Joe Biden’s dilemma

The killing of three US servicemen in a drone strike on the Syrian-Jordanian border, claimed by Iran-backed group Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), means the

Gaza war has claimed its first few American casualties and a much wider, much bloodier war is now inevitable. Joe Biden’s promise to “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing” shows exactly why the US is now forced to take this bait and escalate the conflict.

Remember Biden’s remarks, just days before this attack, about how the airstrikes in Yemen were going? “Are they stopping the Houthis? No,” he said. “Are they going to continue? Yes”.

He was right. They didn’t stop or even deter the Houthis. And, far from restoring Red Sea trade, they have only ensured higher freight and insurance fees as commercial operators are forced to stick to the longer, safer yet more expensive route down the Cape of Good Hope right at the bottom of Africa.

Of course they couldn’t just do nothing as a ragtag militia used Iranian rockets and drones to disrupt 25pc of global shipping activity. But now that they have responded, and it’s achieved nothing, what options are they left with as what is effectively Iranian hardware – no matter the plausible deniability – continues to harass what now used to be one of the world’s busiest and most important shipping routes? Especially when the White House keeps saying that it “does not want to escalate the various and interlinked conflicts in the region”.

Meantime Iran has moved another piece on the Middle East chess board, even as it denies remote controlling IRI; also signaling that any retaliation on its soil or against its interests abroad “will be met with a decisive response”. But not hitting Iranian soil and/or interests will seal Biden’s fate in the turbulence of his reelection campaign.

That’s how the elite Pasdaran that run the ayatollahs’ military have pushed Old Joe into a tight corner at home. None of this would have happened if Washington hadn’t refused to take back the blank cheque from Israel despite the genocide in Gaza.

The Republicans are already out for blood, some saying that anything less than “devastating military retaliation” will “confirm Joe Biden as a coward”. Even Democrats are asking for “accountability”. All this because Netanyahu wouldn’t stop killing women and children and the US couldn’t stop giving him the money and weapons for it.

Less than four months into Israel’s revenge, the US and UK are firing missiles at Houthis in Yemen because they’re firing rockets into the sea and now the US is a heartbeat away from striking Iranian soil and/or interests because an Iraqi militia killed three American soldiers and wounded dozens at Tower 22 in Jordan.

The American response will decide how soon militias, proxies and armies go active in the arc from Iran, across Iraq, through Syria and into Lebanon. Washington is pushed into this world of turbulence and volatility only because it made the wrong choice when Israel’s genocide broke the status quo.

Now, just as Gaza is poised to rattle the entire region, the only way to pull the world back from a violently spreading war is to get Israel to come to its senses. Netanyahu is playing with fire, now it will either burn his political future or light up the entire region and across the Persian Gulf.

Tehran has more pieces to move on the board, but Washington has only one – a very hard response. It can either move it forward and trigger much more bloodshed just so Israel can go on with its genocidal tantrum. Or it can pull it back a square or two, but that would mean sacrificing Netanyahu and living in a world where Israel killed tens of thousands of innocent people, but then suffered the mother of all strategic defeats.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024