardless of the circumstances, the US would probably not be able to stop Israel from penetrating deeply into Lebanon if Netanyahu thinks it is in its vital interests to do so – whether for Israeli security or for his own political reasons. The Biden administration cannot credibly threaten a major shift in the U.S.-Israel relationship less than a month before a close election.

If Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is Gaza 2.0 – with the Israel Defense Forces making a major incursion into Lebanon and remaining there for a year – will the US be able to stand firm against the escalation of offensive attacks against the Will they? We better hope so, but the precedent is not good.

Rosemary Kelanic is Middle East Program Director at Defense Priorities.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer.