Analysis

US treading softly with Israel, Hezbollah escalation, fearing to make things worse

Analysts note lack of public top-level communication between US and Israel in recent days and say Biden administration appears to only be reacting to events

Rescuers sift through the rubble at the scene of an Israeli strike that targeted Hezbollah terror group commanders meeting in Beirut's southern suburbs a day earlier, as search and rescue operations continue on September 21, 2024. (AFP)
Rescuers sift through the rubble at the scene of an Israeli strike that targeted Hezbollah terror group commanders meeting in Beirut's southern suburbs a day earlier, as search and rescue operations continue on September 21, 2024. (AFP)

WASHINGTON  — The Biden administration is taking a more hands-off approach than usual during a week of dramatic escalation between Israel and the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, with top US officials holding back from full-on crisis diplomacy for fear of making matters worse.

The public restraint follows explosions of the terror group’s pagers and walkie-talkies and an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killing Ibrahim Aqil, a senior Hezbollah commander who was also wanted by the US, which threaten to spur all-out war between Israel and its enemies in the Middle East and doom already faltering negotiations for a ceasefire in the Hamas conflict in Gaza.

The escalation came even as two Biden administration officials stopped in the region this week to appeal for calm. It heightens the impression that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government is paying ever less attention to the mediation efforts of its key ally, despite depending on the US for weapons and military support.

“The United States looks like a deer in the headlights right now,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington. “In terms of words, deeds and action … it’s not driving events, it’s reacting to events.”

There has been no publicly acknowledged US contact with Netanyahu since senior White House official Amos Hochstein visited Israel on Monday to warn against escalation. The first wave of device explosions — widely blamed on Israel, which didn’t acknowledge responsibility — struck the next day.

And Gaza ceasefire negotiations were at such a delicate point that Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited only Egypt in a trip to the region this week because traveling to Israel in support of a deal might cause Netanyahu to say something that undermines the US-led mediation, US officials said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, meets with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty in El-Alamein, Egypt, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Kevin Mohatt/Pool Photo via AP)

Asked if the US still had hope for a deal in Gaza — which the administration calls crucial to calming regional conflict — US President Joe Biden said Friday that he did and his team is pressing for it.

“If I ever said it wasn’t realistic, we might as well leave,” Biden told reporters. “A lot of things don’t look realistic until we get them done. We have to keep at it.”

Hezbollah military commander Ibrahim Aqil (left) with group leader Hassan Nasrallah in an undated photo released by the terror group on September 21, 2024. (Hezbollah media office)

In the meantime, the White House and State Department have declined to comment publicly on the Hezbollah devices exploding Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands more, including civilians, in what analysts believe was a highly sophisticated Israeli intelligence operation.

Nor would they offer any assessment of an airstrike Friday in a densely populated part of Beirut — the deadliest such strike on Lebanon’s capital in years — which killed a Hezbollah commander. Hezbollah acknowledged at least 14 more of its operatives were killed in the strike, including senior leaders.

Israel and Hamas have followed past rounds of direct US diplomatic outreach with fiery rhetoric or surprise attacks that the US sees as setting back the effort for a truce.

Blinken appeared to loop in the pager explosions as the latest example of that. When mediators seem to make progress in a Gaza deal, often there’s an “incident, something that makes the process more difficult, that threatens to slow it, stop it, derail it,” Blinken said in Egypt, in response to reporters’ questions about the pager attacks.

A photo taken on September 18, 2024, in Beirut’s southern suburbs shows the remains of exploded pagers on display at an undisclosed location. The pagers were used by Hezbollah and the attack has been blamed on Israel. (AFP)

There may yet be high-level contact with Netanyahu when he travels to New York for next week’s UN General Assembly gathering of world leaders, said US officials with knowledge of the discussions who spoke anonymously to discuss the administration’s strategy. But the officials also acknowledge that the situation has become so precarious that taking a public stance either firmly in support or critical of Israel would probably do more harm than good.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller batted away a question about whether months of Biden administration visits to the Middle East without a ceasefire deal to show for them was making Blinken and other officials look like “furniture” in regional capitals.

“So far, we have been successful of keeping it from turning into an all-out regional war,” Miller said. He credited US messaging — sometimes through intermediaries, to Iran, its proxies in the region and to Israel.

The Biden administration pointed out that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been in contact this week with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant. Gallant’s job, however, is said to be in jeopardy.

Critics accuse the administration of pushing a deal on Gaza that’s repeatedly failed to win buy-in from the warring sides and has been outpaced by the growth of the conflict. The administration could do more diplomatically, including by working harder to rally Middle Eastern countries to intensify pressure on Israel, Iran and the latter’s proxies to stop fighting, said Katulis, the Middle East Institute analyst.

A Palestinian man rides a donkey-pulled cart in front of buildings heavily damaged in Israeli bombing, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on September 14, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas terror group. (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

US officials rejected assertions that they have given up on either a Gaza ceasefire or preventing the conflict from spreading to all-out war in Lebanon.

“We’d be the first ones to recognize … that we are not closer to achieving that than we were even a week or so ago,” national security spokesman John Kirby said Friday.

“But ain’t nobody giving up,” Kirby said, reiterating that the US was working with fellow mediators Qatar and Egypt to put together a final Gaza proposal to present to Israel and Hamas. “We’re still going to keep the shoulder to the wheel. We’re still going to keep trying on this.”

ToI Staff contributed to this report

Most Popular
read more: