‘Dead end’? US shows lack of leverage as Israel pounds Lebanon

Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese city of Baalbeck in the Bekaa valley on September 23, 2024. Agence France-Presse

UNITED NATIONS — For nearly a year, one of US President Joe Biden’s top priorities has been to prevent the Gaza war from spiraling into an all-out regional conflict.

Weeks ahead of an election — and just as Biden begins his farewell visit to the UN General Assembly — Israel is pounding Lebanon, killing hundreds and highlighting the powerlessness of his warnings.

Biden, meeting the leader of the United Arab Emirates on Monday, insisted that his administration was still “working to de-escalate” in coordination with counterparts.

READ: Israeli strikes kill 492 in Lebanon

A US official on the sidelines of the United Nations gathering said the Biden administration was presenting “concrete ideas” to provide an “off-ramp” to prevent further fighting and lead to a diplomatic solution.

But events have quickly moved out of US control. Last week, when pagers exploded across Lebanon targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, the United States said it had no foreknowledge of the operation widely attributed to Israel and appealed for calm.

Instead, Israel quickly stepped up its attacks, saying on Monday that it had hit 1,000 Hezbollah sites over the past 24 hours. Lebanese authorities said 492 people were killed, including 35 children.

READ: Biden to welcome UAE leader Monday to discuss Gaza, Sudan

Nearly a year after an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel that prompted its relentless assault on Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brushed aside warnings of the dangers of regional war and said his country’s goal was to change the “security balance” with its northern neighbor Lebanon.

The operation came after weeks of painstaking US-led diplomacy to reach a Gaza ceasefire failed to seal a deal, with Netanyahu insisting on an Israeli troop presence on the Gaza-Egypt border, and a dispute with Hamas on the release of prisoners.

Michael Hanna, director of the US program at the International Crisis Group, said that US diplomats had based efforts for calm in Lebanon on reaching a Gaza ceasefire.

The Gaza truce effort “looks like it’s at a dead end, and efforts to decouple the two — to reach an agreement between Hezbollah and Israel while the war in Gaza continues, has also proven to be a dead end,” he said.

Political calendar

Complicating matters is the US political calendar, with Biden’s heir Kamala Harris locked in a tough race against Donald Trump for the US presidency ahead of November 5 elections.

While Biden and Harris would be eager to avoid all-out war and the impression of chaos, few believe that the US administration would take major steps against Israel, given the domestic political risks involved, so close to the election.

“It is not particularly far-fetched to imagine that the US political calendar may have played into Israeli decision-making on when to expand” into Lebanon, Hanna said.

James Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey who takes a hard line against Iran, said that US policymakers instinctively promoted ceasefires but that Netanyahu, like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, was more concerned about his country’s security.

“We are already in a regional war and have been for the past 20 years,” said Jeffrey, now at the Wilson Center in Washington.

“Iran is now being pushed back and has lost one of its major proxies at least for the moment — Hamas — and another, Hezbollah, is under stress,” he said.

Netanyahu “has prioritized restoring deterrence and regaining military superiority over anything like pleasing Washington and the international community,” he said.

US support for Israel

Biden has repeatedly voiced concern to Netanyahu over the plight of civilians in Gaza but has mostly held off on using the ultimate US leverage — withholding the billions of dollars in US military aid to Israel.

The Pentagon on Monday said that the United States would send additional troops to the Middle East, a move taken by Israel as a sign of US commitment to its ally if the conflict escalates further.

Also potentially emboldening Israel has been Washington’s muted responses to actions attributed to Israel, including the assassination of the Hamas political chief as he visited Tehran in July.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, visiting the United Nations, accused Israel of seeking a wider conflict and said Tehran had shown restraint due to assurances that a truce could be secured in Gaza.

“They kept telling us we are within reach of peace, perhaps in a week or so,” Pezeshkian, considered a reformist within the theocracy, told reporters in New York.

“But we never reached that elusive peace.”