In the topsy-turvy world of corporate media reporting on U.S. foreign policy, people have been led to believe that U.S. air strikes on Yemen, Iraq, and Syria are legitimate and responsible efforts to contain the expanding war over Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, the actions of the Houthi government in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran and its allies in Iraq and Syria, the narrative goes, are all dangerous escalations.
In fact, it is actions by the United States and Israel that are driving the expansion of the conflict, as Iran and others are genuinely trying to find effective ways to counter and end Israel’s genocide in Gaza while avoiding a full-scale regional war.
Efforts by Egypt and Qatar to mediate a ceasefire and the release of hostages and prisoners-of-war by both sides are encouraging, but it is important to recognize who the aggressors are, who the victims are, and how regional actors are taking incremental but increasingly forceful action to respond to genocide.
A near-total Israeli communications blackout in Gaza has reduced the flow of images of the ongoing massacre on our televisions and computer screens, but the slaughter has not abated. Israel is bombing and attacking Khan Younis, the largest city in the southern Gaza Strip, as ruthlessly as it did Gaza City in the north. Israeli forces and U.S. weapons have killed an average of 240 Gazans per day for more than three months, and 70 percent of the dead continue to be women and children.
Voice of America / Public domain
Drone Shows Airstrike Aftermath in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, January 2, 2024.
Israel has repeatedly claimed that it is taking new steps to protect civilians, but this appears to be little more than a public relations exercise. The Israeli government is still using 2,000 pound and even 5,000 pound “bunker-buster” bombs to displace the people of Gaza and herd them toward the Egyptian border, as that government debates how to eventually push them across that border in what officials euphemistically refer to as “voluntary emigration.”
People throughout the Middle East are horrified by Israel’s slaughter, but most of their governments will only condemn Israel verbally. The Houthis are different. Unable to directly send forces to fight for Gaza, they began enforcing a blockade of the Red Sea against Israeli-owned ships and other ships carrying goods to or from Israel. Since mid-November, they have conducted about thirty attacks on international vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, but none of the attacks have caused casualties nor sunk any ships.
Biden has admitted that U.S. bombing will not force Yemen to lift its blockade, but insists that the United States will keep attacking anyway.
In response, the Biden Administration, without Congressional approval, has launched at least eight rounds of bombing, including airstrikes on Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. The United Kingdom has contributed a few warplanes, while Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Bahrain are also acting as cheerleaders to provide the United States with the cover of leading an “international coalition.”
Biden has admitted that U.S. bombing will not force Yemen to lift its blockade, but insists that the United States will keep attacking anyway. Saudi Arabia dropped 70,000 mostly American (and some British) bombs on Yemen in a seven-year war that utterly failed to defeat the Houthi government.
Yemenis identify with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, and a million people took to the streets of Sanaa to support their country’s position challenging Israel and the United States. Yemen is not an Iranian puppet, but as with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Iraqi and Syrian allies, Iran has trained the Yemenis to build and deploy increasingly powerful anti-ship, cruise, and ballistic missiles. The Houthis have made it clear that they will stop their attacks once Israel stops preventing food and medicine from reaching people in Gaza.
Instead of pressing for a ceasefire in Gaza, Biden and his advisers are choosing to deepen U.S. military involvement in a regional Middle East conflict. The United States and Israel have now conducted airstrikes on the capitals of four neighboring countries: Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Iran also suspects U.S. and Israeli spy agencies of a role in two bomb explosions in Kerman, Iran, which killed about ninety people and wounded hundreds more at a commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the U.S. assassination, in January 2020, of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
On January 20, an Israeli airstrike killed ten people in Damascus, including five Iranian officials. After repeated Israeli air force and artillery strikes in Syria, Russia has now deployed warplanes to patrol the border to deter these attacks, and has reoccupied two previously vacated outposts built to monitor violations of the demilitarized zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Fars Media Corporation, CC BY 4.0
Protests in Iran against the 2024 U.S. bombing of Yemen, January 13, 2024.
Iran has responded to the terrorist bombings in Kerman and Israeli assassinations of Iranian officials with missile strikes on targets in Iraq and Syria. Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdohallian has strongly defended Iran’s claim that the strikes on Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan targeted agents of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
At the same time, the United States has escalated its tit-for-tat airstrikes against Iranian-backed Iraqi militias. The Iraqi government has consistently protested U.S. airstrikes against the militias as violations of Iraqi sovereignty. A military spokesperson for Iraq’s prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani called the latest U.S. airstrikes “acts of aggression,” and said, “This unacceptable act undermines years of cooperation . . . at a time when the region is already grappling with the danger of expanding conflict, the repercussions of the aggression on Gaza.”
After its fiascos in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq killed thousands of U.S. troops, the United States has avoided large numbers of military casualties for the past ten years.
After its fiascos in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq killed thousands of U.S. troops, the United States has avoided large numbers of military casualties for the past ten years. The last time the United States had more than a hundred troops killed in action in a single year was in 2013, when 128 Americans were killed in Afghanistan. Since then, the nation has relied on bombing and proxy forces to fight its wars. The only lesson U.S. leaders seem to have learned from their lost wars is to avoid putting “boots on the ground.” The United States dropped more than 120,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq and Syria in its war on ISIS, while Iraqis, Syrians, and Kurds did all of the hard fighting on the ground. Afghans, Libyans, Qataris, Somalis, and Yemenis also served as foot-soldiers in America’s wars, while U.S. forces provided air cover and managed the wars from distant high-tech command centers.
Blue Ridge cruise book for 1975 / Public domain
Crew of the USS Blue Ridge during the evacuation of Saigon, Vietnam, April 1975.
In Gaza, Yemen, and Iraq, the United States has waded into what it hoped would be another “casualty-free” war for its own forces. Instead, the genocide in Gaza is unleashing a crisis that is spinning out of control across the region and may soon directly involve U.S. troops in combat. This will shatter the illusion of peace that Americans have lived with for the past decade, and would bring the reality of U.S. militarism and warmaking home with a vengeance.
Biden can continue to give Israel carte-blanche to wipe out the people of Gaza, and watch as the region becomes further engulfed in flames. Or, he can listen to his own campaign staff, who are warning that it’s a “moral and electoral imperative” to insist on a ceasefire. The choice could not be more stark.