Why Biden may fail to avert a wider Middle East war

Israel is confronting Hezbollah – and its Iranian sponsors – with a stark choice: Pull out the militia's fighters from the Israeli border or face destruction.

- Jonathan Eyal

When Hamas militants attacked Israel last October, thereby unleashing the current Gaza carnage, the United States' most immediate objective was to prevent a Middle East-wide war. US President Joe Biden moved a substantial American naval task force to Israel's shorelines. And to anyone who contemplated joining the war, he delivered a simple message: "Don't, don't, don't, don't."

It worked. Everyone in the Middle East understood that when an American president is warning in such emphatic terms, they had better sit up and listen. The Biden administration can be criticised for its approaches to the ongoing Gaza war. But it also deserves more credit than it currently gets for averting an even bigger bloodbath.

Yet almost exactly a year after that dramatic Biden gesture, the regional war he tried so hard to prevent may well be upon us. The fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militia based in Lebanon is at its highest in more than a decade. The hundreds of Lebanese civilians already killed in Israeli strikes on Hezbollah's positions form the grimmest such toll in more than three decades. Those shocked by what has happened in Gaza are well advised to steel themselves for much worse in the weeks to come.

HEZBOLLAH THE BIGGER THREAT

One of the reasons why Hamas succeeded in catching Israel unawares with its attack on Oct 7, 2023, was that Israeli decision-makers and the country's political elite were fixated on Hezbollah in Lebanon rather than Hamas in Gaza.