Three reports published since Iran’s April 13 combined missile and UAV assault on Israel stand out for what the tell us about the nature of U.S. policy in relation to the war.
First, on Sunday Reuters reported that Turkey mediated between Iran and the United States to agree on the size and scope of Iran’s assault on Israel before Iran carried it out. A Turkish diplomatic source told the news agency that, “Iran informed Turkey in advance of its planned operation against Israel…[and] Washington had conveyed to Tehran via Ankara that any action it took had to be ‘within certain limits.’”
The Turkish diplomat told Reuters that the mediation was conducted by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken.
“Iran informed us in advance of what would happen. Possible developments also came up during the meeting with Blinken, and they [the U.S.] conveyed to Iran through us that this reaction must be within certain limits,” the official said.
The second story, reported widely by the U.S. and Israeli media, revealed that the United States is pressuring Israel to suffice with a “symbolic” counterattack against Iran. In other words, U.S. President Joe Biden and his team are telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government that Israel can conduct a bit of a sound and light show over Iran, but it may not do any meaningful damage to Iran’s military, missile, nuclear, energy, or regime targets. Blinken reportedly went so far as to tell Minister Benny Gantz and Jewish leaders in the United States that it isn’t in Israel’s interests to attack Iran.
Finally, on Thursday morning, Qatari media reported that the United States has agreed that Israel may attack Hamas’s final redoubt in Rafah, along the Egyptian border, but only if Israel’s strike against Iran is little and mild.
The most startling feature common to all three stories is the sense that for the administration, everything that is happening here is a game. It isn’t a war. At best, it’s a playground fight, or a video game. The reports indicate that as the Americans see things, Iran and its terror armies in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq are children. And they’re ganging up on Israel—another child. It’s Uncle Sam’s job to be the grownup and set rules for their fight that give everyone a chance to get his licks in—but only so hard, and only so many.
The rules Biden and his team have set are fairly straightforward. Iran and its proxies are permitted to attack Israel as hard as they can. Israel is allowed to defend against their attacks. Israel is permitted to carry out limited—preferably covert—raids to counterattack.
Israel is not allowed to defeat its foes.
Consider the administration’s narrative about Iran’s April 13 strike on Israel. The U.S. version of events asserts that Iran attacked Israel in response to the April 1 airstrike in Damascus, attributed to Israel, which took out Mohammad Reza Zahedi, Iran’s terror master in Syria and Lebanon. Zahedi was killed along with six other top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers and Hezbollah terrorists, including his deputy in an IRGC military compound adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus. Zahedi was reputedly the mastermind of Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion and slaughter in Israel that left 1,200 Israelis dead and 246 taken hostage in Gaza.
The problem with the U.S. narrative is that Israel and Iran are in an active state of war across multiple battlefields, including Damascus. Zahedi was not merely a legitimate military target—his role as commander of all Iranian operations in Lebanon and Syria made killing him an operational imperative. To see the Iranian strike against Israel as a simple response to a lone attack is to ignore the fact that a war is raging.
The U.S. narrative also ignores the substance of Iran’s assault on Israel.
Iran combined missile and drone assault against Israel—which included 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones—was the largest such assault in the history of war. As retired General Kenneth McKenzie, who commanded U.S. forces in the Middle East until 2022, explained to The Washington Post, Iran expended “maximum effort” in amassing the force of drones, ballistic and cruise missiles with which it attacked Israel. There was “nothing moderate” about Tehran’s aggression, which he assessed included most of the missile arsenal that the regime had based in western Iran.
- Now is the time for choosing - April 29, 2024
- The Biden administration’s war against the government of Israel - April 4, 2024
- The triumph of the blood libel - March 26, 2024