Iranian allies have launched about 140 rocket and drone attacks against US troops in Iraq and Syria since the start of the Gaza war. Perhaps the most serious situation came on January 20, when “numerous ballistic missiles and rockets” were fired at the Al Asad base in western Iraq, according to US Central Command.
Reports said Patriot air-defense batteries intercepted most of them, but some attacked the base, wounding an unknown number of Americans and Iraqis. So far the US has retaliated against local proxies. Mr Biden will now face increasing pressure to take tough action against Iran. It’s a dilemma: Do nothing and America looks weak; Retaliate and risk a new war in a presidential election year.
Meanwhile, in Yemen, the US launched its seventh strike on the Houthi militia, an estranged Iranian ally that runs much of the country, in an effort to stop its missile attacks on ships passing through the Bab al-Mandab strait. .
The Houthis claim to be acting against ships or Western warships headed towards Israel, in support of the Palestinians. But their targeting remains haphazard, despite reports that it is getting help from members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the clerical regime’s Praetorian Guard, to identify ships and operate weapons.
Mr Biden himself acknowledges that US strikes will not stop the Houthis. Yet the Washington Post reports that the Biden administration is drafting plans for a “sustained military campaign” in Yemen, despite doubts from some officials.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Iran’s oldest and most powerful regional ally, Hezbollah, a Shia militia and political party, has been regularly exchanging fire with Israeli forces. It has expressed support for Hamas, but has not thrown itself into war against Israel.
The Biden administration helped prevent Israel from launching a preemptive strike against Hezbollah immediately after the October 7 attacks. But Israel is threatening action in Lebanon if diplomacy fails to convince Hezbollah forces to stop firing and move away from the border area.
Thus America and Iran are playing the role of a dangerous balance. Iran has helped its allies in the “axis of resistance” carry out attacks intended to weaken Israel, discredit the US, and discredit Arab states that have made (or want) peace with Israel. The US, for its part, is engaged in limited retaliation. Both have avoided direct confrontation, but the balance has not been maintained.
For one thing, Israel is waging an open confrontation with Hamas and Hezbollah as well as a covert war against Iran and its allies. An IRGC commander was killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike in Damascus in late December. A week later, Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official, was killed in an attack on a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut.
On January 20, another rocket attack in Damascus killed five IRGC members, including Hojatallah Omidwar, the head of intelligence in Syria for the Quds Force, the IRGC’s foreign operations arm. On January 4, the US killed Mushtaq al-Zawari, the leader of Harakat al-Nujaba, a group that attacks US forces, in a drone strike on its headquarters in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, a series of terrorist attacks domestically have shaken the Iranian regime. These include a double suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group that killed nearly 100 people in 2020 at the grave of Qassem Soleimani, a senior IRGC general killed by the US; and the killing of at least 11 policemen in the tense eastern province of Balochistan by the Pakistan-based Baloch group, Jaish al-Adl.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called on Iranian forces to exercise “strategic patience”. But Ali Waze of the International Crisis Group argues that the Iranian regime now feels it needs to “reinstate deterrence”, and has taken matters into its own hands. Hand.
Last week it fired missiles at three neighboring countries: at alleged terrorist targets in Syria and Pakistan, and at an alleged Israeli spy base in Iraqi Kurdistan. (The attack on Pakistan invited a retaliatory missile attack on Iran; both countries appear to have now stepped back from the brink.)
“Iranians are still risk averse,” says Mr. Vaze. They want to change the perception that they are on the backfoot. But there is also a perception that Israel has set a trap for them – either to justify escalating to war or to drag the US into it.”
As for the Biden administration, officials insist they do not want a regional war. Mr Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump in 2020 ordered the killing of Soleimani in response to attacks on US forces by pro-Iranian militias. This led to a volley of Iranian ballistic-missile fire similar to the recent volley on al-Assad (to which Mr Trump had no further reaction).
Mr Biden has been cautious. He does not want to get caught up in a war in the Middle East at a time when the US is already in trouble by supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia and trying to prevent another war against China over Taiwan. Moreover, Mr. Biden is seeking re-election this year.
In Iraq and Syria, U.S. forces responded with little more than an attack. Similarly, in Yemen, the US first limited itself to shooting down missiles and drones that were threatening Israel or ships passing through, issuing warnings and a supportive response before directly attacking the Houthis. Achieved the resolution of the United Nations Security Council.
“The administration knows it has a problem without a solution,” says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank in Washington, DC. “He can only try to manage it.”
Mr Biden’s best hope is that Israel will soon win, or at least end its war in Gaza, and thereby reduce anger across the region. But Israel has neither crushed Hamas nor recovered its hostages, and shows no signs of being prepared to stop. The death toll in Palestine has exceeded 25,000. Some accuse Israel of genocide. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is flatly rejecting Mr Biden’s call for a future Palestinian state.
As Mr Biden struggles to hold on to the ring in the Middle East, Mr Miller says he could be one accident or terrorist attack away from a regional war. “If this continues, and one of these attacks actually kills a large number of Americans, the administration will have no choice but to attack the IRGC.”
