How Biden helped make a Middle East regional war a reality

In the weeks following the brutal Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7 last year, Joe Biden made clear his two priorities. He said he wanted to ensure Israel had the means to go on the offensive against Hamas in Gaza, and to prevent a wider regional war that could drag in US forces.

He achieved the first by ensuring a steady flow of weapons and aid to Israel to the tune of $17.9 billion, without any conditions on their use. On the second, he failed dramatically.

In recent days, Israel has invaded Lebanon to its north and killed hundreds of civilians in a bombing campaign. The Houthis in Yemen are firing sporadic salvos towards Israel. Iranian ballistic missiles rained down on Israel in the first week of October, and a fierce Israeli response is expected that could enflame the region further. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed by Israel in Gaza, many of them with US weapons, and the war still rages.

Biden’s failure has been so great that some former State Department officials have wondered if it was not a failure at all, but part of a shifting strategy to reshape the Middle East.

“I think it becomes increasingly difficult to say that all of this is simply a tragedy of errors,” former State Department official Josh Paul, who resigned over US support for the war in October last year, toldThe Independent.

“There is, in Washington right now, a sense that maybe this is an opportunity, a time to settle scores and to sort of press reset on Iranian ambitions in the region, on Hamas and Hezbollah, without regard to the cost in innocent human lives.”

At the center of this question is a simple truth: Biden has repeatedly expressed his belief that a ceasefire is the only way to prevent a regional conflict, but as Israel