U.S. President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel should see its defense against Iran’s attack as a “win” and that Washington wouldn’t participate in an attack on Iran, per reports in multiple news outlets that cited senior U.S. officials.
Anonymous officials also told the publications that Biden fears that Netanyahu will act in a way that drags the United Stations into a regional conflict.
“By leaking Biden’s conversation with Netanyahu in this way, the leaker has increased both the likelihood and importance of an Israeli response—given the dynamics that led Tehran to calculate it could launch this attack without consequence in the first place,” wrote Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“Can you imagine 100 ballistic missiles being fired on the United States and your closest ally calling to say, no need to retaliate, you should feel really secure right now?” he added. “Now imagine our country was the size of New Jersey. And we were fighting a seven-front war of survival.”
“No Joe Biden. The Iranian regime’s failure to do major damage with 350 missiles is not a “win”—9 million Israelis spent the night being terrorized,” wrote NGO Monitor founder Gerald Steinberg. “The regime must pay a major price so that this will not be repeated. And better—showing them the door.”
Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, wrote that Biden’s response, “spinning an unprecedented attack by Iran on Israel,” is “akin to telling the victim of a bully—he didn’t make impact, so deescalate.”
“With this message that the U.S. won’t support an Israeli counterattack on Iran, Biden is signaling that his ‘don’t’ to Tehran didn’t mean anything,” Brodsky added.
“Biden thinks that a successful defense will be enough to counter Khamenei. It’s naïveté bordering on stüpidité,” wrote Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of Foundation for Defense of Democracies. (Ali Khamenei is the supreme leader of Iran.)
“Deterrence by denial is the Biden administration’s operating philosophy. Deterrence by punishment is anathema,” Dubowitz added. “So keep shooting at America and its allies until something gets through.”
