The commander of the U.S. Central Command, who is visiting Israel, announced that he would extend his visit by one day. This signal proves one thing, and that is that America's hopes of withdrawing from the Middle East are becoming increasingly slim. Israel's withdrawal from southern Gaza has brought a brief lull to the Middle East, but it is likely to be a harbinger of a storm.
The United States very much hopes to "turn the rudder" and shift the focus of its efforts from the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine to the Western Pacific. From Biden's pressure on Israel to withdraw its troops and open humanitarian supplies into Gaza a while ago, to Washington's recent high-profile trilateral summit between the United States, Japan and the Philippines, the United States is sending a signal to the outside world: the chaos in the Middle East should end, and the United States will deal with China wholeheartedly.
In late April, according to Biden's plan, the United States and the Philippines will organize a "shoulder-to-shoulder" joint military exercise in the South China Sea. But after Israel "killed" the Iranian embassy in Damascus with the F35, the US plan was completely disrupted. The United States announced that it would send additional warships to the Middle East to "protect" Israel, and it is foreseeable that the U.S. military will definitely have fewer ships assigned to the Indo-Pacific to deal with China.
American
Israel's attack on the Iranian embassy was a clever move for Netanyahu, but it cornered the United States. For Israel, this conflict is bound to continue, and it is not simply a question of winning or losing on the battlefield, or whether Netanyahu will step down, but whether Israel can continue to survive in the Middle East.
For a long time, Israel's survival in the Middle East has relied on a set of theories of "cumulative deterrence." To put it simply, Israel also knows that it is not right, so it must subdue and scare the surrounding Arab countries in order to win enough living space.
To establish such deterrence, two prerequisites need to be met, one is to "respond violently to every provocation" and the other is to "create a strong image through constant victories". In this round of the Gaza conflict, Israel has done the former, but it has clearly failed to do the latter.
Israeli army
No matter how Netanyahu tries to whitewash it, this time the Israeli army and Hamas have a crushing defeat in Gaza. Israel has not completely "eliminated" Hamas, as it claims. On the contrary, Hamas's grip on the Gaza Strip has increased rather than diminished. After the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Gaza, Hamas quickly rebuilt its grassroots and began to maintain local security and keep prices low.
Flour, which once skyrocketed to 120 shekels per kilogram during the war, has quickly fallen back to 10 shekels. This situation is extremely unfavorable for Israel. Hamas's success in shattering the powerful image that Israel has built over the past few decades will likely rewrite the landscape of the Middle East as the entire Middle East begins to take sides again.
Many people wonder why Israel is fighting so ugly in Gaza this time. However, if we understand the theory of "cumulative deterrence", we know that Israel is actually trying to use this kind of indiscriminate bombing to strengthen the impression of "violent response" in Middle Eastern countries, so that the resistance groups will not dare to easily launch actions similar to the "Al-Aqsa flood" in the future.
Otherwise, if Hamas sets off a "flood" today, tomorrow the Houthis in Yemen send a "heavenly fire", and the day after tomorrow Allah attacks the Golan Heights, Israel will certainly not be able to live. Moreover, Sunni countries will also rethink whether to join forces with Israel against Iran or with Iran against Israel.
For the group of countries represented by Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel are essentially no different, and they are both geopolitical rivals. Now that Israel is unable to protect itself, it is not impossible for these countries to turn their backs and deny people. Therefore, in Israel's view, this battle must be fought, and even if there is no way to destroy Hamas, at least there must be a landmark event that can prove that the Israeli army "won the war".
Recently, Israel has frequently hyped up and concentrated its forces on attacking the Rafah crossing, and it is based on this logic that we cannot provoke the hard-nosed Hamas masses, and I can't afford to provoke you, the soft persimmon of Egypt? Moreover, the Rafah crossing is an important channel for the people of Gaza to obtain external assistance. By taking this place, Israel will not only be able to reassert its power in the Middle East, but will also be able to slowly consume Hamas through siege. That's Netanyahu's calculations.
American
But for the United States, this plan is the next choice. If Israel continues to fight, it means that the United States will continue to have human and material resources in the Middle East, and it will also be poked in the backbone by Europe and the entire Third World. This is extremely unfavorable to the United States, which is anxious to engage in strategic competition with China.
The United States has long wanted to withdraw from the Middle East, otherwise it would not have made such a farce as the "Great Retreat from Kabul" that would have been disgraced and thrown to the whole world. However, the current Biden administration is indecisive, unable to recognize the situation in the Middle East, and always imagines that things can develop according to the US script by relying on diplomatic "micro-manipulation". The result of this approach is that the United States is completely led by the nose by Israel.
If the United States had come up with the card of "stop military aid" and hammered Netanyahu earlier, then Israel would most likely not have been able to attack the Iranian embassy. Because it is unlikely that Iran will have no reaction after this is done. Iran's embassies were a key hub for his "arc of resistance," and Iran's military advisers were largely in contact with local resistance forces through embassies.
If the Syrian embassy is attacked this time and Iran does not respond, then the entire resistance network may be threatened by Israel in the future, and both Israel and Iran are "clear" about this matter. Israel's bombing of the Iranian embassy is aimed at escalating the situation and pulling the United States into the water and Iran to completely "open the film."
On the 13th, Iran seized an Israeli-linked vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. On the 14th, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a military strike on the Israeli mainland, codenamed "Honest Promise". Iran launched a total of 185 drones, 110 surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and 36 cruise missiles for a total of five hours.
Although the operation ended as quickly as a fireworks show, Israeli retaliation was also brewing. Israeli wartime cabinet minister Gantz said Israel intends to create a regional coalition to counter the Iranian threat and respond to the Iranian attack at the right time and in the right way.
The country that still harbors illusions is none other than the United States, which has been dragged into the swamp. The Biden administration is still desperately trying to stabilize the situation, ramping up efforts to scare Iran on the one hand and reassuring Israel on the other, and Biden is discussing with Congress new aid to Israel.
But as mentioned above, both Israel and Iran are preparing in the direction of "doing big things" this time, and Iran is also standing in front of the stage for the first time.
Things have developed to this point, and American politicians can daydream as much as they can, but when they are slapped in the face by reality, this group of people will inevitably have to bear the consequences. As a consequence, the United States will be completely dragged into the Middle East quagmire and will completely lose the initiative in the strategic game with China in the Pacific.
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