Looming Israeli strike on Iran brings fresh test for US ceasefire attempts

By Courtney McBride and Alberto Nardelli

President Joe Biden has warned Israel against attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, and US officials worry a strike on its energy infrastructure could roil energy markets. But with Israeli retaliation against Iran expected at any time, the US is finding it has few assurances against further escalation. 
 

Biden’s team is pressing Israel to limit its retaliation against Iran for a strike last week to military targets such as air bases and missile sites. Rather than Israel knocking out economic targets, the US is proposing alternatives such as a fresh round of economic sanctions, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.

The US thinking is based on giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an off-ramp that would allow him to resist calls from hard-liners in his coalition who call for far more severe retribution. Whether he takes it is another matter, especially given that the Biden administration has so far declined to enforce its opinions by cutting off weapons sales to Israel.

There are political concerns too: Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is anxious to keep the conflict from draining support in battleground states, especially Michigan, with its substantial population of Arab and Muslim Americans. Netanyahu, who has openly touted his close relationship with Republican candidate Donald Trump, has shown little interest in doing anything to help her.
 

 

Netanyahu knows Biden won’t be able to put a lot of pressure on him in the weeks before the US election, said Ali Vaez, Iran Project Director at the International Crisis Group. “Escalation in the region helps Trump, which is also good for Bibi because it means not just four more weeks of unrestrained behavior, but four years of no American pressure,” he said, using Netanyahu’s nickname.

The discussion about how hard to hit Iran comes when ties between the US and Israel have rarely been more strained. Netanyahu has disregarded US advice time and again in charting Israel’s response to the Oct 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 Israelis. 

And he has stepped up an aggressive military campaign against another Iranian proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon, despite US warnings.

Biden and Netanyahu spoke on Wednesday for the first time in more than a month — a stunning period of silence given how much has happened since then. Israel launched its massive campaign to target Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing most of its senior leadership including Hassan Nasrallah as well as at least 1,500 people in air strikes.

A White House readout of the call didn’t mention a likely Israeli strike. Instead it said Biden “affirmed his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security” and “condemned unequivocally Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel on October 1st.”

Israeli officials have suggested the attack will be more severe this time around. While Israel, with US and UK help, knocked down almost all incoming missiles and drones in an attack in April, this time many of Iran’s ballistic missiles hit close to their targets.

“Iran’s attacks on Israel were aggressive, but failed because they were not precise,” Gallant said in a speech Wednesday. “Our attack on Iran will be deadly, precise and above all surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened. They will see the results.”

CIA Director William Burns, who has led the US effort to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and the return of hostages held by Hamas, said he thinks Israeli leaders take into account the concerns expressed by Biden and senior US policymakers.

There’s a “very real danger of a further regional escalation of conflict,” Burns told the Cipher Brief Threat Conference in Sea Island, Georgia, on Monday.

For now, the European Union is expected to finalize in the coming days a package of sanctions on Iran for supplying Russia with missiles, including measures targeting engineering, metals and aviation firms. Other allies are waiting to see Israel’s response before committing to new restrictions, some of the people said.

One thing working in the US’s favor is that for all Netanyahu’s disregard of the US, he did heed American warnings after Iran’s April attack. Netanyahu retaliated with a single strike against an air-defense facility in Isfahan, Iran, rather than a wider strike, after Biden urged him to “take the win.”

“They’ll probably go against the military-industrial complex in Iran, probably not against the nuclear power complex, and probably not against energy,” retired US Navy Admiral James Stavridis, who is now a Bloomberg opinion columnist, told Bloomberg Radio on Wednesday. “I think there’s about a one-in-four chance of a broader war in the Middle East that drags the US in. That’s uncomfortably high, but I’d still bet against a big sweeping war in the Middle East.”