Will The U.S. Step Up And Defend Israel?

Only Washington can prevent Iran from setting off an all-consuming conflict.

A deadly game of wits: how far will Iran and Israel go in their military responses?

After 10 months of Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, a showdown is at hand. Not with the terrorist proxies but with the ideological, political and military source of their effort to eradicate Israel: Iran, whose supreme leader has long vowed to destroy “the Zionist entity.”

Now is the time for the U.S. to step up and declare its full support for Israel, and to act on it. 

My deep concern, though, is that while until now the Biden administration has strongly backed Israel’s right to defend itself, that’s clearly not enough. Wars are not won simply by staving off enemy attacks. Victory requires sufficient escalation to defeat those who would destroy you. It’s understandable that the U.S. wants to prevent a wider regional conflict, but sadly, for some time now it has been holding Israel back from achieving a decisive victory.

Iran has been able to sit back and have its terrorists in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen fire missiles and rockets – often deadly – at Israel every day since October 7, killing soldiers and civilians, disrupting the economy and societal norms, and forcing an estimated 90,000 Israelis out of their homes in the north and south. Unless and until Israel responds aggressively, with U.S. cooperation, the Ayatollahs will be happy to have their henchmen keep up their daily attacks and defeat Israel gradually. 

What Iran and its fighters in the region share is not only a blind hatred of Jews but a total disinterest in the fate of innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire. As Israelis put it, Iran is prepared to fight to the last Palestinian. 

It seems that Israel has come to the sobering conclusion that it is better to strike hard rather than continue to endure a never-ending war. But will the U.S. have its back? Israel is not looking for boots on the ground, but the U.S. could, as The Wall Street Journal noted in an Editorial on Friday, “end sanction relief for Iran, including the $10 billion waivers, snapback U.N. sanctions, return the Houthis to the foreign terror list,” and make it abundantly clear that the government stands firmly with Israel. 

That response does not seem likely at the moment. After remarkable support in word and deed from the president last fall that was enormously helpful to Israeli morale and military, a growing impatience set in with the grinding pace of the war. Facing an enemy whose diabolical strategy was to hide underground and make its citizens fodder for attacks, Israel became the villain in world opinion even as it sought to minimize civilian casualties. 

Along the way, Israel’s most vital ally has slowed the IDF’s efforts for fear of humanitarian suffering, though it is Hamas that initiated the war with its barbaric attack on October 7, and bears responsibility for making its own citizens vulnerable. More recently the administration encouraged Israel to use less firepower and instead identify and eliminate key Hamas commanders. But when Israel did just that in recent days, killing the No. 2 Hezbollah commander in Beirut and, presumably, taking out Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah in a pinpoint operation in Tehran, Biden, clearly displeased, said the acts were “unhelpful.” Unfortunately, the signal this sends to Iran is that America is not willing to engage.

While the administration grapples with the dilemma of trying to support Israel without setting off a world war, Donald Trump’s response is that he would not have allowed the war to start in the first place. Simple enough – and unhelpful.

What is clear is that the war Israel has been fighting since long before October 7 is about Iran’s zealous desire to eradicate the Jewish state from the region. Haviv Rettig-Gur, an analyst for the Times of Israel, said this week that only America can stop  it. “This war is all about Iran,” he said. “It’s only about Iran … and every life in the Middle East depends on ending Iran’s imperialist crusade. If America is not ready” to act, he observed, “then America is part of the problem.”