US President Joe Biden works to limit conflict as Middle East edges closer to all-out war

The White House is working to limit the Israeli response to the barrage of ballistic missiles that Iran fired into the country yesterday, as some United States officials worry the Middle East could be edging closer to the all-out war that President Joe Biden has sought to prevent for nearly a year.

Several senior Biden officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations, said today that Israeli officials have told them privately that they do not feel the need to hit back against Iran in an immediate and massive way. Yet officials in the US and Europe fear Israel could hit economic targets in Iran that would prompt a dangerous escalatory reaction.

Tehran has long signalled that attacks on its oil and gas industry would be a “red line”, a senior European official said. Such a strike would probably prompt retaliatory attacks from Iran on Western energy interests, potentially disrupting the global economy one month before the US presidential election.

American officials say they are encouraging Israel to respond in a measured way, but US allies in Europe are concerned that Washington is not putting sufficient pressure on the Government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Our understanding is the Americans are not holding them back,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter.

Biden administration officials say that while Israeli leaders have suggested they will act with restraint, that could change once Netanyahu’s decision-making has passed through the blender of Israeli politics, where far-right voices hold considerable power. Some officials say Israeli leaders’ private assurances have not always panned out over the past year.

At the same time, Israeli leaders have taken a relatively aggressive tone towards Iran publicly.

Inside Israel, there is a strong appetite for a major military response, with a sense that Iran is unusually weakened because its strongest proxy, Hezbollah, is reeling from recent Israeli attacks that damaged its communication system and decimated its leadership. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recently urged Netanyahu to immediately authorise strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme.

US President Joe Biden. Photo /Getty Images

“We must act *now* to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, its central energy facilities, and to fatally cripple this terrorist regime,” Bennett said on social media yesterday. “The octopus’s tentacles are temporarily paralysed – now comes the head.”

In response to a question, Biden today said he did not support an Israeli strike on nuclear sites. A senior administration official said Israeli officials have not discussed such a move in private conversations with US officials.

Last week, US officials believed they had Israeli sign-off on a ceasefire proposal with Hezbollah, officials said at the time, only for Netanyahu to forcefully reject the proposal once the US and other countries, including France, announced it publicly.

“What the Americans understand is the Iranians desperately don’t want escalation, and that reality means both you’re a little less concerned about escalation but you’re worried the Israelis might try to do more,” said Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group. “The Israelis are on the front lines here – they’re the ones who feel the existential threat – but they also certainly do not feel bound by American pressure, and that makes Biden look bad.”

Iran fired about 180 missiles directly into Israel yesterday with little advance warning – only the second time the country has launched a direct attack into Israeli territory – in retaliation for Israel killing Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah last week in Beirut. That strike also killed an Iranian general, and Iran had yet to retaliate for Israel killing Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

The Israeli military announced on Tuesday the start of ground operations in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah militants had been launching drones and rockets into Israel since Hamas carried out a surprise attack on Israel last October 7 that killed some 1200 people.

This school building was heavily damaged when a projectile exploded upon impact in Israel's southern city of Gedera on October 1. Photo / AFP

Iran had launched missiles into Israel in April, and this time, Tehran sought to muster a more effective air assault, according to analysts, relying mostly on ballistic missiles and abandoning slower weapons such as drones and cruise missiles. That provided less advance warning for Israel’s air defences.

Still, while the latest attack’s impact was slightly greater than in April, no deaths were reported yesterday within Israel. One Palestinian man was reported killed in the West Bank.

The success of the US and Israel in repelling Iranian missiles for a second time has boosted confidence inside Israel, a senior administration official said, and in private conversations Israeli officials have signalled that they will respond in a calibrated way. That is a stark change from April, the official noted, when the US publicly and privately had to urge Israel to respond with restraint to avoid a further escalation.

A senior administration official said the US and Israel, with other international partners, crafted a defence plan to help defend against potential Iranian attacks that “worked as well as we could have wanted it to work”. The fact no Israelis were killed and the countries were able to thwart all of Iran’s missiles, including ones launched at Tel Aviv, have bought the US some time to try to influence the Israeli response, the official said.

But the Middle East is even more combustible than it was just a few months ago. Israel in recent weeks has launched intelligence and military actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon, pounding the country with airstrikes that have killed more than 1400 people and displaced nearly 1 million. And Israel did not inform the US ahead of time of several major actions in Lebanon, including one that detonated pagers and handheld radios used by Hezbollah and another that killed Nasrallah.

While US officials have said they are impressed by Israel’s ability to significantly degrade Hezbollah in a matter of weeks, as well as take out its command-and-control structure and kill many of its top leaders, they are still pressing Israel on what its strategic end game is since it is fighting a war on multiple fronts, including in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank.

Senior Biden aides are particularly concerned that Israel’s ground incursion into Lebanon – which it has said is a limited operation to take out Hezbollah infrastructure along its northern border – could bog down into a long-term operation that drags out the war even longer.

Since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, US officials have been working to prevent the war between Israel and Hamas from spiralling into a broader regional conflagration. Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and fuelled an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.

US officials for months have been trying to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire, but those efforts are deadlocked as neither side appears willing to make enough concessions to cement a deal. The US is also pressing for Israel and Hezbollah to agree to a ceasefire and come to a diplomatic solution that would resolve the conflict on the Israel-Lebanon border.

But Biden has been unwilling to use the most significant source of US leverage – conditioning or suspending military aid to Israel – to try to change the dynamics of the war, as Israel has repeatedly rebuffed US advice and counsel.

Between the US and Israel, there are “major efforts on both sides to keep lines of communication open and make sure that perspectives are understood. There have been moments of surprise, I don’t think that’s a secret, over the course of the last couple of months,” Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said at a Carnegie Endowment event today.

“As important as a response of some kind should be, there is a recognition that the region is really balancing on a knife’s edge, and real concerns about an even broader escalation or a continuing one,” Campbell said, adding that this could “imperil not just Israel but our strategic interests as well”.