The ensuing defeat saw the Taliban take control of a weak state that had been propped up for nearly two decades by US resources. Biden and his allies are still defending what happened, based on the conviction that the American people want to end the longest war in the country’s history and that the chaotic collapse in Kabul was a result that had already begun because of the mistakes of Biden’s predecessor.
Whatever the merits of that claim, this weekend Biden plunged back into the sprawling battlefields of the post-9/11 era. The United States and a number of its Western allies launched strikes on dozens of targets belonging to armed groups affiliated with Iran in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The wave of attacks was described as a response to a drone strike by an Iranian-affiliated armed group in Iraq that killed three American soldiers at a support base in Jordan the previous weekend.
On Friday, Biden framed the punitive action as a necessary measure. “If you harm an American, we will respond,” he said. The strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, in which the British also participated, were described as a deterrent against the group's attacks on maritime activity in the Red Sea, a vital artery for global trade.
“We will not hesitate to defend lives and the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most important waterways,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement, adding that there would be “further consequences” for the Houthis — who initiated this. The campaign is a form of protest against the Israeli attack on Gaza – if the attacks do not stop.
Analysts doubt that US strikes will achieve any major strategic goals. The Biden administration telegraphed its response over the past week and deliberately avoided crossing the Iranian regime's implicit red lines — and no Iranian personnel appeared to be injured, although Iraqi authorities cited more than a dozen deaths, including an unspecified number of civilians.
“It seems to be a very important measure by the Biden administration, but on the other hand, I don’t think it will be enough to deter these groups,” Charles Lister, director of the Syria Program at the Middle East Institute, told my correspondent. peers. He added: “These militias have been engaged in this campaign for more than 20 years, and they are in a long-term conflict. Ultimately, they are engaged in a campaign of attrition against the United States.”
The strikes, as expected, sparked a new wave of regional anger. The Houthis said that they would “face escalation with escalation.” An Iranian Foreign Ministry official accused the United States and Britain of “provoking chaos, turmoil, insecurity, and instability.” An Iraqi government spokesman said that Biden's actions “put security in Iraq and the region on the brink of abyss,” and expressed his regret that his country was “a battlefield for settling scores.”
Looming behind these tensions is the war between Israel and the armed Hamas movement, which still holds more than 100 hostages. The devastating Israeli campaign in Gaza led to the deaths of more than 27,000 people, leveling the Strip to the ground and sparking a humanitarian crisis. It also sparked a wave of attacks launched by “Axis of Resistance” groups allied with Iran on American bases in the region.
The main limiting factor at the moment is that neither the United States nor Iran wants an all-out war. “The Biden administration has an election looming, in which it does not need another costly foreign adventure, problems over its policy toward Israel, or rising oil prices,” CNN's Nick Patton Walsh wrote. “Iran’s economy remains fragile, internal turmoil is not yet a distant memory, and it has broader goals of massive regional influence, exhausting its technical relationship with Moscow, and clearly seeking a nuclear weapon.”
In Washington, Republican lawmakers and politicians called on Biden to be more aggressive against Iran, even pointing to the need to launch American attacks inside Iranian territory. The White House has made clear that it does not want to engage in open war with Tehran.
“Biden is less violent than his critics,” wrote Spencer Ackerman, a veteran historian of the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East. “But he has locked his policy into a situation where every provocation leads to another escalation of escalation.”
Ackermann invoked Karl Marx's eloquent axiom about history playing out first as tragedy and then as farce. He said that after two decades of Middle East quagmire, Biden was engaged in “a farcical, rote recapitulation of the historical catastrophes that have led to this point, and its ultimate failure was as inevitable as the atrocities it would generate.” Biden still has time to rein in Israel — and find a way to negotiate with Iran. “Before we cross the threshold. But not much.”
Other commentators are less bothered. Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin rejected the suggestion that the Biden administration should now withdraw the presence of relatively small US forces in countries like Iraq and Syria, which serve a nearly decade-long mission to confront the militant Islamic State group.
“Maintaining small amounts of US forces in strategically important locations in the Middle East is not the same as fighting a war forever,” Rogin wrote. “It is an insurance policy against much worse outcomes. Americans are willing to pay for this insurance policy, as long as it does not include the deaths of American soldiers.”
John Hoffman, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, disagrees. He wrote: “America’s presence and policies in the Middle East do not deter violence, nor do they contribute to stability in the region.” Instead, they are inciting and risking major escalation. Washington must end its pointless tit-for-tat military exchanges with Iranian-backed groups in the Middle East and bring US troops home.
That won't happen now, as Biden prepares for a challenging election year. “One of the great things about having a president with 50 years of foreign policy experience is that he fully understands the difficulties, tensions, and competition in the region,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.). A close Biden ally told the New Republic. He added: “But I am confident that he is carefully balancing how to deter Iran, and how to respond in a way that shows firmness and determination to protect American forces, while focusing on avoiding expanding the conflict.”
