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Waiting on Israel: US Bear Hugs & Biden knows

First up!
I’m doubtful Biden knows or is aware of how or when Israel will respond- If he did, he’s forgotten, already. Biden is an exploited individual.

Biden says he has good idea of how and when Israel will respond to Iranian attack

US President Joe Biden said Friday that he has a good understanding of how and when Israel plans to respond to Iran’s recent ballistic missile attack.

How are we defining “good understanding”?

Pressed by reporters during a visit to Germany, Biden declined to share any details regarding Israel’s planned response to the October 1 attack missile attack, though his remarks appeared to mark the first time the US indicated it has reached an understanding with Israel on the nature of the retaliation.

Asked by reporters about the prospects of “Middle East peace,” Biden said he sees an “opportunity…that we can probably deal with Israel and Iran in a way that ends the conflict for a while… stops the back and forth.”

“We think that there’s a possibility of working for a ceasefire in Lebanon. It’s going to be harder in Gaza, but we agree that there has to be an outcome, what happens in the day after,” the president added, without elaborating why he thought this way.

For nearly two weeks, Israeli officials said they were still deliberating how to respond to the roughly 200 ballistic missiles fired by Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to consult first with Biden, which didn’t happen until October 10.

Since the call, the US has dispatched a THAAD air defense battery to Israel to protect the country in case of an Iranian reaction to Israel’s reprisal. US soldiers were deployed to operate the system, underscoring US support for Israel’s defense while also undercutting the Jewish state’s long stated position that it will defend itself by itself.


On Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned UN chief Antonio Guterres that Tehran is ready for a “decisive and regretful” response if Israel attacks his country.

Israel has never and was never going to defend itself alone. (Unless it used nukes) The Israeli leadership can make such claims, but, they are just empty words-

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said this week that Israel “will soon respond” to the missile attack, vowing it will be “precise and deadly.”

According to reports this week, Israel has decided on the targets it could potentially strike in Iran.

Channel 12 said the military presented a list of targets to Netanyahu and Gallant as it finalizes preparations, which include “sensitive coordination” with other countries in the region.

2nd- Why Israel Won’t Take the Win ( The killing of Sinwar etc.,)


An interesting opinion peace

Select excerpts,

So maybe, if Biden finally uses his full leverage as Israel’s arms supplier, he can compellingly argue that, as he put it at an earlier juncture, Netanyahu should “take the win.”

But there’s little chance that much of this will happen, and this week’s second big development—the deployment to Israel of that American anti-missile battery—helps explain why. The deployment symbolizes with particular power the longstanding tendency of America’s Israel policy to create what economists call “moral hazard.” (Moral hazard=Lack of incentive to guard against risk where one is protected from its consequences.) The basic idea is that being shielded from the adverse consequences of your actions can encourage risky behavior.

Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute argued in Zeteo this week that Biden has over the last year repeatedly provided such shields for Israel. Whenever Netanyahu escalates the conflict—by, say, invading Lebanon or bombing Iran’s embassy compound in Syria or assassinating (relatively moderate) Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh on Iranian territory—Biden “rushes to defend Israel from the consequences of its own escalation,” Parsi writes. The result is to encourage more escalation.

Bear hug approach?

The Biden administration has argued that this “bear hug” approach allows US policymakers to influence, and sometimes restrain, Israel. But evidence for that argument is sparse.( Actually it’s non existent)

As Biden has continued to arm Israel and defend it on the world stage—and has helped it fend off two rounds of missile strikes from Iran—Netanyahu has opted to expand the war. Parsi writes: “Had Biden refrained from adding additional defensive capabilities to Israel after it needlessly intensified the conflict, the cost of escalation would have been higher for Israel—perhaps even prohibitive.

Biden officials might argue that they pulled off a successful bear hug this week. Media reports suggest that agreeing to send the missile defense system to Israel, along with those 100 troops, played a role in getting Netanyahu to agree that in striking Iran he will avoid particularly sensitive targets, like nuclear facilities and oil refineries.
At least: Those targets won’t be hit this time around. But Netanyahu knows that Tehran will feel compelled to respond forcefully to any powerful Israeli strike, so he can assume there will be a next time. And, with US troops in Israel, he can then feel even more confident than he otherwise would that America will help him deal with blowback from a strike on Iran’s refineries or nuclear facilities. Moral hazard.

The US, Parsi argues, has strong incentives to change course. One is that Iranian missiles could kill US soldiers. If that happens, America could find itself drawn deeply into an intensifying and expanding war. (Of course, from Netanyahu’s perspective, direct American involvement is a feature, not a bug. And note that it could further heighten moral hazard.)

Netanyahu has wanted American troops and American involvement to target Iran for as long as I can recall.

Other main stream media outlets, see below, are stating quite openly that Netanyahu is not going to “take the win” He was never going to- He was always going to escalate and the US, despite it claims to the otherwise, will aid the escalation- I’ve no reason to this situation differently. Perhaps you do?

finally: U.S. hopes Hamas leader’s death will end Gaza war. Israel may have other ideas

WASHINGTON —

President Biden and his senior leadership hailed Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as an “opportunity” to end the yearlong war that has devastated the Gaza Strip and killed thousands of Palestinians.

Speaking Friday in Germany, Biden said he telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and told him the elimination of the radical “terror mastermind” Sinwar meant it was time to find peace.

Israel’s next steps will largely depend on Netanyahu’s own political calculations and those of his ultra-right coalition government, some members of which want to reoccupy Gaza and expel large numbers of Palestinians.

Sinwar’s death “gives Israel sort of the ladder to climb down from the total victory tree and say, ‘OK, we have won the war.’ We can … move toward a different reality on the ground in Gaza,” said Shira Efron, a former Rand Corp. fellow and Israel-based analyst with the Israel Policy Forum in Washington.

But it could also go the other way, she said. Netanyahu can conclude he is on a roll, Hamas is irreparably crippled, and “we should double down on fighting and continue this endless war.”

It is also difficult to predict Hamas’ next actions — defiant rhetoric aside. Much will depend on who succeeds Sinwar and what kind of game plan, if any, he left behind.

It became increasingly clear that Netanyahu and his government repeatedly ignored U.S. advice, or agreed to it but then didn’t follow through. This included entreaties to allow more food, water and medicine into a starving Gaza Strip and minimizing civilian casualties.

Bruce Hoffman, an insurgency expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Israel often disregarded U.S. military advice because “Israel was looking for a new status quo, not a return to the status quo ante … which I’m not sure was understood in Washington.”

I believe Washington understood this- If this geopolitical devotee, that’s me, understood this, Washington simply had too!

“The conventional wisdom is that Sinwar’s death is a potential off ramp for Netanyahu, but that assumes he wants one,” Khaled Elgindy, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington, said in an interview. “He just doesn’t have the same calculations and intentions” as the Americans. “Trying to align American rhetoric with Israeli action has led to total contradiction.”

Late Thursday, Israel released a video of Sinwar’s dying moments. He sat in an armchair in a destroyed building, covered in dust and debris, an arm apparently amputated by mortar fire. A drone moves in to observe him. He uses his last strength to shakily hurl a pole at the drone.

Israelis celebrated these images as a final humiliation to a man whom they saw as evil. But for Palestinians, the video sealed a kind of folk-hero status for the dying Hamas leader, who was seen as defiant to the end, fighting on the front lines.

The video that sealed Sinwar’s heroic status- Agree or disagree with the man and his actions. An individual, mortally wounded, at deaths door, still hurling a large stick at an IDF drone- speaks of a fearlessness that is rare. He was clearly prepared to die alongside other fighters in a way that western leaders are not. It’s usually young men who died in wars fighting for old men. But Sinwar was not a young man, he was an old man who could have been expected to direct battles from a bunker-

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