Iran’s barrage of attacks against Israel represents a stark reminder of how the US has been unable to ameliorate tensions in the Middle East and contain the ongoing conflict in Gaza, a national security and foreign policy expert told Business Insider.
On Saturday, Iran launched missiles and drones against Israel in what officials from Iran described as retaliation for the airstrike on the country’s consulate in Syria nearly two weeks ago. The airstrike killed two Iranian generals and five officers, the Associated Press reported.
The US anticipated that Iran would strike back, but it was only a matter of when and how. President Joe Biden told reporters on Friday that he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later.”
The president also re-affirmed US support for Israel and had a simple, brief message to Iran: “Don’t.”
Iran’s brazen dismissal of Biden’s warning may be the result of a series of inconsistent strategic moves from the US with its handling of the Israel-Gaza war, Sean McFate, a national security and foreign policy expert at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, told Business Insider.
‘No strategic competence’
McFate told BI that Iran’s retaliation was a way to show the international stage that the country had a backbone after Israel’s airstrike in Damascus. But, more broadly, Saturday’s attack shows just how effective Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel was at stoking chaos in the Middle East, McFate said.
Hamas “launched this as a way to disrupt the melting of relations between Israel and the Gulf states,” McFate said, referring to how diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab countries had been thawing before the war. Biden similarly stated that Hamas was trying to disrupt his administration’s efforts to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as with others in the region, The Washington Post reported.
With the war in Gaza, the US wedged itself into the battle and has so far shown conflicting messages to the world through its military support for Israel and simultaneous humanitarian aid for Gaza, leaving Gulf countries such as Iran to feel more defensive, the expert said.
“The fact that the Biden administration is both arming Israel and sending aid to Gaza shows the world that the Biden team has no strategic competence,” McFate said. “They’ve already lost control.”
McFate pointed to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war as another example of one of the Biden administration’s strategic misfires.
Throughout the 2024 election cycle, Biden has said that the US must maintain its support for Ukraine against Russian aggression. But the president’s support for Israel runs counter to the reasons he said the US should support Ukraine.
“The administration wants to be the firefighters in a raging house fire,” McFate said. “But I think for them to do that, they need to extend more leverage on the government of Israel by conditioning further military support. Israel has basically said, ‘Drop off your munitions. Don’t answer the door. Just leave,’ like your Uber driver. I think the administration has been a little too timid in how to deal with Israel.”
In recent weeks, US support for Israel showed some signs of wavering as Biden called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the White House.
In a Saturday statement after Iran’s strikes, Biden condemned the attacks and said he had spoken with Netanyahu over the phone to say that the US remains steadfast in its support for Israel.
“I’ve just spoken with Prime Minister Netanyahu to reaffirm America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel,” Biden said. “I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks — sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel.”
However, in the same call, Biden told the prime minister that the US will oppose a counterattack against Iran, a senior White House official told CNN.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
