Carlos Berrios Polanco/Sipa USA via AP Images
Tens of thousands of pro-Gaza, pro-Palestine activists marched from Freedom Plaza to the White House, November 4, 2023, in Washington.
Despite plenty of warnings, the United States has stumbled into a worst-case scenario: an incredibly dangerous, expanding regional Middle East war with the United States fighting on multiple fronts.
And it was all entirely avoidable.
On Sunday, Iraqi factions from the Iran-allied Axis of Resistance killed three Americans at a base in Jordan. Miraculously, until the attack on the military installation on the Jordan-Syria border known as Tower 22, no Americans had died in more than 150 strikes on American bases in the region since October 7. Axis of Resistance forces have vowed to continue attacking American targets, and global shipping through the Red Sea, until the war in Gaza comes to an end.
Without a swift course correction, the president who ended the war in Afghanistan might go down in history as the same president who started a new, unwinnable regional war that mires the United States in asymmetric conflict from Iran to the Suez Canal, from the Red Sea to the Turkish border.
There is only one slender hope: for the United States to immediately call for a cease-fire in Gaza, withhold military assistance from Israel so that Israel ends its maximalist military campaign, and commit to a region-wide de-escalation on all fronts.
THE UNITED STATES HAS PROMISED TO RETALIATE, but it is caught in a trap of its own making.
Troops stationed at vulnerable American bases in the deserts of Iraq, Syria, and Jordan make inviting targets—and force protection has become one of their central missions. The deployments are necessary in order to protect the deployments; the troops have to fight back to deter future attacks against the troops. None of these strikes and counterstrikes serve the actual mission, which is to deter ISIS. But the alarming spiral does create new risks, most dangerously of a direct war between the United States and Iran.
This entire disaster was predictable, and in fact, many of us predicted it. Since October, it was clear that Israel’s war in Gaza was very likely to spiral into a wider war involving the U.S. By early January, the U.S. had already slipped beyond a threshold and was involved in an active multifront war, but had a small chance to pull back.
Since Hamas’s October attacks, the U.S. has created moral hazard, backed Israel’s eliminationist war in Gaza, and alienated huge swaths of the world.
Until now, it was only a matter of luck that the near-daily Resistance Axis attacks have not killed Americans. In addition to the three killed in Jordan on Sunday, two Navy SEALs were declared dead in recent operations against the Houthis. Now, some Americans like Sen. Lindsey Graham are calling for direct attacks on Iran. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby channeled the administration’s cavalier approach to the risks of an out-of-control regional war: “We don’t want a wider war with Iran. We don’t want a wider war in the region, but we gotta do what we gotta do,” Kirby said.
Now that Americans are dying, the United States will feel compelled to take actions that will neither secure U.S. forces nor advance U.S. interests.
CAN AMERICA REPAIR THE MISTAKES MADE since October 7? Given their records, it is unlikely that either Joe Biden’s administration or a Trump Restoration are likely to change course, but it’s worth detailing the elements of sound policy. A better policy begins with a cease-fire in Gaza, and requires a new approach to securing shipping lanes and managing the ISIS threat.
Since Hamas’s October attacks, the U.S. has created moral hazard, backed Israel’s eliminationist war in Gaza, and alienated huge swaths of the world. America’s moral rationale for Ukraine is in tatters ever since the United States started equating Israel’s position to Ukraine’s. Public opinion and skeptical governments around the world see Ukrainians and Gazans both as victims of an indiscriminate war by a far more powerful adversary.
The United States should immediately call for a Gaza cease-fire and dissociate America from the campaign. No more weapons shipments, no enabling Israel’s war. Washington should protect the United Nations from baseless attacks, and flood the zone with humanitarian aid for Gazans, who are being subjected to a level of harm and misery that will remain in history as a mark of shame. The United States should commit to zero displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
International trade is not a Western interest; it’s a global interest. The United States should quickly step out of its war with the Houthis, and only participate in Red Sea naval patrols in partnership with a wide coalition that must include local powers like Saudi Arabia and international powers like China.
In Syria and Iraq, America’s bear hug of the Israeli war in Gaza has created an impossible amount of pressure on American deployments, which in any case had neared their expiration date. Iraqis are in Washington this week to negotiate a withdrawal of U.S. troops, and as America’s posture in Iraq changes, so too will the deployment in northeast Syria.
Hawks like Graham might dream of a war with Iran, but U.S. troops are in Syria and Iraq to counter the Islamic State. So the U.S. will have to negotiate new arrangements with its Iraqi partners to manage ISIS, including the persistent problem of the roughly 50,000 ISIS supporters in al-Hol camp in northeast Syria.
Without a long-term solution, when American troops inevitably leave under duress, those ISIS members will either escape, and possibly drive a new wave of ISIS violence, or continue in detention enforced by a new partnership between the Assad regime in Damascus and the Syrian Kurds who are currently America’s close partner in northeast Syria.
SO THE UNITED STATES HAS MADE A SERIES of poor choices that have landed it in a regional war. For now, that war is limited and reversible; but it’s only a matter of time before the horrifying total warfare in Gaza spreads to Lebanon and perhaps further afield.
Israel could have defended itself against Hamas without war crimes, and the U.S. could have supported Israel after October 7 without enabling Israel’s bad policies. Instead, the Biden administration embraced Israel’s maximalist war, making the United States co-author and perhaps, down the road, co-conspirator in an international docket. Israel’s destructive policies are now America’s, too.
The Biden administration has put itself in a lose-lose position, fighting unwinnable battles across the Middle East with asymmetric foes who win politically even when they lose on the battlefield.
Biden’s foreign-policy team ended the war in Afghanistan, and then rallied the world to Ukraine’s side against the Russian invasion. It’s uncanny to think the same team is responsible for the litany of baffling choices since October 7.
If the United States doesn’t want a bigger and worse sequel to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington must emerge from its fugue state. The status quo is driving toward a super-war in the Middle East that benefits toxic hawks in Israel and United States, the Resistance Axis, the ranks of Hamas, and the IRGC. This war doesn’t benefit American interests, America’s partner governments, or any of the hundreds of millions of civilians suffering in the Middle East under some of the worst misrule in the world.
It’s too late for 26,000 dead Gazans. It’s too late to avoid regional war. It’s too late to avoid colossal self-harm to America’s reputation.
But it’s not too late for the United States to snap to its senses, end the Gaza war, climb down from pointless escalations across the Middle East, and put the brakes on the new regional war before it spins completely out of control.
