Michael Young
Diwan, a blog from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Program and the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, draws on Carnegie scholars to provide insight into and analysis of the region. LEARN MORE
As tensions have risen in the border area between Lebanon and Israel, many observers are predicting that Hezbollah and the Israeli military will soon be at war. On June 26, several governments began advising their citizens to leave Lebanon. Certainly, there is a high likelihood that some escalation will happen in the coming weeks, but for now we’re still not in the final stages of the build-up to a Lebanese-Israeli apocalypse.
Why have the pessimists been so affirmative? Because of ambiguous signaling from the Biden administration. During a recent trip to Washington an Israeli delegation heard from U.S. officials that in the event of a conflict with Hezbollah, the Americans would fully back Israel. This prompted one commentator to tell a Lebanese newspaper that the administration’s “red light against an Israeli offensive turned orange, and it may soon turn green.” Such arguments were further reinforced by U.S. warnings that Hezbollah was wrong to think that Washington could stop an Israeli invasion.
All this may be true, but it’s more probable the Biden administration’s statements are part of a concerted effort to raise the heat on Hezbollah to be more flexible toward a negotiated solution in the border area. The reason is that U.S. officials have repeated time and again, most recently during the visit to Washington of Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, that a new Lebanese war would be catastrophic for Lebanon and Israel. The United States fears it could spiral into a regional conflagration that draws in U.S. forces. That is why the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, told Gallant that “principled diplomacy is the only way to prevent any further escalation of tensions in the region.”
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