Daniel DePetris: Is the Middle East in danger of spinning out of control?

There is only so much a single person can do to control the events around them. Joe Biden is learning in real time that one of life’s golden rules also applies to the president of the United States.

Despite holding the most powerful position in the world, Biden is finding it increasingly difficult to accomplish one of his top priorities in the Middle East today: ensuring the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza doesn’t snowball into a wider escalation that draws in the region’s big powers. If anything, regardless of Biden’s best efforts, the risk of a regional conflagration may only grow as long as the fighting in Gaza persists — and if we take Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s word for it, Israel is no mood to stop its military offensive anytime soon.

Netanyahu aims to destroy Hamas in its entirety and deradicalize the Palestinian polity, understandable objectives given the depravities of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. But they portend a dismal future ahead for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, many of whom have nothing to do with Hamas. More than 21,000 Palestinians have already died over the last 12 weeks, according to health officials, in what is the most ferocious urban assault this century.

If you take Israel’s word for it, thousands of Hamas fighters have been killed, but that still leaves around 15,000 to 20,000 members left in its ranks. Even if Israel were to miraculously kill them all, the notion that Hamas will simply disappear, as Netanyahu seems to think, is contradicted by the fact that the organization is an integral part of the Palestinian social fabric. U.S. officials aren’t confident Israel’s maximalist goals can be accomplished.

What’s happening outside the immediate war zone, however, might be even more concerning to Biden. Unlike the fighting in Gaza, which the White House has reiterated won’t involve U.S. troops in any capacity, the flare-up in violence around the region could very well pull the U.S. into a conflict it doesn’t want to fight.

The Israel-Lebanon border, fragile but relatively peaceful since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, is for all intents and purposes a theater of active hostilities. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah have launched attacks against each other’s positions for nearly three months. Although the Hezbollah missile attacks and Israeli airstrikes have been confined to the border region, the Israelis are signaling with renewed vigor that a big military operation against Hezbollah may be a matter of when, not if.

For Netanyahu, allowing a Lebanese terrorist organization to permanently displace tens of thousands of Israelis is simply unsustainable and exposes his coalition government as a bit powerless. While his government’s first priority remains dislodging Hamas, pushing Hezbollah away from Israel’s northern border is a close second.

“There are only two options — a political solution or military operation,” Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen commented recently. “We will grant a certain amount of time for a political solution. And if none is (reached), all options are on the table.”

War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz echoed those remarks: “The stopwatch for a diplomatic solution is running out. If the world and the Lebanese government don’t act in order to prevent the firing on Israel’s northern residents, and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the (Israeli military) will do it.”

About 1,500 miles to the south, off Yemen’s coast, another flashpoint is growing in intensity. Civilian tankers and vessels using the Red Sea as a shortcut to European ports have been targeted by the Houthis for weeks. The Iran-supported Houthis claim that any ships traveling to Israel or linked to Israel in any way will be attacked, yet in reality, the Houthi missile and drone strikes have been indiscriminate.

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The situation has prompted the U.S. Navy to volunteer as the Red Sea’s police force. On Dec. 26, the USS Laboon and U.S. fighter aircraft shot down 12 attack drones, three ballistic missiles and two cruise missiles. Two days later, another U.S. warship, the USS Mason, neutralized a drone and a ballistic missile, which marked the 22nd attempt by the Houthis to attack civilian ships since Oct. 19.

The problem has gotten to such a point that Washington organized a coalition of the willing to preserve freedom of navigation in the area. The problem: Like other multilateral initiatives, it’s the U.S. doing most of the work and taking on most of the risk.

The ongoing confrontation between Israel and Iran is accelerating as well. On Christmas Day, an Israeli airstrike killed a high-ranking Iranian general, Seyed Razi Mousavi, in Damascus, Syria. Mousavi was a longtime member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; a close associate of its former leader, Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2020; and was supposedly in charge of funneling Iranian weapons to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and Syria. Earlier in December, another Israeli airstrike near Damascus killed two Revolutionary Guard officers who were serving as advisers to the Syrian army.

In both cases, Tehran strongly denounced the attacks and pledged retaliation at a time and place of its choosing. Those statements should be taken seriously; the Iranians have a history of retaliating for what they see as past transgressions, whether it be covert operations on their nuclear program or assassinations of senior military leadership.

For Biden, this chain of events is an ominous one that is becoming ever more difficult to contain. Unfortunately, these events also serve as a reminder that, despite its best intentions, the U.S. is not an all-powerful force that can bring peace into existence. Local actors are the key decision-makers.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

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