This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 29 episode of “Ayman.”
Tensions are rising in the Middle East following the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike on Friday. After days of anticipation of a possible Iranian response to Nasrallah’s killing, Iran fired ballistic missiles into Israel on Tuesday. No fatalities have been reported. Israel is expected to retaliate imminently.
Israel has also continued its strikes on southern Lebanon, where they claimed to have killed another senior Hezbollah figure. On Monday, Israel’s military forces pressed forward with a ground incursion to conduct what the government described as “limited, localized and targeted ground raids” against Hezbollah.
According to Lebanon’s prime minister, as many as 1 million residents have been displaced already, with many forced to sleep on the streets. The Lebanese government says Israel’s two-week aerial campaign has now killed more than 1,000 people, including women and children. Hezbollah has launched retaliatory attacks across northern Israel, which were mostly intercepted.
Americans in Lebanon are feeling confused and anxious amid the bombardment, with many scrambling to find a way out.
Meanwhile, Americans in Lebanon are feeling confused and anxious amid the bombardment, with many scrambling to find a way out. On Sunday, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told ABC News that the State Department does “not feel a need” to evacuate Americans from the country, instead suggesting those worried about their safety use “commercial air traffic.” This comes as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered U.S. forces to remain on standby as tensions flare up. And on Monday, NBC News reported that “the Pentagon said it was sending a ‘few thousand’ additional troops to bolster the roughly 40,000 American forces in the area.”
With the threat of a full-scale regional war seemingly rising by the hour, many are now asking how we got here. For nearly a year, U.S. officials have urged actors in the region to lower the temperature and prevent the conflict from escalating. But those warnings apparently fell on deaf ears.
U.S. officials are growing increasingly concerned as strikes ramp up in Lebanon. Just two days before Nasrallah was killed, a handful of Western nations led by the U.S. put forward a 21-day cease–fire plan, expecting Israel to accept it. In fact, Kirby told reporters the cease-fire plan was published after consulting with Israel and that the Israelis “were aware of every word” in the statement. Kirby said he thought the Israelis were “on board” with the proposal and said the allies would not have made it public otherwise.
Despite that, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly rejected the deal on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week. The massive strike that killed Nasrallah went down just hours later.
Now, the fact that Israel agreed to a cease-fire deal in bad faith should surprise absolutely no one, especially U.S. officials, who have been strung along for months. The truth is, the situation playing out right now in the Middle East is being orchestrated entirely on the terms of one person and one person alone: Netanyahu.
As NBC News has reported:
In the days after the October 7th attack, President Joe Biden fervently embraced Netanyahu and Israel, literally and figuratively, calculating that unvarnished American support for the Jewish state would result in a willingness to accede to some American demands. Instead, over the past year, Biden and his aides have appeared to have steadily less influence with Netanyahu.
In the absence of an arms embargo, America’s leverage over Israel has been whittled down to nothing. By sacrificing its seat at the table, the U.S. has ensured that those deciding the next steps in this conflict are Netanyahu and the leaders of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah — not the American president.
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