Middle East crisis highlights the White House’s diminished ability to exert pressure

“We need a ceasefire now [on the border between Israel and Lebanon],” insisted U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday at the White House. Just hours later, Israel launched its “limited” invasion of southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, the Shia party-militia backed by Iran. The sequence has been repeated time and again in recent months in the Middle East: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has systematically ignored U.S.-led calls for a ceasefire, without incurring major consequences on Washington’s part.

Just over 24 hours after the U.S. president’s call, the prospect of any possible agreement has been definitively dashed after Iran launched an attack against Israel with some ballistic 200 missiles in retaliation for the offensive in Lebanon and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Biden has ordered an increased U.S. military presence in the region in support of his Israeli ally.

Recent events have scuppered Washington’s ambitions since the war in Gaza began almost a year ago: to prevent the conflict from spreading to other parts of the Middle East and eventually dragging in other participants, most specifically Iran. Successive U.S. attempts to pressure for a temporary ceasefire that would lead to a permanent solution have come to nothing, and the pattern has intensified in recent weeks as tensions on the Lebanese border have escalated.

Last Thursday, the United States floated a proposal for a 21-day ceasefire along the Blue Line — the demarcation between Israel and Lebanon. A day later, Israel ignored it and an enraged Netanyahu vowed from the podium of the UN General Assembly to continue his country’s attacks on Hezbollah. Just hours later, without Washington receiving advance warning, the Israeli government green-lighted a massive airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut that killed Nasrallah, in a move that further aggravated tension in the region.

On this occasion, the Israeli invasion has been greeted by the U.S. administration with resignation, shrugs, or even acquiescence. Israel maintains that the action is essential to consolidate its airstrikes of recent weeks and to definitively dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure and remove the militia’s ability to attack populations in the north of Israel, as it has been doing since the beginning of the war in Gaza. The crisis in the region has displaced thousands of people in northern Israel and 10% of the Lebanese population.

“Unintended consequences”

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, before the start of the offensive and concurred with the need to disrupt Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon while reiterating Washington’s support for Israel’s defense. At the State Department, spokesman Matthew Miller said that “military pressure can at times enable diplomacy.” He added: “Of course, military pressure can also lead to miscalculation. It can lead to unintended consequences. And we’re in conversations with Israel about all these factors now.”

The U.S. reaction on Lebanon is parallel to its admission that it is failing to make progress towards a ceasefire on the other open front in the Middle East, the war in Gaza, which is approaching a year in duration and is the main factor that has triggered the current hostilities along the Blue Line. Leaders of the fundamentalist Palestinian militia Hamas, which controls Gaza, have not responded to mediators from Qatar and Egypt for weeks.

“We can’t get a clear answer from Hamas of what they’re willing to entertain and what they’re not willing to entertain,” spokesman Miller said on Monday. Netanyahu, now backed by the Israeli population, also has no incentive to make concessions.

Circumstances are not in Washington’s favor and its position is complicated by questions about who is in a position to give the green light to a ceasefire agreement. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar remains silent. Within Hezbollah’s ranks, it is unclear who might succeed Nasrallah, the man who controlled the party-militia for 30 years. And Tuesday’s Iranian attack on Israel has removed any hope of Israeli restraint.

Above all, time is running out for the Biden administration, which in its final weeks in office finds itself with an increasingly diminished capacity for influence.

“Why should Israel agree to a 21-day truce in exchange for vague promises of negotiations led by a declining administration? I see no reason why Israel would be terribly interested,” said David Hale, former U.S. ambassador to the region and now at the Wilson Center think tank, before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Iranian missile strike.

Biden’s reluctance to use the main instruments of pressure he has against Israel has also contributed to American calls going unheeded. “The United States has been reluctant to impose any costs or consequences” on Israel’s policies, notes Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank. Biden has long tempered any hint of criticism of his ally with lavish statements of support for Israel’s security and its right to defend itself.

“Diplomacy is of fundamental importance, but diplomacy requires urgency. It is the lack of urgency felt by the two decision-makers [Israel and Hamas in Gaza] that has prevented the U.S. administration from closing what is a very possible deal,” Miller said in a video conference organized by the Council on Foreign Relations. According to this expert, “when steps forward have been taken in the region it has been when there have been leaders who have been masters of their political decisions, not prisoners of their ideologies who do not fight at every step with the United States.”

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