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      US looks unable to talk Netanyahu out of planned invasion of Lebanon

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      The Biden administration is losing influence over whether Benjamin Netanyahu launches a ground invasion into southern Lebanon or not.For more than a year, Joe Biden and his senior advisers have managed to forestall an Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon in fear of a larger war that could envelop the entire Middle East.In the days after the 7 October attack, Biden phoned Netanyahu to talk him out of a massive retaliation against Hezbollah, which had begun firing guided rockets against Israeli positions following the Hamas raid.In April this year, Biden also told Netanyahu that the US would not support Israel in an offensive war against Iran after Tehran launched dozens of loitering munitions, cruise missiles and drones toward Israel.But on Monday, US outlets reported that Netanyahu’s administration had told White House officials they were planning a limited ground incursion into Lebanon, essentially escalating a conflict with Hezbollah and its backer Iran to a level that Biden and his team have tried desperately to avoid.The Washington Post reported that Israel was planning a limited campaign – smaller than its 2006 war against Hezbollah – that nonetheless would mark a drastic escalation with Hezbollah and Iran. The New York Times suggested US officials believed they had talked Israel out of a full invasion of Lebanon, but that smaller incursions into southern Lebanon would continue.But Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, has briefed a meeting of local council heads in northern Israel on Monday, according to the Times of Israel. “The next stage in the war against Hezbollah will begin soon … We will do this. And as I said here a month ago [that] we will shift the center of gravity [to the north], this is what I say now: we will change the situation and return the residents home.”Earlier that day, he had told Israel Defense Forces soldiers that to return some 60,000 Israelis to their homes in the country’s north, we “will use all the means that may be required – your forces, other forces, from the air, from the sea, and on land”.The plan to attack comes at a unique moment – with war hawks dominating domestic Israeli politics at the same time as a lame duck Biden administration appears increasingly unable or unwilling to intervene in the conflict. And, according to analysts, Netanyahu believes he has a limited window around the US elections to attack Iranian proxies across the region.With just a month left until the US presidential elections, the Biden administration has launched a tepid effort at a ceasefire that Netanyahu appears to have chosen to ignore – or simply to wait out until US elections that could bring in a Trump administration that would do even less to restrain him than the current one has.“Netanyahu made a calculation, and the calculation was that there was no way that the Democrats between now and November 5th [election day] could do anything that would criticise, let alone restrain him from that,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who focuses on US foreign policy and the Middle East.“You saw [vice-president Kamala] Harris’s statement, you saw the White House statement, you saw the Democrat and Republican consensus on the killing of Nasrallah and what the Israelis have done there,” he said. “And since Iran is involved in this, unlike in Gaza, the toxicity of animus against Iran in this town is so intense that the Republican party, which is now the ‘Israel can do no wrong’ party, is just winging for the administration.”Until recently, prominent US officials have thought they still had a chance to conclude a ceasefire and prevent the war from escalating further. Last week, US and French officials along with dozens of other countries called for a ceasefire in Lebanon. US officials briefed on the matter said they believed the “time was right” and that Israel would sign up.A western official last week told the Guardian that the Israeli threat to invade northern Lebanon was probably “psyops” largely designed to force Hezbollah and Iran to the negotiating table.But, at the same time, the official said, the situation in the region was extremely volatile, and could be upset by as little as a single drone strike against a sensitive target.One day later, a massive airstrike launched by the Israeli air force killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, upending security calculations in the region and potentially emboldening Israeli officials to believe they could fundamentally change the security dynamics in the region.“I understand, and happen to be very understanding of the administration position, because I spent almost 30 years inside knowing full the constraints of how to get anything done in this region, which is very hard,” Miller said. “But the notion that a US-French proposal for a three-week ceasefire in the middle of all this could work, I mean, it was, it was simply not well thought out.” More

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      Is this week Netanyahu goes from pariah to fugitive? | Andrew Roth

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      One year ago, Benjamin Netanyahu came to the UN with a vision of a “new Middle East” anchored by Israel’s growing ties with its Arab partners in the region. Now he is on the brink of launching a major escalation against Hezbollah, ignoring calls for restraint from his allies over the Gaza war and defying criticism that he is prevaricating in negotiations over a temporary ceasefire.The Israeli PM remains scheduled to speak on Friday at the UN general assembly in an appearance that is sure to lead to walkouts and protests on the streets of midtown Manhattan.He has delayed his arrival in the US by at least a day as tensions rise with Lebanon, after an elaborate operation to detonate thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah that may signal the beginning of a broader war in the region.The trip to New York may offer him a chance to evaluate support for an escalation in Lebanon, or to let Joe Biden and other allies know that he had made his decision and would not be talked down from a broader war.Netanyahu’s trip to the UN comes after a year of bloodshed in Gaza that has left more than 41,000 people dead and led the international criminal court (ICC) to consider issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar. The ICC judges are regularly rumoured to be close to approving a warrant that could accuse Netanyahu of war crimes.Among those killed during the Gaza conflict have been 200 UN humanitarian aid workers. Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces have made claims that staff from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) had taken part in the 7 October Hamas-led attacks, and nine members of the organisation had their contracts terminated after an internal UN review.António Guterres, the UN secretary general, has said that he and Netanyahu have not spoken since the beginning of the war, but that he was ready to meet him on the sidelines of the summit if the Israeli PM asked.“I have not talked to him because he didn’t pick up my phone calls, but I have no reason not to speak with him,” Guterres said. He blasted the “lack of accountability” for the deaths of the humanitarian aid workers, most of whom have been killed in strikes that the UN has slammed as indiscriminate.Asked earlier this month if Netanyahu would meet Guterres, Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, said that the Israeli PM’s schedule had not been finalised yet.Netanyahu’s most recent trip to the US came in July, when he addressed a raucous joint session Congress, promising “total victory” in his war against Hamas and mocking demonstrators against his appearance in the US Capitol as “idiots”. On the streets outside near Union Station, protesters clashed with police and defaced marble statues with paint.It remains to be seen whether Netanyahu is ready to take a step further towards the abyss. Following an airstrike in Beirut on Friday that killed a senior Hezbollah commander and at least 13 others in Beirut’s Dahiyeh area, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said that “even in Dahiyeh in Beirut – we will continue to pursue our enemy in order to protect our citizens”.The new “series of operations in the new phase of the war will continue until we achieve our goal: ensuring the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes,” he said.Guterres had said that he viewed the booby-trapped pager attack against Hezbollah as a potential prelude to a military escalation by Israel in Lebanon and warned that the region was on the “brink of catastrophe”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhether Netanyahu is ready to escalate, including by launching a ground operation, remains unclear, and both Hezbollah and its benefactor Iran have promised retribution for recent strikes. But Netanyahu’s office on Friday announced that he would delay his arrival by a day due to the situation, and Danon later told reporters that Netanyahu’s arrival date would depend on events in Israel.Netanyahu addressed the UN last year riding high on the recently concluded Abraham accords. The landmark agreement normalised relations between Israel and two Arab states, Bahrain and UAE, with expectations that Saudi Arabia may soon sign the accords as well.“When the Palestinians see that most of the Arab world has reconciled itself to the Jewish state, they too will be more likely to abandon the fantasy of destroying Israel and finally embrace a path of genuine peace with it,” Netanyahu said, holding a crude map with the words “The New Middle East”.But the bloodletting in Gaza following the attacks by Hamas have sent tensions soaring, and most recently Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said his country would not recognise Israel without a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.And, if the ICC panel of judges makes a surprise decision this week to accuse Netanyahu of war crimes in Gaza, it will mark a further embarrassment as he goes from pariah to international fugitive. More

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      The Guardian view on Israel’s booby-trap war: illegal and unacceptable | Editorial

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      In the second world war, guerrilla forces scattered large quantities of booby-trapped objects likely to be attractive to civilians. The idea was to cause widescale and indiscriminate death. The Japanese manufactured a tobacco pipe with a charge detonated by a spring-loaded striker. The Italians produced a headset that blew up when it was plugged in. More than half a century later, a global treaty came into force which “prohibited in all circumstances to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material”. Has anyone told Israel and its jubilant supporters that, as Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group points out, it is a signatory to the protocol?On Tuesday, pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 12 people – including two children and four hospital workers – and wounding thousands more. This situation is directly analogous to the historical practices that current global arms treaties explicitly prohibit. US media say Israel was behind the attack, and the country has the motive and the means to target its Iran-backed enemies. Israel’s leaders have a long history of carrying out sophisticated remote operations, ranging from cyber-attacks, suicide drone attacks and remote-controlled weapons to assassinate Iranian scientists. On Wednesday it was reported that Israel blew up thousands of two-way personal radios used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, killing nine and wounding hundreds.This week’s attacks were not, as Israel’s defenders claimed, “surgical” or a “precisely targeted anti-terrorist operation”. Israel and Hezbollah are sworn enemies. The current round of fighting has seen tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the Israel-Lebanon border because of the Shia militant group’s rocket and artillery attacks.However, the pager bombs were clearly intended to target individual civilians – diplomats and politicians – who were not directly participating in hostilities. The plan appeared to produce what lawyers might call “excessive incidental civilian harm”. Both these arguments have been levelled at Russia to claim Moscow was committing war crimes in Ukraine. It’s hard to say why the same reasoning is not applied to Israel – apart from that it is a western ally.Such disproportionate attacks, which seem illegal, are not only unprecedented but may also become normalised. If that is the case, the door is opened for other states to lethally test the laws of war. The US should step in and restrain its friend, but Joe Biden shows no sign of intervening to stop the bloodshed. The road to peace runs through Gaza, but Mr Biden’s ceasefire plan – and the release of hostages – has not found favour with either Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Hamas.The worry is that Israel’s actions lead to a disastrous all-out conflict that would pull the US into a regional fight. The world stands on the edge of chaos because Mr Netanyahu’s continuing hold on power and consequent insulation from corruption charges depend largely on his nation being at war. None of this is possible without US complicity and assistance. Perhaps it is only after its presidential election that the US will be able to say that the price of saving Mr Netanyahu’s skin should not be paid in the streets of Lebanon or by Palestinians in the occupied territories. Until then, the rules-based international order will continue to be undermined by the very countries that created the system. More

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      The US diplomatic strategy on Israel and Gaza is not working | Daniel Levy

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      The Biden administration remains in an intense phase of Middle East diplomatic activity working to avoid a regional war while optimistically spinning the prospects for a Gaza breakthrough deal.Following the latest round of provocative Israeli extrajudicial killings in Tehran and Beirut and the intensified exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend, the region appeared to lurch further in the direction of all-out war. Preventing that is a worthy cause in itself.With a US election looming and policy on Gaza, Israel and the Middle East unpopular with the Democrats’ own constituency and a potential ballot box liability in key states, there are also pressing political reasons for a Democratic administration to avoid more war and to pursue a diplomatic breakthrough. Countering domestic political criticism with hope for a deal was a useful device to deploy at the Democratic convention in Chicago and will be needed through to 5 November.Team Biden is attempting a difficult trifecta. First, the Biden administration is trying to deter the Iranian axis from further responses to Israel’s recent targeted killings in Tehran and Beirut. Joe Biden no doubt has wanted to hold out the prospect of a ceasefire, which Iran would prefer not to upend, while he simultaneously bought time for the US to beef up its military presence in the region as leverage and a threat against Iran.The US is also trying to help a key regional ally, Israel, reclaim its deterrence posture and freedom of military operation after the balance of forces shifted against it during the current conflict.Second, the Biden administration is trying to reach election day on a positive note, by bringing an end to a divisive conflict – or, as a fallback, to at least avoid further escalation and a potentially debilitating regional explosion into which Israel could pull the US. Third, and more speculatively, the Biden administration might want to bring an end to the brutal devastation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the humanitarian crisis there, and the hellish ordeal of the Israelis held in Gaza and their families. A ceasefire would also have the benefit of avoiding further damage to US interests and reputation as a consequence of Biden running political cover for and arming Israel throughout this war.Ordinarily, delivering on those first two goals – and merely scoring two out of three – might constitute an acceptable achievement. It is made more attainable by the Iranian-led axis of resistance not wanting to fall into the trap of all-out war. However, failure to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza risks everything else unravelling and keeps the region at boiling point. Regional de-escalation and domestic political quiet will be that much more difficult to sustain if the Gaza talks again collapse, especially against the backdrop of raised expectations.Sadly, that is the direction in which things are headed, exacerbated by the current US diplomatic push being exposed as clumsy or fraudulent or both.It should go without saying that putting an end to the unprecedented daily suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as bringing the Israelis who are held there home, is reason enough to throw everything at achieving a ceasefire. But the Biden administration has been singularly incapable of treating Palestinians as equals with the humanity and dignity accorded to Jewish Israelis – one of the reasons this has played so badly with the Democratic voting base.The staggering shortcomings in the Biden administration’s approach, exacerbated in secretary of state Antony Blinken’s latest mission, are highly consequential and worth unpacking. Alarm bells should have been set off when Blinken at his recent press conference in Jerusalem announced that Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted the US “bridging proposal” – when the Israeli prime minister himself declared no such thing. Within hours, it became clear that Israel’s chief negotiator, Nitzan Alon, would not participate in the talks as a way of protesting against Netanyahu’s undermining of the deal.That was followed by senior US and Israeli security officials anonymously briefing the press that Netanyahu was preventing a deal. Similar conclusions were also reached and made public by the main forums representing the Israeli hostage families. On his ninth visit to Israel since the 7 October attack, Blinken again failed – not just at mediating between Israel and Hamas, but even in closing the gaps between the competing camps inside the Israeli system. The US refusal to take seriously that there are Hamas negotiating positions which are legitimate, and which will need to be part of a deal (and with which the US ostensibly agrees to in substance – such as a full Israeli withdrawal and a sustainable ceasefire), has condemned US-led talks to repeated failure.Repackaging Israeli proposals and presenting them as a US position may have a retro feel to it, but that does not make it cool. And it won’t deliver progress (it can’t even sustain Israeli endorsement given Netanyahu’s constant shifting of the goalposts to avoid a deal). That the US has zero credibility as a mediator is a problem. That it has conspired to make its contributions not only ineffective but counterproductive is devastating. Even Itamar Eichner, a diplomatic correspondent for the Israeli Yedioth newspaper, describes Blinken’s visit as having displayed “naivete and amateurishness … effectively sabotaging the deal by aligning with Netanyahu”.This is a US government modus operandi with which Netanyahu is extremely familiar, and which falls very squarely inside his comfort zone. Netanyahu knows that he has won once the US mediator – whatever the actual facts – is willing to blame the Palestinian side (Arafat during Oslo, Hamas now). Despite having the US having changed its own proposal to accommodate Netanyahu, and Netanyahu still distancing himself from the terms and being called on it by his own defence establishment, Biden and senior US officials continue their public disinformation campaign of claiming that only Hamas is the problem and should be pressured.Even if US governments hold personal frustrations with Netanyahu, their policies serve to strengthen Bibi at home.From early in this war, Netanyahu’s bottom line has been that while internal pressures exist to secure a deal (and therefore get the hostages back and cease the military operation), the opposite side of that ledger is more foreboding: a deal would upend Netanyahu’s extremist governing coalition and bring an end to the most important shield Netanyahu has created for himself politically: his claimed mantle as Israel’s indispensable wartime leader.Netanyahu’s ideological preference is for displacing Palestinians and eviscerating their rights, alongside pulling the US more actively into a regional clash with Iran; his short-term political goal is to maintain an open-ended war which can accommodate varying degrees of intensity, but not a deal.So where might change ultimately come from? Given current tensions, something approximating an all-out regional war might yet unfold. Alongside the dangers and losses this would entail, a broader conflagration might belatedly produce a more serious external push for a comprehensive ceasefire.Israeli coalition politics could also throw a spanner in the works for Netanyahu, given tensions among his governing allies, and particularly with the ultra-Orthodox parties over the issue of military enlistment. But the surest way to de-escalate in the region and to bring the horrors of Gaza to an end continues to be via challenging the Israeli incentive structure in meaningful ways – through legal, political and economic pressure and sanctions, and especially by the withholding of weapons.Netanyahu is a loose cannon, which Kamala Harris should have no interest in reloading 10 weeks out from an election.

      Daniel Levy is the president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator More

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      Ceasefire talks are on their last legs, and Benjamin Netanyahu is to blame | Mohamad Bazzi

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      Joe Biden is making a last-ditch effort to salvage the Gaza ceasefire agreement he has been pushing for months. The US president, along with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, have called on Israeli and Hamas negotiators to resume indirect talks on Thursday to hammer out an agreement. But Biden and his administration won’t name and shame the biggest obstacle to reaching a deal: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. For months, Netanyahu has tried to block an agreement by backtracking and adding new conditions, prompting Israeli security officials to accuse him of sabotaging the negotiations to stay in power.Since a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed on 1 December, Biden has invested nearly all of his administration’s efforts into resurrecting a ceasefire. But Biden refuses to impose any cost on Netanyahu for his obstinacy and prolonging the conflict. Since Israel launched its brutal war on Gaza 10 months ago, Biden has failed to use the two most effective levers of power at his disposal: withholding billions of dollars in US weapons shipments, and denying Israel political cover at the United Nations security council and other international bodies.Even as US officials privately leak that Biden is angry at Netanyahu for lying to him about wanting to secure a ceasefire, the Biden administration continues to send massive new transfers of weapons to Israel. On Tuesday, the state department approved $20bn in new arms sales, which include dozens of F-15 fighter jets, tactical vehicles and missiles, as well as tens of thousands of explosive mortar and tank cartridges.This is one of the largest weapons transfers to Israel in US history – and it will be mostly funded by American taxpayers. The biggest part of the deal is nearly $19bn for up to 50 new warplanes, which won’t be delivered for at least five years. But the thousands of rounds of ordnance could be shipped sooner. Washington is, by far, the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, providing $3.8bn in military aid a year. In April, after intense lobbying by Biden, Congress approved an additional $14bn in military assistance to Israel, which will fund the latest purchases approved this week.With this level of Israeli dependence on US military aid, Biden should have significant leverage over Netanyahu. Instead, Biden is clinging to a failed policy of trying to exert behind-the-scenes influence on the Israeli prime minister and his extremist allies. Netanyahu has consistently defied and humiliated Biden – and yet the US president won’t call out Netanyahu for obstructing a ceasefire agreement that would lead to the release of more than 100 hostages still being held by Hamas after its 7 October attacks on Israel.Biden outlined the parameters of a deal in late May, when he spoke at the White House to publicly endorse a three-phase Israeli plan to end the war. By essentially adopting Israel’s proposal, Biden hoped to break a months-long deadlock in negotiations that were mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar. For months, the Biden administration blamed Hamas for refusing to accept a truce – and rarely mentioned Netanyahu’s intransigence. In early July, the Biden administration called Hamas’s response to the US proposal a “breakthrough”, raising hopes that a deal was imminent.But as talks dragged on, Netanyahu ordered Israeli negotiators to add five new conditions to the outlines of a proposal that Israel had accepted in late May and which formed the basis for Biden’s plan. In a letter sent to mediators in late July, Israel demanded that it maintain military control of Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, an area known as the Philadelphi Corridor, which had been a major point of contention during earlier rounds of negotiations.Netanyahu’s attempts at blocking the ceasefire agreement infuriated members of Israel’s security establishment, and they began leaking details of recent high-level security meetings to show the prime minister’s obstinacy and his lack of interest in the fate of the remaining hostages. On 2 August, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on a tense meeting between Netanyahu and his security chiefs days earlier, which devolved into a shouting match as multiple officials accused the premier of torpedoing any ceasefire deal with his latest demands. Netanyahu reportedly accused his top security officials of being “soft” and poor negotiators.The prime minister is trying to prolong the Gaza war to avoid early elections, which his Likud party is likely to lose, and multiple investigations into his government’s security failures leading up to the October attacks. If he’s forced out of power, Netanyahu would also face a long-delayed corruption and bribery trial stemming from an earlier stint as premier. Despite Netanyahu’s interest in clinging to power and criticism of his negotiating tactics by Israeli security officials, the Biden administration has gone out of its way to avoid blaming Netanyahu for obstructing a ceasefire.Israel has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and brought hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, as the Israeli military continues to block aid deliveries. Researchers fear the death toll could eventually reach 186,000 – due to “indirect casualties” of war, such as food shortages, a widespread cholera epidemic and the destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure.With the US and other western allies continuing to provide the weapons that sustain Israel’s war machine, Netanyahu has had little incentive to stop the bloodshed. Instead, he has escalated the conflict in recent weeks, risking a wider regional war that could involve Israel and the US against Iran and its network of allied militias in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.Late last month, two assassinations in Beirut and Tehran revived fears that the Gaza war could spiral into a regional conflagration. On 30 July, an Israeli airstrike on southern Beirut killed a senior commander in Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia supported by Iran that has been fighting a low-level conflict with Israel since October. The next day, an explosion in Tehran killed the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. While Israel did not claim responsibility for that assassination, it’s widely assumed to be behind the attack that humiliated the Iranian leadership, which was hosting Haniyeh and dozens of other foreign officials for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. Iran vowed to retaliate for Haniyeh’s killing on its soil, and US and western officials have been scrambling to avoid an escalating series of attacks and reprisals.A ceasefire is the only way to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and to ensure that the conflict won’t expand into a regional war that could entangle Iran and the US. But since Netanyahu has not faced the loss of US support or other consequences for his belligerence, he has little incentive to agree to a truce or to refrain from attacks that destabilize the region.Already, there are signs that Biden’s ceasefire summit on Thursday will end in yet another deadlock: Hamas has not committed to participating in the talks, while a member of Israel’s negotiating team told Israeli media that there was no point in traveling to the summit unless Netanyahu expands the team’s mandate. In other words, Netanyahu can continue to obstruct the negotiations – and pay no price for it.So far, the Israeli prime minister has gotten everything he’s wanted by prolonging the war and escaping blame from the Biden administration for stalling a ceasefire deal. After the administration approved $20bn in new arms deals this week, Biden is signaling that he will continue sending weapons to Israel no matter what Netanyahu does.It doesn’t have to be this way: since Biden dropped out of the US presidential race last month, he no longer risks paying a political cost for restraining Netanyahu and Israel. The president can finally stand up to Netanyahu – and salvage a ceasefire plan that ends 10 months of American complicity.

      Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University. He is also a non-resident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) More

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      Assassination again shows Netanyahu’s disregard for US-Israel relations

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      Standing alongside Donald Trump in Florida a week ago, Benjamin Netanyahu was vague on the latest prospect of a ceasefire in the war in Gaza.“I hope we are going to have a deal. Time will tell,” the Israeli prime minister said, two days after his controversial address to a joint session of the US Congress.Throughout his three-day visit to the US, Netanyahu was careful to avoid making any commitment to the deal Biden unveiled on 31 May. While the US insisted publicly that the onus was on Hamas to accept the plan, the administration knew it also needed to pin down Netanyahu personally over his reluctance to commit to a permanent ceasefire.Yet, according to US reports, it now appears that at the very time Netanyahu was publicly speculating about a deal, a remote-controlled bomb had already been smuggled into a guesthouse in Tehran, awaiting its intended target: Ismail Haniyeh, the senior Hamas leader who was assassinated on Wednesday night.Haniyeh, reported the New York Times and CNN, was killed by an explosive device placed in the guesthouse, where he was known to stay while visiting Iran and was under the protection of the powerful Revolutionary Guards. Iran and Hamas have blamed Israel for the attack, which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied. It fits a pattern of previous Israeli targeted killings on Iranian soil.If the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is to be believed, Netanyahu never divulged any such plan to his American allies. The first Blinken knew of the assassination was when he was told in Singapore, after the event. Later that day he insisted he had been left blind-sided, almost as badly as Iranian intelligence.In Netanyahu’s defence, Israel has not confirmed the US media accounts, nor has it ever made any secret of its intention to kill the senior Hamas leadership as a reprisal for the 7 October attacks. And even as he spoke to Congress, the prime minister could not have known that the reported plan would work so well, or have such a devastating impact.However, the potential consequences of such an assassination were clear to all. It took the frustrated Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, to accuse Netanyahu of sabotage. “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” he asked.In Washington, the national security council spokesperson John Kirby put on a brave face, claiming the ceasefire process had not been “completely torpedoed”, and insisting: “We still believe the deal on the table is worth pursuing”.The assassination underlines how the US is often left looking like the junior partner in the relationship with Israel, observers say. Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, said: “It is another case of Netanyahu putting up two fingers to Biden. There has been month after month after month of these just repeated affronts and humiliations from Netanyahu, culminating in this ridiculous moment last week, where he came and spoke in front of the Congress yet again, to undermine Biden’s ceasefire proposal. Yet Biden, who sets such store by personal relations, refuses to change course.”Duss has said that by refusing to control the supply of US weapons as a means of leverage with Israel, Biden has left Netanyahu free to pursue the war. Biden was left to ring Netanyahu two days after the assassination, and to promise to defend Israel from any threats from Iran and its proxy groups. If there was any private admonition or disapproval, the public read-out of the call concealed it.Biden later expressed his frustration, telling reporters: “We have the basis for a ceasefire. They should move on it now.” Asked if Haniyeh’s death had ruined the prospect of a deal, the president said: “It has not helped.”The killing is a further indicator of how the Biden administration cannot capitalise on a security relationship with a politician whose methods and objectives it does not share, and who it suspects wants its political rival to triumph in November’s US election. Moreover, both Trump and Netanyahu share a common goal – having political power to stave off criminal proceedings against themselves.At issue, too, is the effectiveness of Israel’s long-term military strategy for dismantling Hamas, including the use of assassinations on foreign soil.Haniyeh is the third prominent member of Iran-backed military groups to be killed in recent weeks, after the killing last month of the Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif in Gaza and the strike on the Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, in turn a response to the killing of 12 children and teenagers in the Druze village of Majdal Shams.In total, according to ACLED, a US-based NGO, Israel has mounted 34 attacks that have led to the death of at least 39 commanders and senior members of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran in the past 10 months.Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations, describes the killings as a tactical victory, but a strategic defeat. “Haniyeh was a proponent of Palestinian reconciliation, and of a ceasefire. So taking him out of the equation has an impact on the internal power dynamics within the group by strengthening the hardliners, at least in the current term,” he said.Netanyahu, Lovatt added, was undermining Haniyeh “by going back on agreed positions and by being very vocal in saying as soon as the hostages were released we recommence fighting Hamas”.Nicholas Hopton, a former UK ambassador to Tehran, said he feared the assassination was part of a deliberate attempt to sabotage the hopes of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, to rebuild relations with the west.“You can overstate what a reformer means in Iran – he went to the parliament wearing an IRGC uniform – but he was going to give relations with the west a go,” Hopton said. “I think the supreme leader is deeply sceptical it will lead anywhere but thought it was worth an attempt. Pezeshkian may now be stymied right away, and I think that’s what the Israeli assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran was partly designed to do.”Inside Iran, Mohammad Salari, the secretary general of the Islamic Solidarity party, said the killing should be seen as more than the removal of one political figure. The hidden purpose was to overshadow the new government’s policy of engagement and de-escalation, he said.“Netanyahu will use all his efforts to lay stones in the path of realising Iran’s balanced foreign policy, improving relations with European countries, and managing tension with the United States, just like during the nuclear negotiations.”So when the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah,threatened an open battle on all fronts, he probably meant, according to Lovatt, a multi-pronged response designed not to trigger a regional war, but to go further than the retaliation mounted by Iran alone in April. It was notable that Nasrallah added a plea to the White House: “If anybody in the world genuinely wants to prevent a more serious regional war, they must pressure Israel to stop its aggression on Gaza.”At the moment that plea lies unanswered. More

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      Trump calls Harris remarks on Gaza war ‘disrespectful’ as he meets Netanyahu

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      Donald Trump has called Kamala Harris’s statement on the Gaza war “disrespectful” before a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Florida to discuss the conflict.Harris, the US vice-president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, had seemed to mark a change of tone on the Israel-Gaza war on Thursday after her own meeting with Netanyahu, when she declared she would “not be silent” about the suffering of Palestinians.Trump criticised Harris on Friday before his meeting at his Mar-a-Lago home, calling her remarks “disrespectful” as he targeted her over an issue that has split the Democratic party.“They weren’t very nice pertaining to Israel,” Trump said. “I actually don’t know how a person who is Jewish could vote for her, but that’s up to them.”Right-wing Israeli politicians attacked Harris and anonymous officials have suggested the remarks could make it more difficult to conclude a ceasefire deal.“I think to the extent that Hamas understands there’s no daylight between Israel and the United States, that expedites the deal,” said Netanyahu to reporters at his meeting with Trump. “And I would hope that those comments don’t change that.”A Harris aide rejected a report in the Times of Israel that a senior official had said that Harris’ criticism would hinder the conclusion of a deal.“I don’t know what they’re talking about,” a Harris aide told CNN.Photographs showed Trump warmly greeting Netanyahu, who is concluding a one-week visit to the US that has been marked by large protests against the war. People stood along the route used by Netanyahu’s motorcade to visit Trump, holding up signs that read: “Ceasefire now” and “Convicted fellon [sic] invites a war criminal”.View image in fullscreenBefore the meeting, Netanyahu said he believed military pressure on Hamas had created “movement” in ceasefire talks, and that he would send a team to an upcoming round of negotiations in Rome. “Time will tell if we’re closer to a ceasefire deal,” he said.The meeting is their first since Trump left the White House in 2020. The men have had a strained relationship in the past after Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden on his victory in the 2020 election, a vote that Trump has claimed, without evidence, was manipulated. “Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake,” Trump said at the time. “Fuck him.”On Friday, the two appeared to have reconciled. “We’ve always had a good relationship,” Trump told reporters before the meeting.The two were political allies in the past. Trump largely gave Netanyahu carte blanche during his first term in office, ADD moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. . He told Fox News this week that Israel should finish the war and bring back the hostages “fast”. “They are getting decimated with this publicity, and you know Israel is not very good at public relations,” Trump told the broadcaster.Harris has tried to thread the needle of continuing the Biden administration’s policy of support for Israel while assuaging growing anger among Democrats about the humanitarian toll of the conflict that has killed 39,000 Palestinians. Nearly half the Democrats in Congress skipped Netanyahu’s speech in the House of Representatives, and dozens openly said they were boycotting it because of the war.Harris met Netanyahu on Thursday at the White House shortly after the prime minister had sat down with Joe Biden. The separate meetings highlighted how the presumptive Democratic nominee has become increasingly independent since launching her presidential campaign.At the same time, aides tried to play down the potential for change between Biden and Harris on Israel. “[Biden’s] and [Harris’s] message to PM Netanyahu was the same: it’s time to get the hostage and ceasefire deal done,” wrote Phil Gordon, Harris’s national security adviser.Harris called the meeting “frank and constructive”, and said “Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters”. She indicated that she would not halt military aid to Israel because she would “always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself”.But she went further than other administration officials in criticising how Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza, bolstering hopes she may, at least rhetorically, give more voice to the humanitarian concerns of Palestinians.She said she had expressed her “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians, and I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there”.“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating – the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”Harris did not say how Netanyahu responded to the Biden administration’s offer of a three-part ceasefire that would begin with a withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from population centres and some hostages being released. She did not take questions from reporters following the remarks.“There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal,” Harris said. “And as I just told prime minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done. So, to everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you.”The Democratic mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, said in an interview with Michigan public radio: “Many of us are waiting to see what policy platform Harris puts forward.” Hammoud has been outspoken on Gaza in a state where 13.2% voted “uncommitted” in this year’s Democratic primary in a protest against Biden’s policy towards Israel.“In the conversations that we have had I have found her to be sympathetic and empathetic,” he said. “I’ve found her to be someone that wants to listen … obviously there’s much that remains to be seen.”A senior administration official said before the meetings with Biden and Harris that the “framework of the deal is basically there” but that there are “some very serious implementation issues that still have to be resolved”.“There are some things we need from Hamas, and there are some things we need from the Israeli side, and I think you’ll see that play out here over the course of the coming week,” the official said. 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      Harris navigates Netanyahu visit and stance on Israel – podcast

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      Kamala Harris enjoyed a brief period of excitement as Democrats rallied behind her presidential bid ahead of November’s election. Only a few days in, however, she is being asked questions over her stance on Israel and the war in Gaza.
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