Projecting a Churchillian pose during his address before Congress in July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that the United States and Israel need to “stand together” in combatting Iran’s aggression and that Israel was protecting U.S. interests by standing up to Tehran. “Give us the tools faster and we’ll finish the job,” he proclaimed.
Indeed, when he was fighting alone against Nazi Germany, British prime minister Winston Churchill requested that American president Franklin Roosevelt provide his country with financial and military assistance to help it fight against Adolf Hitler.
However, the historical analogy advanced by Netanyahu was incomplete. Churchill had a more important item on his agenda. He wanted to press Roosevelt and the isolationist American people to join the war in Europe. He recognized that Britain could defeat the German war machine only if the Americans fought side-by-side with them.
Indeed, the speculation in Washington in recent years was that Netanyahu, like Churchill at the start of World War II, was hoping to create conditions that would lead the Americans into direct military intervention on the side of Israel in a war with Iran.
But in the aftermath of the long failed military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Americans are clearly not interested in being drawn into another war in the Middle East. Hence, American concerns that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would ignite a massive Iranian reaction and force the United States to deploy military forces to defend Israel gained validity.
In order to prevent such a scenario, President Biden refused to give Israel the green light to attack Iran’s oil and nuclear facilities. From this perspective, the JCPOA nuclear deal with Tehran was aimed at freezing Iran’s nuclear program and thus denying Israel an excuse to launch a preemptive military strike against Iran.
The U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal and the series of military moves by Israel since October 7, 2023, have led to a direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran, changing the situation and requiring the Americans to protect Israel, the scenario that the Americans wanted to avert and Netanyahu was hoping would materialize.
In a way, the first step in that direction has been taken with the U.S. decision to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, including 100 U.S. troops, to help defend Israel against the potent missile threat from Iran and its regional allies, most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon.
That means that against the backdrop of Israel’s retaliation against Iran, U.S. troops are now fighting side-by-side with Israel. A possible Iranian reaction to such a move could create the conditions under which American soldiers could be directly engaged in a war with Iran.
Netanyahu, who had no choice under the pressure of the Biden administration but to agree not to attack Iran’s nuclear and oil sites, is hoping that a Donald Trump presidency will provide him with a green light to take such an action.
It’s true that Republican members of Congress applauded Netanyahu’s call for Israel and the United States to stand together in the struggle with Iran. Yet, even a Trump administration would find it difficult to win public support for a new war in the Middle East. The argument that Israel drew the United States into a military intervention (with all the casualties and expenditures that would entail) would ignite anti-Israeli public sentiments—and not only among members of the progressive Left.
Moreover, as the strategic center of gravity shifts to East Asia, reflecting Trump’s own geopolitical views, the Pentagon doesn’t have an interest in joining a new military exercise in the Middle East whose prime goal is to protect Israel that doesn’t seem to be able to restrain its military power.
And at a time when the isolationist forces in the two big political parties are gaining strength, another military quagmire in the Middle East would only play into the hands of those Americans who urge that the United States disengage from the Middle East and bid farewell to its players, including Israel. In the same way that the 1956 Suez War marked the end of the British and French military interventions in the Middle East, a costly war with Iran could help bring an end to the American age in that region.
Dr. Leon Hadar is a contributing editor with The National Interest, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, and a former research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He has taught at American University in Washington, DC, and the University of Maryland, College Park. A columnist and blogger with Haaretz (Israel) and Washington correspondent for the Business Times of Singapore, he is a former United Nations bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post.
Image: Elyasaf Jehuda / Shutterstock.com.
