Will Netanyahu Maneuver The US Into A Major Regional War?

Many savvy commentators believe that’s Netanyahu’s goal, and Netanyahu himself seems to confirm that. The Zhou regime in the US is acting as if it can handle the escalating crisis in the Middle East, but one can be forgiven for doubting that. Their war on Russia has been a monumental screw-up from get go, and there’s no reason to expect their genocide campaign in Palestine to work out any better. In fact, it bids fair to end far worse, as it quickly takes on global dimensions.

The latest evidence can be briefly summarized. Despite the barrage of Israeli propaganda, it’s clear that the genocide campaign in Palestine isn’t going well. Former Israeli Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, has said that Israel is losing the war, based on the high casualties, and that the only win would be Netanyahu’s removal. Claimed losses inflicted on Hamas are also being authoritatively called into question:

Megatron @Megatron_ron

Major General of the Israeli Reserve Yitzhak Brik:

"The number of Hamas members killed by our forces on the ground is much lower than what is reported in the media.

Most of our dead and wounded were hit by Hamas explosive devices and anti-tank missiles.

Creating images of victory before we are even close to achieving our goals can be extremely harmful.

Destroying the Hamas tunnels will take many years and will cost Israel many deaths.

Officers fighting in the Gaza Strip said it was impossible to stop Hamas from rebuilding itself."

12:07 PM · Dec 26, 2023

Despite these major setbacks, Netanyahu is proclaiming the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza as Israel’s goal—and the US continues to provide Israel with what can only be termed weapons of mass destruction for indiscriminate use on the civilian population—vast numbers of 2k lb. bombs.

Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal

#GenocideJoeBiden has shipped over 10,000 tons of military aid to Israel since October 7, and shows no sign of stopping as Netanyahu openly admits Israel’s objective is exploiting Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe to drive ethnic cleansing

7:14 AM · Dec 26, 2023

Yeah: sic. They mean ‘emigration.'

Alastair Crooke has a typically smart article in which he maps out Netanyahu’s strategy to drag the US into a major Middle East war for which the US is unprepared, but which Netanyahu sees as the only way of securing a Greater Israel:

Netanyahu Outsmarted by ‘Wily’ Biden? No, Biden Is the One Being Played

Biden smirked and responded, “I know”, when told by a guest that Netanyahu is drawing the U.S. into a civilisational conflict – ...

Are you up for a “civilizational conflict”? Me neither.

In practice, what Netanyahu is doing is simply mounting a classic flanking manoeuvre – attempting to circumvent Biden by pointing to the ‘broader conflict’ with Iran: ‘Why are you pestering me about Gaza when there’s a monumental conflict raging’, suggests Bibi in exasperation?

“This is not only ‘our war’ but in many ways your war… This is a battle against the Iranian axis… now threatening to close the maritime strait of Bab Al-Mandeb… It is the interest … of the entire civilized community”, Netanyahu has said – not very subtly.

Never mind that it is the single minded Zionist campaign against the Palestinian population since before WW2—which has escalated dramatically in recent decades to a massive campaign of dispossession and ethnic cleansing—that has led to the current conflict.

As Crooke sees it, the US strategy is to prevent a wider war by supporting the genocide in Gaza but controlling conflict in other areas:

So, the U.S. is assembling a maritime force to confront AnsarAllah in Yemen; the Biden Admin will act to sanction violent settlers in the West Bank; it is warning Baghdad to rein-in the Hashad al Sha’abi; and his envoys in Beirut are trying to forge a ‘diplomatic agreement’ that will include the withdrawal of Hizbullah’s Radwan Forces to the other side of the Litani River in southern Lebanon, and also deal with the unresolved border disputes between Israel and Lebanon.

The problem is that the US isn’t in control in any of these areas, while Netanyahu seeks escalation to get the US in up to its neck—no more of standing off on the high seas.

Netanyahu knows that ‘no way’ will Hizbullah disarm, and withdraw to north of the Litani. ...

…

Netanyahu knows too that control over settler violence in the West Bank lies not with him, but is in the hands of his partners: i.e., Ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich. Neither he, nor Biden can dictate to them – they have been quietly increasing the squeeze on West Bank Palestinians for months.

And finally, Netanyahu knows the Houthis: They will not be deterred by Biden’s maritime flotilla. They will, rather, relish drawing the West into a Red Sea quagmire.

Like it or not, Biden’s tactic of containing and pre-empting regional escalation through the U.S. itself becoming lead actor – in lieu of Israel – is clearly drawing the U.S. deeper into conflict. Does Biden believe that the Houthis will just quietly ‘roll-over’ because the Gerald Ford is anchored off Bab Al-Mandeb, or that Hizbullah will accept instruction from Amos Hochstein?

An important part of the equation is the inability of the US to control not just Houthis and Hezbollah and Iran, but Israel also. Crooke discusses—at length—the reasons for that and concludes with a grim picture of how the US is blundering deeper into a quagmire:

The U.S. is directly engaged today in Yemen, Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq and Syria. And as the war widens, so the U.S. will be held at least partly responsible – You deliberately let Gaza break, and what’s broken, you own. What further gets broke, you own that too.

A destitute 2 million Gazans will be all refugees with no government to provide basic functions and services. Does Netanyahu get it? Of course. Do the vast majority of Israelis care? Nope. But the rest of the world does, and sees a dark stain spreading across the map, and leeching into the West.

And does the U.S. Red Sea flotilla; does the diplomatic effort in Lebanon; do the frantic calls to China to ask for help to rein-in Iran, and the efforts in Baghdad – will this suffice to bring an end to the Axis’ plan?

No – the Resistance must see the U.S. floundering and that Israel – suffused with anger – is positively inviting the next ascent up the escalatory ladder of diffused incremental wider conflict.

So, a few points. The Axis of Resistance has a plan—and its working. The economic pressure on Israel and its Western supporters is growing, US military preparedness, already at a low point, is being further degraded. The Non-West is not interested in becoming complicit in genocide, and much of the West has developed cold feet at this point, too. And not just the West. India, which in recent years has had warm relations with Israel, is also backing out: India’s turnaround on Palestine has more than meets the eye. Indian foreign policy officials are realizing that the US navy is no longer in a position to project the force needed to protect the maritime traffic that India depends upon. Nor does continued alignment with “Israeli methods of brutal repression or assassination as part of statecraft, apartheid policies and so on” any longer serve Indian interests:

The incidents of October 7 have been an eye opener for Indians, which has exposed not only Israel’s frailties as a modern state but also its military’s bluster and intelligence’s failure. The acolytes of Israel in the Indian strategic community feel utterly disillusioned. Simply put, an influential constituency in India and the interest groups that it spawned are no longer calling the shots in Delhi. This is going to be consequential.

Thus, in the civilizational war that Netanyahu is seeking, the lineup is starting to look like the American Empire going it alone on Israel’s behalf against the non-Western civilizational lineup that looks something like Russia, China, Iran, and India. While also continuing to confront Russia in Ukraine. And Netanyahu is egging that coming conflict on. The Israeli assassination of an Iranian general in Damascus looks very much like an attempt to stoke hotter conflict on other fronts than Gaza to inevitably draw the US in deeper.

Max Blumenthat draws attention to the assessment of a well known Iranian geopolitical thinker, Trita Parsi. Parsi points in a direction similar to that of Crooke (who wrote before the assassination hit the news):

Some brief analysis of the implications of the assassination of Iran’s top commander in Syria, Radhi Mousavi, presumably by Israel.

Bottom line: Israel either killed Mousavi as a warning to Iran, given Tehran’s support for the Houthis’ targeting of ships in the Red Sea, as a provocation to beget an Iranian response that would give Israel the pretext to enlarge the war, or as a preparatory move to enlarge the war regardless of Iran’s response.

This next paragraph is important. Parsi sees that the US doesn’t “necessarily” have an interest in a broader conflict—but that Israel appears to be pushing for exactly that.

It is very likely that Israel is behind the assassination of Mousavi since it is the only power with both a motive and capacity to pull off such a killing - not to mention a long history of assassinating Iranian operatives. The US has the capacity but not necessarily the motive. The analysis below rests on the rather safe assumption that Mousavi was assassinated by Israel.

US intelligence believes that Iran has been actively involved in the Houthi movement’s targeting of ships in the Red Sea, which has effectively closed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait for Israel and cost the Israeli economy billions of dollars. The Houthis insist they will continue the attacks - despite threats of retaliation from the US - until Israel ceases its bombardment of Gaza. Israel, of course, refuses and Biden is loath to press Israel for a ceasefire. From Israel’s perspective, Iran is not paying a price for its alleged role in the Red Sea attacks. The assassination may, as a result, be a warning to Iran that Israel has the capacity and willingness to exact a price from Iran - even in areas where the Iranians may have presumed that they are safe.

Parsi’s “second scenario” is quite explicitly along the lines of Crooke’s thinking. Israel is lost without constant supply and resupply of vast amounts of US munitions. From the Israeli perspective this has to stop, and the only way to accomplish that is to get the US involved—in a very major way.

In a second scenario, the assassination may be a deliberate provocation to beget an Iranian response that would give Israel the pretext to enlarge the war. While the Biden administration has given Israel a complete green light to bomb Gaza to smithers, Biden opposes an expansion of the war since that very likely could drag the US into it. The debate inside the Israeli government is increasingly leaning toward expanding the war - they have already mobilized +300,000 troops and there is a growing belief in Israel that it simply is intolerable for Israel to live next to Hezbollah. [Israel] thought they could manage the threat from Hamas - and they couldn’t. Even though it wasn’t Hezbollah that attacked Israel on Oct 7, the Israeli argument is that next time it might be Hezbollah, and as a result, Israel has no choice but to expand the war. But unless there is an attack from Iran or Hezbollah itself, the US may continue to oppose such a move.

But the assassination of Mousavi may cause Iran to retaliate against Israel via Hezbollah, the reasoning goes, and Israel can then use Hezbollah’s action as a pretext to not only expand the war to Lebanon - but also force the US to go along with it. There is also a third explanation. According to Amwaj Media,

Mousavi was in charge of facilitating the entry of Iran-led forces and arms shipments to Syria as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. If Israel intends to attack Lebanon, taking out Mousavi could be a logical first step to disrupt the arming of Hezbollah as well as its supply lines. As such, the assassination may be a preparatory move to enlarge the war regardless of Iran’s response to the killing of Mousavi.

The bottom line. Read it carefully:

All of these scenarios point to one undeniable reality: As long as Biden refuses to pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire in Gaza, tensions in the region will continue to rise and the Middle East will gravitate towards a regional war that very likely will engulf the US as well. **Biden may think that he can control these events** and allow Israel to slaughter the people in Gaza while keeping a lid on the escalation risk. **He is likely wrong** - and the American people may soon find themselves in yet another unnecessary war in the Middle East because of Biden’s strategic incompetence.//

Zhou is under intense pressure from the Israel Lobby to support Netanyahu to the hilt, and he’s getting little pushback from our captive Congress. His entire foreign policy and national security team is composed of Neocons, who tell him what they want him to hear.