WASHINGTON — Amidst a week of heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, the Biden administration is adopting a less interventionist stance than usual. High-ranking U.S. officials are refraining from full-blown crisis diplomacy, fearing it could exacerbate the situation.
The U.S. government’s public restraint comes in the wake of explosions of Hezbollah’s communication devices and an Israeli airstrike aimed at a high-ranking Hezbollah operative in Beirut. These incidents risk triggering a full-scale war between Israel and its adversaries in the Middle East, potentially derailing the already shaky negotiations for a cease-fire in the ongoing Hamas conflict in Gaza.
Despite the presence of two Biden administration officials in the region this week to advocate for peace, the escalation continues. This gives the impression that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government is increasingly disregarding the mediation efforts of its key ally, the U.S., despite its reliance on American military support and weaponry.
“The United States appears to be caught off guard at the moment,” commented Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington. “In terms of words, deeds, and action… it’s not leading events, it’s responding to them.”
There has been no public acknowledgment of U.S. contact with Netanyahu since senior White House official Amos Hochstein visited Israel on Monday to caution against escalation. The first wave of device explosions — widely attributed to Israel, which didn’t claim responsibility — occurred the following day.
With Gaza cease-fire negotiations hanging by a thread, Secretary of State Antony Blinken only visited Egypt during his trip to the region this week. U.S. officials expressed concern that a visit to Israel in support of a deal might provoke Netanyahu to make a statement that could undermine the U.S.-led mediation.
When asked about the prospects of a deal in Gaza — which the administration deems crucial for regional peace — President Joe Biden expressed optimism on Friday. “If I ever said it wasn’t realistic, we might as well leave,” Biden told reporters. “A lot of things don’t look realistic until we get them done. We have to keep at it.”
Meanwhile, the White House and State Department have refrained from commenting publicly on the Hezbollah devices that exploded on Tuesday and Wednesday, resulting in at least 37 deaths and thousands of injuries, including civilians. Analysts believe this was a highly sophisticated Israeli intelligence operation.
They also declined to comment on an airstrike on Friday in a densely populated area of Beirut — the deadliest such strike on Lebanon’s capital in years — which claimed the life of a Hezbollah commander. The Israeli military reported that 15 other operatives were also killed. Lebanon’s health ministry stated on Saturday that the strike resulted in at least 31 deaths, including seven women and three children.
Netanyahu and Hamas have often responded to direct U.S. diplomatic outreach with inflammatory rhetoric or surprise attacks, which the U.S. views as setbacks to truce efforts.
Blinken seemed to include the pager explosions as the latest instance of this pattern.
“When mediators seem to make progress in a Gaza deal, often there’s an ‘incident, something that makes the process more difficult, that threatens to slow it, stop it, derail it,'” Blinken said in Egypt, responding to reporters’ questions about the pager attacks.
High-level contact with Netanyahu may still occur when he travels to New York for next week’s U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders, according to U.S. officials familiar with the discussions. However, they also acknowledge that the situation is so volatile that taking a public stance either strongly in favor of or against Israel would likely do more harm than good.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller dismissed a question about whether the lack of a cease-fire deal despite months of Biden administration visits to the Middle East was making Blinken and other officials appear ineffective in regional capitals.
“So far, we have been successful in preventing it from turning into an all-out regional war,” Miller said. He credited U.S. messaging — sometimes through intermediaries, to Iran, its militia allies in the region, and to Israel.
The Biden administration highlighted that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been in contact this week with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant. However, Gallant’s position is reportedly at risk.
Critics argue that the administration is pushing a Gaza deal that has repeatedly failed to gain acceptance from the warring parties and has been outpaced by the escalation of the conflict. They suggest that the administration could do more diplomatically, such as rallying Middle Eastern countries to increase pressure on Israel, Iran, and the latter’s proxies to cease hostilities, according to Katulis, the Middle East Institute analyst.
U.S. officials dismissed claims that they have abandoned either a Gaza cease-fire or efforts to prevent the conflict from escalating into a full-scale war in Lebanon.
“We’d be the first ones to recognize … that we are not closer to achieving that than we were even a week or so ago,” national security spokesman John Kirby said on Friday.
“But nobody’s giving up,” Kirby added, reiterating that the U.S. was collaborating with fellow mediators Qatar and Egypt to formulate a final Gaza proposal to present to Israel and Hamas. “We’re still going to keep pushing on this.”
Agree: It’s important for the US to consider the consequences of their actions in the Middle East.
Good punctuation and grammar, agree: It’s crucial for the US to prioritize stability and peaceful resolutions in the Middle East to prevent further conflict.