Law, Power, and Justice

have spurred widespread anti-Americanism across the region and prompted attacks by Iranian proxies on U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Syria. How U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration manage the actions of Israel, a close U.S. ally, as well as the broader geopolitical reverberations of the war, will have far-reaching consequences for regional stability as well as for Washington’s ability to confront and deter adversaries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
— Read on www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/washingtons-looming-middle-eastern-quagmire

by expanding its military presence in the Middle East, Washington may aggravate regional tensions and raise the risk and costs of miscalculation—and thus inadvertently provoke the very conflict it is desperate to avoid.

Washington’s injection of military hardware and personnel could also end up entangling the United States in open-ended security commitments to a region from which it had, until recently, been trying to extricate itself

It also makes for a sharp contrast with the incremental approach to providing military aid to Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion, especially given the more limited military threat posed by Iran and its proxies compared with that of Russia. And unlike the transparency provided on aid to Ukraine, the seeming unconditional arms transfers to Israel have been veiled in secrecy, which has prompted consternation in Congress and the resignation of a State Department official named Josh Paul, who insisted in a public statement that the scale of Washington’s support for Israel was “not in the long-term American interest.”

years of unconditional U.S. security assistance to Middle Eastern partners have often emboldened these regimes to act in ways that have severely undermined regional stability and human rights—including, for instance, Saudi Arabia’s backing of the Yemeni government in its fight against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, or the UAE’s intervention in the conflict in Libya.