Hamas’s carnage upends Joe Biden’s plans for the Middle East
“THE MIDDLE EAST region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” The words of Jake Sullivan, America’s national security adviser, have come back to mock him. Just eight days after he uttered them on September 29th, Hamas’s slaughter of Israelis and others confronts President Joe Biden with an acute Middle Eastern crisis atop the chronic one in Ukraine and a looming one over Taiwan.
One immediate concern for his national-security team is to establish how many Americans have been killed (nine so far confirmed dead) or taken hostage (unknown). A second is to control the possible shockwaves across the region. On October 8th the Pentagon announced that a carrier strike group led by the USS Gerald Ford would steam to waters off Israel. Air-force squadrons in the Middle East would be reinforced, and arms supplies would be dispatched to Israel within days. These moves were intended “to strengthen the US military posture in the region to bolster regional deterrence efforts,” the Pentagon said.
For Martin Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel, this amounts to a “Kissingerian move” intended to reinforce Israel’s deterrence and give substance to Mr Biden’s warning to Iran and its proxies: “This is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks.” Still, committing American forces to fight alongside Israel is a remote possibility, short of a regional conflagration.
2023-10-09 12:18:04
Article from www.economist.com