Dyer: Israel working against Kamala Harris

Article content

Since U.S. President Joe Biden quit his re-election campaign last month and let Vice-President Kamala Harris run instead, the prospects for the Democrats in November have improved. But it could all turn sour for them very quickly if the U.S. gets dragged into a bigger war in the Middle East.

Unfortunately for Harris, Biden is still running foreign policy, and he still seems incapable of saying no to Israel. Not even to Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is systematically crossing the red lines laid down by Israel’s most dangerous enemies, Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

Article content

Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been engaged in a low-intensity exchange of rockets and artillery fire across Israel’s northern border for the past eight months, but the damage on both sides was limited to the first 20 kilometres beyond the border. No attacks on Beirut, no attacks on Tel Aviv.

Iran, with 90 million people and an Islamist government, could be an existential threat to Israel if it had nuclear weapons, but it has deliberately stopped just short of that technology. It supports various Arab members of the Axis of Resistance with money and weapons, but it avoids direct clashes with Israel and the two do not have a common border.

So, it is obviously in Israel’s interest to maintain the status quo with Hezbollah and Iraq, and yet, Netanyahu is trying to undermine it.

His first attempt was a missile strike four months ago that killed two Iranian generals and five other officers visiting Iran’s embassy in Syria. Israel often “deniably” assassinates Iranian officers, officials and scientists, but this was a direct challenge certain to evoke an Iranian military response.

Article content

Neither Teheran nor Washington wanted to get drawn into a war, however, so they coordinated a charade in which Iran launched 300 missiles and drones against Israel but all of them were shot down or missed their targets. Honour was satisfied, Netanyahu was thwarted, and nobody died.

But then in July, Biden pulled out of the presidential race, Harris became the candidate and the prospect of a less blindly supportive U.S. ally loomed on the horizon. How best to ensure Harris doesn’t win and Netanyahu’s friend Donald Trump becomes president instead? Drag the U.S. into a war with Iran before the election.

On the night of July 30 and 31, Israeli missiles flew to Beirut, Hezbollah’s red line, to kill Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s second-in-command. Only hours later an Israeli missile or bomb (accounts vary) killed Hamas’s political head, Ismail Haniyeh and it killed him in Tehran, to ensure that Iran also felt obliged to retaliate.

To people unfamiliar with the way the game is played in the Middle East, this account may sound paranoid or even specifically anti-Israeli. It is not. I offer in defence the analysis by Alon Pinkas in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on Aug. 1.

Article content

“Israel could have killed Haniyeh anywhere in the Middle East, yet chose to do so in Tehran during the inauguration of the new president . . . Israel left Tehran no alternative but to retaliate.”

“Who has no interest in such an escalation? The United States, whose makeshift Middle East policy will now have to be revisited, and Iran, which clearly prefers attrition and low intensity.”

“Who does have a vested interest in an expanded war? Mr. Netanyahu. Which is why the conventional wisdom in Washington over the last 36 hours is that Israel carried out the Haniyeh assassination deliberately in Iran and intentionally on that day.”

And what is dear old Biden doing? He’s sending another aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean to defend Israel (and maybe fight Iran) when he should be using the leverage of the $6.5 billion of extra military aid Washington has sent Israel since last October to force a ceasefire.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist based in London, England.

Article content