Behind the US warning about an Israeli weapons ban

TEHRAN – Since the Israeli occupation regime began its relentless bombardment of women and children in the Gaza Strip, the United States has provided full support to Tel Aviv.

From day one, on the evening of October 7, when the Israelis began airstrikes, the United States offered military, political, diplomatic and media support. America’s stance was at odds with the majority of the international community.

Over the past seven months, only the United States has vetoed UN resolutions aimed at ending the Israeli military’s daily massacres of women and children in Gaza. Washington shielded Israelis from sanctions and other punitive measures as the international community called on Biden to apply American pressure against the Israeli occupation and end the genocide in Gaza.

Now the Biden administration has changed its public position on Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, but why the sudden change?

What was said?

Biden told CNN that if the Israeli military enters Rafah, “we will not provide the weapons and artillery shells used.”

The US President made it clear that Washington would continue to supply weapons to Tel Aviv, but there would be certain limits.

The comments come amid reports suggesting the same thing and senior American officials making similar comments that the US would stop some arms sales to Israel, but this was the first public statement from the president himself.

validity

The White House and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are the staunchest allies.

Biden had previously used a loophole to quietly send more than 100 arms shipments to Tel Aviv during the war on Gaza. It is therefore impossible to check whether the US government will actually block some weapons or whether this is a PR measure.

There is growing global focus on how much control the US can exert over the occupation regime.

This could be an attempt by both Tel Aviv and Washington to show that the Israelis do not take orders from America.
The Israeli regime is also implicated in genocide and war crimes cases at the UN’s top courts, and Biden wants to avoid being blamed.

ceasefire agreement

Recently, Hamas was offered a US-developed ceasefire agreement via Qatar and Egypt. The same text was also made available to the Israelis, who accepted it.

Tel Aviv expected Hamas to reject the proposal, but Hamas accepted the agreement, which contained the key conditions the resistance group sought.

This surprised Netanyahu’s cabinet and Tel Aviv quickly changed its position by rejecting the ceasefire, which is believed to have caused some tension between Netanyahu and Biden.

US domestic politics
The US presidential election in November is proving to be an important driving force for Biden to end the Israeli war against Gaza.

When the war ends, the pro-Palestinian American student movement will also end. The violent crackdown on students has reignited the global debate about America’s human rights record.

Biden is also worried that he could lose battleground states like Michigan over Gaza, which could spell the end of his presidency.

Biden thought he had a ceasefire agreement in place, but the Israelis appear to have jeopardized it.

Rafah “red line”

To ease public dissent at home, the US president declared the Israeli ground invasion of Rafah to be his red line.

The Israeli military has entered Rafah, where half of Gaza’s population, including 600,000 children, have sought refuge.

If Biden had not acted, he would have appeared extremely weak, as his poll numbers have already plummeted.

Israeli military supplies

The Israeli military is believed to have a large stockpile of US weapons, even though it has fired a record amount of ammunition against the Gaza Strip. Biden ensured that Israeli arms depots were overloaded with offensive weapons.

The same bombs that killed 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

Battle of Rafah

The Israelis’ concern is whether the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) will have enough American weapons for the Battle of Rafah if Biden actually follows through on his promise to stop some US weapons.

A brief analysis shows that the number of bombs and artillery shells used by the IOF in northern Gaza explains why the US shipped more. The Israeli army used up its supplies faster than the US deployed.

In Khan Younis, the IOF deployed several battalions that withdrew under fire on April 7 after four months of fighting with Palestinian resistance forces. The battle lasted longer than in northern Gaza.

Rafah’s location on the Egyptian border would, of course, make it an ideal area in which Hamas would establish its logistical, governmental and social bases.

Eliminating Hamas in Rafah would take more than seven months of fighting, judging by the failures in northern Gaza (where the IOF is fighting Hamas again) and in Khan Younis.

Takeover of Rafah

The US is aware that the IOF cannot defeat Hamas in Gaza and is unlikely to have as much luck in Rafah as the Israeli army has elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking to British media, a former Middle East adviser to the US Department of Defense said there was a reason Hamas was never defeated militarily and Netanyahu must be aware of that.

Jasmine El Gamal says: “(Hamas) recruits are increasing as the Israelis invade.

“We are already seeing Hamas regrouping in other places in the Gaza Strip. So it’s more of a slugfest than a long-term, sustainable solution to the idea of ​​weakening Hamas.”

CIA Director William Burns traveled to Tel Aviv again to hold talks with Netanyahu. El Gamal says Burns will likely tell the Israeli prime minister that there is “no military solution.”

Humanitarian crisis

What the IOF will do in Rafah will only worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis. The image of the Israeli occupation regime that the United States has tried to protect over the past seven months is becoming more tarnished as aid enters the Gaza Strip.

Operation True Promise

Biden and other U.S. policymakers fear that the prospect of an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah would trigger a larger regional conflict.

There are many fronts on which the United States should try to shield its ally, and America has done poorly on them.

Yemen’s Ansarullah leader is undeterred by American and British attacks and has vowed to step up operations if the IOF massacres civilians in Rafah by targeting ships from all companies involved in the delivery or transport of goods the Israeli occupying power, regardless of their destination.

Abdul Malik al-Houthi said this was a fourth stage of escalation in retaliation for “Israeli aggression against Rafah.”

“From now on, we are also thinking about the fifth and sixth phases and have very important, sensitive and influential decisions against the enemies,” he added.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has also significantly increased its attacks against “vital Zionist targets” in the past week, while Lebanon’s Hezbollah is bringing new elements to the battlefield every day. Who says Hezbollah won’t liberate the occupied Sheba’a Farms?

The real turning point was Iran’s Operation True Promise in retaliation for the deadly Israeli airstrikes on the Iranian diplomatic mission in Syria. The United States and its allies failed to protect the Israelis from the multitude of drones and missiles fired by Tehran. Iran says it only used simple projectiles. Another Iranian retaliation could change the geography of the region.

Netanyahu’s headache

The Israeli prime minister is in a quandary between listening to Biden to end the war or listening to his fascist ministers who have threatened to withdraw from his cabinet and end Netanyahu’s rule if he ends the war on Gaza completed. Netanyahu is certain to face more than one trial over his catastrophic security failure on October 7 and other criminal proceedings that could lead to his imprisonment.

How will the war end?

The US was heavily involved in Israel’s war on Gaza. But America’s track record over the past few decades shows that it cannot win any war, let alone Israel’s.

The US, like Israel, has the ability to start wars, as it has done in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, but when one looks at the outcome of these wars and their stated missions, it is clear that the US has been defeated more than once became .

The same applies to the Israeli occupation regime since 2000 after the withdrawal of regime troops from southern Lebanon.

Tel Aviv has started many wars but has been unable to win them. The regime itself has a terrible track record of inflicting unprecedented suffering and casualties on civilians.