Biden Must Again Prevent a Wider Middle East War
As Iran and Israel prepare to keep taking an eye for an eye, the US president must ensure the whole region won’t end up blind.
The room that matters most now.
Photographer: Adam Schultz/The White House via Getty Images
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, as Mahatma Gandhi allegedly said. After Iran’s massive retaliation for the Israeli strike against Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus, it now falls to US President Joe Biden to prevent subsequent rounds of escalation from blinding the entire Middle East, or even the world. Biden must punish Iran diplomatically but also restrain Israel.
This will be unfathomably hard. Since the sadistic terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, Biden has had to balance objectives that are often in conflict. He has to show his support for Israel, which he again reaffirmed as “ironclad” after Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles against Israel this weekend. Simultaneously, he has to minimize the death and suffering of civilians in Gaza, a goal at which he has so far failed. And third, he has to stop the war from becoming regional or even global, a prospect that is possible because the militias attacking Israel are backed by Iran, which is aligned with Russia and China.