US seems to have lost its sway over Israel

Biden’s inability to restrain Netanyahu has pushed Mid-East to the brink of a wider war

- Bhagyashree Garekar

As the volatile Middle East appears poised to tip into a wider war, US influence over Israel, its strongest ally in the region, is at its weakest in decades.

Tel Aviv has responded to US pressure at several key junctures in the past, but the Oct 7 Hamas attack, which claimed more than 1,200 lives, seems to have shifted the calculus for Israel under its combative prime minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.

And with Israel's alleged killing of senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a brazen attack in Tehran, the stakes have become higher. A widely anticipated Iranian attack on Israel can provoke a wider Middle East war.

President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris were briefed by their national security team on Aug 5 as the clock ticked down to what Secretary of State Antony Blinken described a day earlier as an "imminent" attack by Iran on Israel.

Haniyeh was the third significant anti-Israel figure to be killed in less than a month.

A July 30 Israeli air strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, the Hezbollah commander who Israel said was responsible for an air strike on a football field in the Golan Heights that killed 12 children and teenagers.

On July 13, Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, believed to be the main planner of the Oct 7 Hamas attack, was killed in Israeli air strikes over southern Gaza.

Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied it was involved in Haniyeh's killing, is on high alert for a barrage of missile and drone attacks from Iran and its allies, as well as terrorist infiltration.

The US military has dispatched an aircraft carrier and additional weaponry, including fighter jets that can shoot down missiles.

Despite growing tensions between Mr Biden and Mr Netanyahu, a top US general is in the region to mobilise the international and regional coalition that had defended Israel against a previous attack from Iran on April 13.