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To deter a full-scale assault on the Palestinian city of Rafah, the U.S. has provisionally halted the shipment of 3,500 large munitions to Israel. About a million Palestinians displaced by the conflict had been sheltering in Rafah, according to the United Nations, when the Israeli military began moving in. And for some time prior, the U.S. administration had been questioning Israel’s plans to take control of the city—the last remaining district of Gaza outside Israeli control—as Washington feared the bombs would add too many more civilian deaths to the roughly 35,000 Palestinians the Gaza Health Ministry estimates have been killed in the conflict so far.
Meanwhile, the relationship between U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been deteriorating for months, with the Americans repeatedly asking for greater military restraint in Gaza and the Israelis repeatedly ignoring them. In March, Biden publicly endorsed a speech by the U.S. Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, that referred to Netanyahu as an “obstacle to peace.” And in both houses of the U.S. Congress, more and more Democrats have called for the Biden administration to stop or put conditions on military assistance to Netanyahu’s government, amid widespread political pressure over the war.
Where is this all going?
Steven Cook is a senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the new book, The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East. In Cook’s view, the current tensions between the U.S. and Israel may be flaring, but they aren’t fleeting; they represent a long-term shift in their relationship’s politics in both countries—and a critical test of Washington’s global power.
Since the 1970s, the U.S. has transferred more than US$3 billion annually in military assistance to Israel, giving the Americans what should be significant leverage over their much smaller partner. This isn’t the first time a U.S. president has tried to influence Israeli behavior by withholding weapons, Cook points out, but it may be the least effective. Since the Americans announced the pause in weapons shipments, the Israelis have only intensified operation in Rafah—making it Biden’s move. |
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From Steven Cook at The Signal:
“Biden is in a difficult position, … because he seems to be trying to manage two different goals. One is to support Israel in destroying Hamas—something he’s made firm guarantees on. But another is to put a brake on Israeli military operations in this conflict he thinks have been unwise. I’d say Biden made a strategic mistake at the beginning of the conflict. He embraced the Israelis—literally and figuratively—believing that would give him the capital necessary to influence the Americans’ support to destroy Hamas however they saw fit. In this round of the longer conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, there’s a great demand for moral absolutes—and Biden is caught between this demand and those of an extraordinarily complicated problem.”
“The U.S.-Israel relationship is evolving, and I expect the politics of the relationship to become quite different over the next 10 to 15 years than it is even now. In early April, I mentioned a public-opinion poll from the spring of 2023—before the conflict started—which found for the first time that more Democrats were sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis. Today we see this shift playing out in how more and more Democrats are questioning the U.S. relationship with Israel. Now they question not just Israel’s conduct in Gaza but also its human-rights violations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip outside of wartime. Lawmakers in Congress are more willing openly to discuss conditions on military aid to Israel. That simply never happened before. Yes, there’ve long been articles and books criticizing Israel—and America’s relationship with it—but it used to be tremendously rare for a lawmaker on Capitol Hill to take a public position critical of Israel.”
“There’ve been media reports describing the increasing international isolation of Israel, but I’m not so sure they’re accurate. Turkey said it would cut off all trade with Israel—but many analysts expect that trade will likely continue through third parties like Azerbaijan or Slovenia, because the family of Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is making a lot of money from business with Israel. He’s just under political pressure from Islamists in his country to do more for the Palestinians. These reports also mention the pro-Palestinian protests at the Eurovision Song Contest and the protests across U.S. college campuses, and that the U.N. General Assembly has taken lopsided votes condemning Israel’s actions—but there’s nothing new about votes like that. All of this seems like pretty thin evidence for international isolation. Frankly, I’m surprised no country except Colombia has severed diplomatic relations with Israel over the war.” |
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FROM THE FILES |
‘A Whole New Era’
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Flying in foggy blizzard conditions through the mountains of northwest Iran, a helicopter carrying the country’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, crashed on May 19, killing him along with Iran’s foreign minister and six other people. The country’s constitution requires a special election to replace Raisi within 50 days, leaving its clerical leadership with a tough choice: Either allow moderates to run—which it’s avoided in recent elections—or allow only conservative candidates, which would likely lead to dismal turnout among an increasingly disaffected population. A week before Raisi’s death, only 8 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in Tehran’s electoral districts during the second round of parliamentary elections.
Discontent with the Iranian regime has been rising for several years now—and came into view around the world during weeks of demonstrations across Iran after the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody in September 2022. Amini had been arrested and beaten for not wearing her hijab in accordance with the country’s “morality” laws. In the month following her death, Vali Nasr examined the threat growing popular opposition posed to the regime. Their scale, Nasr says, revealed the depth of dissatisfaction not only with the country’s rulers—but with some of the cultural foundations of the Islamic Republic itself. |
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Join The Signal—to support our independent current-affairs coverage, explore our archive, and unlock our full conversations with hundreds of contributors: |
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Coming soon: Mujtaba Rahman on why Europe’s leaders are so far apart on the continent’s biggest political and security issues … |
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