A phone call would have been nice.
When a client state of a major power has planned, and is about to execute, a reckless act of foreign aggression that might drag its benefactor into a regional war, the diplomatic nicety of at least a preliminary phone call is customary — just sort of a heads-up, you know, to let the big partner know that the little one is messing around in what could mushroom into a multi-power conflagration.
This protocol assumes, however, that the client state is not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's. Bibi has nothing but contempt for the nation that keeps his afloat in weapons and cash, and he knows how to show it. Say nothing, blunder ahead and risk entangling the unsuspecting U.S. in a broader Middle East war.
Moreover, do this just as the American president is trying to prevent a wider European war, keep the Chinese at bay, literally, in the Pacific, and help his would-be successor in thwarting the resurrection of an unhinged, friend-of-tyrants-everywhere ex-"president."
And so it was this week when Israel assassinated Hamas leader and cease-fire negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Yesterday, reported The NY Times, "Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the United States had not been involved in, or even informed of, the operation in [Iran]."
Only hours before, Bibi also successfully targeted the end of Fuad Shukr, a senior member of Hezbollah forces. This was done in a busy Beirut neighborhood, additionally spelling the end of two children and three women, wrote the Associated Press.
Unironically, the Israeli military reported that it conducted the "strike in Beirut on the commander responsible for the murder of children." That was also reported unironically by Al Jazeera.
To all this the Times added what many analysts likely see as a bobby-dazzler of an understatement: "To some, Mr. Blinken’s statement confirmed a dangerous power vacuum in the region."
I see the region in a different light. Shortly after the Israeli government committed its acts of aggression in Iran and Lebanon, the Biden administration announced it would rush to Israel's defense should one of the offended nations decide to retaliate. So what now poses the greatest danger in the Middle East is an excess of power intervening on Bibi's behalf, thus pulling into the fray yet more Arab nations.
Almost pathetically, as Blinken was acknowledging the prime minister's non-phone-dialing contempt for his boss, he said the administration is still working toward a de-escalation in Israel's war on Gaza.
As pathetically — comically, too, if it weren't for the lost lives involved — White House spokesman John Kirby said "when you have events, dramatic events, violent events, caused by whatever actors, it certainly doesn’t make the task of achieving [de-escalation] any easier."
If, in the phrase I emphasized, Kirby had only put it in the passive voice, his remark would have replaced Nixon White House spokesman Ron Ziegler's "Mistakes were made" gibberish as the Platonic Ideal of politico-bureaucratic evasiveness in culpable-party identification. As it stands, though, caused by whatever actors is unquestionably a phrase to be repeated by consummate spinsters for generations to come.
The most poignant and for a change serious observations were made by Patrick Kingsley, the Times' Jerusalem bureau chief, and Itamar Rabinovich, Israel's former ambassador to the U.S.
Wrote Kingsley: "Once the dust settles, more than 100 Israeli hostages will still remain captive in Gaza, Hamas will remain undefeated, Hezbollah will continue to pose a strategic threat along Israel’s northern border, and Iran will still exert influence over several proxy powers that threaten U.S. and Israeli interests in the region." Kingsley quoted Rabinovich: "Nothing is resolved.... We are where we were."
I'll close with my own observation, which I'll base on the second premise in Kingsley's reporting. His frightening first half: "Taken together, the seniority of the targets, the sensitive location of the strikes and their near simultaneity were viewed as a particularly provocative escalation." Yet, Kingsley continued, "while Iran and Hezbollah are likely to respond, they may yet choose methods that give Israel room to avoid further retaliation."
That, of course, is what is to be hoped. But, I shall add in the vernacular, it's a pretty damn godawful situation for the U.S. when de-escalation and perhaps a permanent peace in the Middle East is determined not by its client state of Israel, but by the bad guys.
Once again it's up to the theo-fascists in Iran — and the pressure they put on the poisonously antisemitic members of Hezbollah in Lebanon — to respond to Israel's reckless aggression with the softest of kid gloves.
Odds are, they'll choose that route. The odds are further on the side of the Israeli government launching yet another recklessly aggressive act against one or both of them. Sooner or later, the bad guys will have had enough — and then the U.S. will be sucked into the long and bloody war it has tried to avoid.
The real hell of it all? President Truman's top foreign policy advisers predicted — in 1948 — precisely such an unfolding in the Middle East.
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