Biden on Israel Strike: “I Hope This Is the End”

Israel’s first publicly acknowledged strike on Iran is met with shrugs

Israel struck Iran on Friday in the escalating tit-for-tat war between the two nations but neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump has yet felt it necessary to meaningfully explain how they will resolve yet another never-ending war. Or even comment on the strike at all, which neither did until the next day. The night of the attack, Trump instead yukked it up with podcaster Joe Rogan while Harris held a rally with superstar Beyonce. 

“Israel is attacking — we've got a war going on, and she’s out partying,” Trump said on Saturday at a rally in Michigan, declining to mention his own three-hour-long gabfest with Rogan. 

Are these people running for president, or the People’s Choice Awards?

The strike, by the Pentagon’s own admission, threatens to further escalate and engulf the United States in even more war. That neither presidential candidate has said anything meaningful about a matter of such importance to our national security, just days before a presidential election, is a national disgrace.

The White House has also been virtually silent, leaving it to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to once again declare that the United States has “ironclad” support for Israel. Austin reiterated this administration's longstanding position that there is no war going on outside of Gaza, just minor conflicts. As Austin puts it, the U.S. “is determined to prevent any actor from exploiting tensions or expanding the conflict in the region.”

In what universe has the conflict not already expanded? For more than a year, we've been told that U.S. military forces — aircraft carriers, cruise missile shooting submarines, fighter aircraft, air defenses, and more troops — are there in the Middle East to "deter" Iran and prevent further escalation. And yet in that same time, Iran has already attacked Israel twice and Israel is at war with every "H" it can find: Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi. 

Washington and its cheerleaders want you to think that it is restraining Israel even as it supplies the nation with weapons it needs to sustain combat. The New York Times, for example, reported that the attack “raised fears of a wider war” — as if Israel’s first ever publicly acknowledged military operation inside Iran isn’t already a wider war. 

Yesterday afternoon, after the headlines had passed, Harris finally addressed the strike with a brief statement that put to rest any speculation that she might try something different with U.S. foreign policy. “I feel very strongly, we as the United States feel very strongly that Iran must stop what it is doing in terms of the threat that it presents to the region, and we will always defend Israel against any attacks by Iran in that way,” she told reporters in Michigan the day after the attack. “Of course, we maintain the importance of supporting Israel's right to defend itself.”

As for her personal vision of a foreign policy, Harris said that “we are also very adamant that we must see de-escalation in the region going forward and that will be our focus.”

In other words, the Harris administration will pursue two thrusts: escalating by continuing to arm Israel and de-escalating by saying shit that has no actual meaning.  

One of the administration’s favorite meaningless terms is “deterrence,” which the Pentagon uses refer to countless deployments and redeployments of U.S. forces to the region over the past year. What exactly the U.S. is deterring at this point is unclear. Even the Defense Intelligence Agency affirmed this week that Iran is not actively pursuing a nuclear bomb, after a year of war in Gaza.

Trump’s view on Iran centers on its acquisition of a nuclear weapon, both promising to “end” the Iran nuclear deal while also saying he doesn’t want to get involved in any kind of regime change scheme. “We can't get totally involved in all that. We can't run ourselves, let's face it,” Trump says.

“I would like to see Iran be very successful,” Trump also says, referring to their development into a trading partner, unspecified Deals being his answer to everything. “The only thing is, they can't have a nuclear weapon.” 

Meanwhile, deterrence extraordinaire Lloyd Austin insists it’s all over. In speaking to his Israeli counterpart, Austin says he “made clear that Iran should not make the mistake of responding to Israel's strikes, which should mark the end of this exchange."

For Austin, who will undoubtedly leave office in January no matter who’s president, this literally marks the end. He leaves behind unresolved and escalated wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, with American forces engaged in combat in at least a half dozen countries. It has become so routine that the news media seems uninterested in challenging either candidate on that, both the reality and what they really plan to do about the mess.

President Biden, for his part, was at least candid enough to disclose some uncertainty. “I hope this is the end,” he said yesterday.

That might be the hope in the giant echo chamber that is Washington, but it is only in that alternate reality that the war has ended.

— Edited by William M. Arkin