The unrelenting violence that has erupted since Hamas attacked Israel Oct. 7 now has engulfed parts of six countries in the Middle East and raised the alarming possibility that it could explode into a regional war.
It’s not exactly the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing campaign that started America’s war in Iraq in 2003, not yet, but the impacts of the escalation are already too real.
Recent U.S. airstrikes against Iranian proxy forces in Iraq, Syria and Yemen have been fierce and targeted but so far limited to specific arms sites and militant groups attacking U.S. forces or international shipping in the region. Still, it’s clear a wider war is already underway, and President Joe Biden is right to try to contain it and keep it from spreading. Both the U.S. and Iran claim they don’t seek a regional war, and they would be wise not to go there. Once a match is lit in the Mideast, it’s hard to control the fire.
Three American service members were killed and more than 40 others injured in a drone attack in Jordan in late January. The U.S. retaliated on Feb. 2 with strikes on dozens of sites of Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Iraq and Syria, thought to be the groups that planned and struck the U.S. base in Jordan. The Pentagon has indicated there is more action to come. Separately, the U.S., the United Kingdom and allied forces for the past month have been striking Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who have fired on ships and disrupted trade in the Red Sea. Lebanon’s Hezbollah forces, also backed by Iran, have been exchanging fire across the border with Israel.
All of this started four months ago when some 3,000 Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists broke through the Gaza border and killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis, raped and tortured civilians, and took some 240 hostages to the tunnels and warrens of Gaza. That set off an Israeli military invasion of Gaza that now has claimed more than 27,000 Palestinian lives, 70% of them women and children; destroyed 65,000 housing units; displaced 1.7 million people; and left many Gazans facing starvation.
The Biden administration was right to support Israel after the atrocities committed by Hamas that started the war. But international outrage is growing over how Israel has waged its operation to eliminate Hamas and retrieve the hostages, given the staggering numbers of civilian casualties. That, in turn, continues to fuel outrage and attacks by this “Axis of Resistance” of Arab militias backed by Iran across the region, which demand an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and threaten Israel, U.S. interests and allies in the region.
The danger looms that the U.S. could be sucked into a longer-term regional war, but it’s not yet inevitable, according to Aaron David Miller, a Mideast expert and former adviser to six secretaries of state in Republican and Democratic administrations.
“It’s been ever-present since the beginning of the crisis, and I think there are a couple of ways to get there,” Miller told me. He warned of possible scenarios such as a “major escalation across the Israel-Lebanon border” that could dwarf the Lebanon War in 2006 and ignite more violence by Iran’s proxy militias, attacks on U.S. embassies or an escalation of U.S. military strikes.
“What would make it a regional war would be direct strikes against Iran, responses by Israel and Iran firing back with ballistic missiles. That’s a regional war. We’ve never seen that before. I am not predicting it goes there,” said Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It has remained more or less stable so far, and the rules of the game have been preserved.”
What Iran wants is to bloody America and drive it from the region. That’s not happening; nor should it. So far, Biden is rightly focusing on diplomacy, not waging wider war. There is no upside for the administration to get the U.S. involved in another Mideast conflagration.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken just completed his fifth recent trip to the region to discuss Israel’s security and a hostage deal, urge Israel to better protect civilians and increase humanitarian aid for desperate Gazans — and gather support from moderate Arab states for a plan to offer Palestinians a path to a two-state political solution. It is painfully obvious there is no military solution to this conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains as opposed as ever to U.S. calls for a Palestinian state after the war ends and the trauma eases for both peoples. Netanyahu’s rejection of that political horizon has frustrated pro-peace, pro-Israel groups such as J Street in the U.S., an organization advocating for U.S. policies that promote Jewish and democratic values for Israel.
“The most challenging thing now as this continues, and more and more people are dying, is the question of the day after,” said Adina Vogel-Ayalon, chief of staff of J Street in Washington. “I find it so cynical that this Israeli government continues to dismiss any real discussion for what a viable, stable and secure future would look like — in favor of their own survival.”
J Street advocates a diplomatic solution. Vogel-Ayalon said groups like hers endorse growing efforts in Congress to put guardrails on future U.S. funding to Israel to ensure the aid is not spent on actions at odds with U.S. policies. “We support military assistance to Israel. It should be able to defend itself, but the U.S. has the right to have accountability,” she told me.
One area of concern by J Street is the escalation of attacks by Jewish settlers on Arab villages and the Israeli military during government operations in the occupied West Bank since Oct. 7. Those attacks have killed 300 Palestinians and displaced more than 1,200.
Like the catastrophe in Gaza, the violence in the West Bank is radicalizing a new generation of Arabs. For all Tehran’s claims it does not seek escalation or regional war, Iran has carefully trained, armed and unleashed its proxy militias in a ring of fire around Israel.
“These groups are the wild cards,” a retired senior U.S. diplomat observed. “They may want to spread this conflict. They may not be controllable now.”
Storer H. Rowley, a former national editor and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, teaches journalism and communication at Northwestern University.