DC Think-Tank: Threat of Iran-Israel War Still Present

The Netanyahu government still can drag the US into an exhausting and dangerous conflict with Iran, warns the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a DC-based think-tank.

Although US President Joe Biden's administration seems to have convinced Israel not to raise stakes in its conflict with Iran, "the incentives" for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to provoke a wider regional war "are still present," according to the think-tank.

Israel's April 19 strike on Iran — which followed Tehran's retaliatory attack on the Jewish state's territory — was limited in scale, with the Islamic Republic opting not to respond to it immediately.

However, the New York Times revealed that the Israeli war cabinet sought to fire back on Iran with a large-scale attack. But at the eleventh hour the plan was replaced with a smaller drone strike aimed at both sending a "decisive message" and de-escalating the conflict, the newspaper said.

The Quincy Institute argued that the recent Iran-Israel crisis was caused by Netanyahu's military adventurism — from his disproportionate response to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, to the brazen attack on the Iranian embassy premises in the Syrian capital Damascus which prompted the Iranian missile strike.

"Yet now may be Netanyahu's golden opportunity," wrote QI contributor Ivan R. Eland, former director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute. "An even wider war, which includes direct US military conflict with Iran, would help an unpopular, indicted prime minister who may need to stay in power to keep himself out of jail and divert attention from his wildly disproportionate military response and potential bog in Gaza."

Eland drew attention to the fact that Netanyahu's poll numbers had risen immediately after Tel Aviv's "reckless" attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria, which under international law was a de facto attack on Iran's sovereign territory. Polls also indicated that 53 percent of Jewish Israeli citizens said they would support a "massive first strike" on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Israeli population's apparent backing for harsh measures could embolden Netanyahu to risk an escalation. He seems sure that the Biden administration would not leave Tel Aviv in limbo in the event of a direct Iran-Israel conflict and would fight on Israel's side, according to the scholar.

Trump and Biden in Cahoots With Netanyahu

While Netanyahu bears the blame for the latest escalation, it was the Trump and Biden administrations that pushed the region to the edge of a wider war, according to Trita Parsi, executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute.

Donald Trump almost destroyed the possibility of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and threw his entire weight behind the Netanyahu cabinet, causing desperation among Palestinian political and paramilitary organisations. The Biden government failed to force Tel Aviv to restrain its excessive use of force against Hamas and armed the Israeli military "in the middle of what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be considered genocide," Parsi stressed.

The Biden administration also vetoed UN Security Council resolutions demanding a cease-fire as civilian casualties skyrocketed in Gaza on three occasions. "[Biden] allowed one such resolution to pass last month, only to immediately undermine it by claiming it was nonbinding," Parsi added.

According to the scholar, Biden's attempts to build on Trump's Abraham Accords and push Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel amid the unfolding havoc in the strip have nothing to do with a genuine peaceful settlement. Such a normalization "is eerily similar to America’s decades-long failed strategies of organizing the region against Iran instead of supporting an inclusive Middle East security architecture that brings in all of the region’s governments," according to the scholar.

"Mr. Biden has pursued policies that have pushed the Middle East to the precipice of war," the QI leader emphasized.