The Biden Administration has begun its promised escalation in the Middle East - in support of Israel's actions in Gaza

The expanded US war in the Middle East the Biden Administration announced this past week is now under way.

As Reuters reports:

The U.S. military launched airstrikes on Friday in Iraq and Syria against more than 85 targets linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and the militias it backs, in retaliation for last weekend's attack in Jordan that killed three U.S. troops.

The strikes, which included the use of long-range B-1 bombers flown from the United States, were the first in a multi-tiered response by President Joe Biden's administration to the attack by Iran-backed militants, and more U.S. military operations were expected in the coming days.

While the strikes did not target sites inside Iran, they signaled a further escalation of conflict in the Middle East from Israel's nearly four-month-old war with Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza.

The strikes hit targets including command and control centers, rockets, missiles and drone storage facilities, as well as logistics and munition supply chain facilities, the U.S. military said in a statement.¹

The Administration's official position has been that the attacks on US forces in the Middle East since October 7 has nothing at all to do with Israel's war on Gaza civilians. We don't have to take militia groups' word for it. But as Daniel Larison points out:

The umbrella group in Iraq that claimed responsibility for the attack in Jordan, the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, explicitly stated that its attack was connected to the war in Gaza. The Houthi leadership has been emphatic that their attacks will continue for as long as the war does. The decision of other actors to jump on a cause’s bandwagon may be cynical or not, but there is no denying that they have jumped on the bandwagon.

Refusing to face the reality of the connections between these conflicts guarantees that the U.S. will pursue ineffective and counterproductive policies by ignoring that the key to defusing regional tensions is to bring the war in Gaza to an end as quickly as possible.

[NSC spokesman John] Kirby did not mention that militia attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria had ceased for several months prior to October 7 because of the understanding that the U.S. and Iran had reached in connection with the prisoner exchange deal. It was only after October 7 that those attacks resumed and then increased to record levels. Local militias have additional reasons of their own for targeting U.S. forces that predate the war, but there is no way to understand the intensity of the attacks in recent months or their cessation during the pause in fighting in Gaza last year without recognizing that they are linked to Israel’s war.² [my emphasis]

Gunar Olsen notes:

[T]he existence of domestic motivations for the Houthis does not preclude genuine solidarity with Palestinians. In this context, disconnecting Ansar Allah’s [a Houthi group’s] actions from Israel’s Gaza war only serves to undermine legitimate resistance to what the International Court of Justice has ruled could plausibly be a case of genocide.³

Where did the Ansar Allah group which spearheads the current “Houthi movement” come from?

The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 deeply radicalized the Houthi movement, like it did many other Arabs. It was a pivotal moment. The Houthis adopted the slogan: “God is great, death to the U.S., death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam,” in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The group also officially called itself Ansar Allah, or supporters of God. It was a turning point largely unrecognized outside Yemen, another unanticipated consequence of George Bush’s Iraq adventures.

Hezbollah, the Shiite movement in Lebanon which successfully expelled the Israeli army from the country, became a role model and mentor for the Houthis. Although different kinds of Shiites, the two groups have a natural attraction. Hezbollah provided inspiration and expertise for the Houthis. Iran was a secondary source of support, especially since the Houthis and Iranians share a common enemy in Saudi Arabia.

After 2003, Saleh launched a series of military campaigns to destroy the Houthis. In 2004, Saleh’s forces killed Hussein al Houthi. The Yemeni army and air force was used to suppress the rebellion in the far north of Yemen, especially in Saada province. The Saudis joined with Saleh in these campaigns. The Houthis won against both Saleh and the Saudi army, besting them both again and again.⁴ [my emphasis]

In other words, we have George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their neocon cronies to thank for this. Then the Obama-Biden Administration proceeded to fund the Saudis in a long, nasty war against the Houthis in Yemen, which the Saudis eventually gave up as hopeless.

The Iraq War is the gift that keeps on giving. Especially in the German sense of the word Gift, which means “poison.” (For war profiteers, it continues to be a gift in the English sense of the word.)

In an interview before the latest US escalation, John Mearsheimer gives his view of Israel’s situation in the current war, which despite the official State Department position is at the center of the current larger conflict⁵:

Andrew Napolitano is a rightwing libertarian prick. But he also promotes a libertarian-isolationist foreign policy perspective that leans toward restraint when it comes to US military intervention, so he regularly interviews substantive, skeptical critics of establishment foreign policy like Mearsheimer.

Mearsheimer notes in the interview that the Biden Administration seems to “going to great lengths” to avoid direct attacks against Iran itself. It’s notable that Mearsheimer does not advocate some US expansion of the war against Iranian-related targets. In fact, but he also thinks that Biden “has to respond and he has to respond against targets that have some real relationship to Iran.”

This is what makes Mearsheimer consistently worth hearing and also consistently irritating. As an Über-Realist, he is unsentimental about high-sounding official justifications for war and is very aware that countries are led by human beings who can and do sometimes make bad decisions, even really bad ones. But he’s also not consistently antiwar in all situations. And it’s one of the chronically dubious aspects of the realist outlook that it also provides a continuing temptation to say, here’s what great powers are tempted to do, so they probably are going to do it. Which can always be spun as an apathetic, “well, whatcha gonna do?” position.

Mearsheimer correctly (as it turns out) suggests that Biden would attack Iran-related military targets in Iran and Syria, as well as Yemen (the Houthis). He also notes:

The belief here is that if we whack Iran or we whack Iranian assets or we go after the Houthis or we go after these Iranian supporters, militias, that the end result is that they will throw up their hands and quit and [thereby] we will deter them. The purpose of this military action is to produce deterrence in the region as as to avoid escalation. My view is that you get exactly the opposite. This is why [Biden] doesn’t want to bomb Iran because he understands the Iranians will retaliate.

So any use of military force here is just likely to lead to further escalation.

I just want to say one thing about what’s going on here. If you listen to [Secretary of State Anthony] Blinkin and [to] Israel’s supporters in the United States speak, the argument they like to make is that Iran is he tap root of all the trouble in the Middle East. And [that] what Iran is doing here - you hear Blinkin say this - is Iran is taking advantage of a crisis to pursue its own narrow interests.

But that’s actually not what happening here. What happening here is the Houthis, the Iranian Hezbollah, and these Iranian-supported militias are all responding because of what’s happening in Gaza. You want to remember … before the war broke out on October 7th, [National Security Adviser] Jake Sullivan said the Middle East was a peaceful as we had seen it in a good number of years.

And then everything changed after October 7th. And you want to ask yourself the question, why did everything change? It wasn’t because the Iranians and Hezbollah all of a sudden decided to go on a rampage and take advantage of Israel and the United States. What changed was, a war broke out involving the Israelis and the Palestinians in Gaza. And that’s what’s driving this train.

So the tap root of the problem, despite what Israel and its supporters in the United States say, is not Iran. The tap root of the problem is Israel, and Israel’s failure to create a Palestinian state. [my emphasis]

The clip also includes an emphatic comment by Biden himself in 2007 - when Bush and Cheney were still running the show - that a President launching an attack on Iran without Congressional approval would be an impeachable offense:

The President has no Constitutional authority to take this nation to war against a country with 70 million people [Iran] unless we’re attacked do unless there is proof that we about to be attacked. And if he does, if he does, I would move to impeach him. The House obviously has to do that. But I would lead an effort to impeach him.

In light of current arguments around Biden slurring his words in 2024, it’s worth noting that back in this 2007 clip, he notably slurs the word “authority.” Well, actually, that passage just quoted is pretty garbled on the whole.

Mearsheimer has been around for a while. So he makes the observation that if Biden decides to attack Iran directly, he would argue that Iran itself had actually attacked the United States. He also notes that Israel argues that Iran is responsible for every attack to Hezbollah. And he gives the Wall Street Journal as a source where one can find that argument repeated again and again.

1. Ali, Idrees & Stewart, Phil (2024): US starts retaliatory strikes in Iraq and Syria against Iran-linked targets. Reuters 02/03/2024. <https://www.reuters.com/world/us-starts-retaliatory-strikes-iraq-syria-officials-2024-02-02/> (Accessed: 2024-03-02).

2. Copp, Tara et. al. (20224): US Begins Wave Of Airstrikes in Iraq, Syria Retaliating For Fatal Drone Attack. AP/Huffpost 02/02/2024. <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-begins-wave-of-airstrikes-in-iraq-syria-retaliating-for-fatal-drone-attack_n_65bd5dd1e4b05c8779f9341f> (Accessed: 2024-03-02).

3. Olsem, Gunar (2024): You Can’t Bomb the Houthis Into Not Supporting Palestine. The New Republic 02/02/2024. <https://newrepublic.com/article/178415/houthi-yemen-palestinian-liberation-ceasefire> (Accessed: 2024-03-02).

4. Riedel, Bruce (2017): Who are the Houthis, and why are we at war with them? Brookings Institute 12/18/2017. <https://www.brookings.edu/articles/who-are-the-houthis-and-why-are-we-at-war-with-them/> (Accessed: 2024-03-02).

5. Prof. John Mearsheimer: Can Israel Win in Gaza? Judge Napolitan-Judging Freedom 02/01/2024. <https://www.youtube.com/live/HFb8Av76Gug?si=im-1e63X4hNVGccu> (Accessed: 2024-03-02).