As Israel’s war in Gaza enters its seventh month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — under growing pressure to end the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians — ordered the bombing of Iran’s embassy in Syria on April 1, that Iran said killed seven of its military advisers, including three senior commanders. While the airstrike may have momentarily distracted the world from Israel’s widely condemned targeted killing of seven World Central Kitchen humanitarian aid staff in Gaza, Israel’s attack on a diplomatic compound — in violation of international law — could trigger a dangerous regional war.
The war in Gaza, which began after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 hostages — has now killed at least 33,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom are women and children. Many of the 2.3 million residents of Gaza now face starvation due to Israel’s blocking of food, potable water and other basic humanitarian aid. Although Israel recently permitted 300 aid trucks to enter Gaza, the highest number of trucks since war began, the UN says these deliveries fall far short of the minimum required to feed millions of hungry, malnourished people.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Melvin Goodman, a former CIA analyst, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University and author. Here, he assesses the dangerous consequences of Israel’s bombing of Iran’s Syrian embassy that could trigger a wider Middle East war and the Biden administration’s response to the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
MELVIN GOODMAN: Iran doesn’t want war. We certainly don’t want a war with Israel, and they don’t want a war with an Israel that’s backed up by the United States. And Biden has made it clear he’s still going to back Israel with regard to Iran or Hezbollah, for that matter.
Iran’s strategy is simple. I think it’s to use these proxies, use these militia groups. And if they and militia groups go too far, such as when they killed three American soldiers in Jordan, Iran told its militias to back down, to back off. And they signal to the United States, I find very interesting because they reached out to us in January for secret talks that led finally to a United States response that took much too long for the United States to respond.
And they eventually set up indirect talks, where you had an Iranian delegation in one part of a hotel and a U.S. delegation in another part of hotel and messengers running back and forth. But the key to me is a dialog between the United States and Iran. And I find Biden, I think, fearful that if he reaches out to Iran or even responds in a positive way to Iran’s efforts to establish some dialog, he’ll look weak and his Republican opposition will take advantage of that.
So the fact that there’s an election coming up in a few months, I think is a real problem for Biden and for the international situation. But when you look at Iran, they’re to me, preoccupied with domestic issues. They have serious issues of mismanagement. They are dealing with the economic problems from the sanctions. There’s terrible corruption in Iran, but they are developing a nuclear program, which they couldn’t have developed under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Obama negotiated in 2015 that Trump came along and abrogated in 2018.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Mel, we only have about a minute left. But after I heard about Israel’s airstrike of Iran’s Syrian embassy, it appeared to me that it was calculated to distract the world from the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza, the death of the humanitarian aid workers from World Central Kitchen that were killed and create a crisis that could deter President Biden from conditioning military aid to Israel, as has been called for by a growing number of people in the U.S. Senate.
On the same day that Israel attacked the Iranian embassy in Damascus, a reporter asked the U.S. State Department, Kirby, why America is giving 2,000-pound bombs to Israel while it’s destroying Gaza? And Kirby answered that Israel needs these bombs to confront Iran as well. And it just seemed to play right into what Netanyahu was doing with this launching of the airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, which potentially could take any kind of restriction of military aid to Israel off the table.
MELVIN GOODMAN: Well, you’re raised the issue that worries me, and that’s our complicity, our complicity with Israel over what’s happening in Gaza and what’s been happening for the past six months and the horrors of that military campaign. And then now, the potential for further complicity with regard to what Israel may decide to do with regard to Iran.
My concern is that Netanyahu needs this war. He needs this war politically to stay in power. He’s saving his own political situation by continued warfare, because when the war ends, he’ll be gone. But what I really worry about even further than that is, Netanyahu would try to drag the United States into a greater regional war that involves Iran. Again, Iran clearly does not want war. They are in no position to deal with war.
But the United States announcing in the middle of all of this disaster that’s taking place, we’re going to supply 1800 more 2,000-pound bombs and 500 additional 500-pound bombs. Those bombs themselves are violations of international law because Israel has used them in domestic areas. They used them against urban dwellings. They’ve used them against high-rise apartment buildings.
When you look at all of the civilians who have been killed, the number you cited of 33,000, and then when you look at pictures of what has happened in Khan Yunis in Gaza City and elsewhere in northern Gaza, it looks like the major battles from World War II, what Berlin looked like and Dresden looked like and Stalingrad looked like.
So Biden has always convinced himself, unfortunately, that if we supplied Israel with all of its needs, they would not only be more conciliatory toward the Arabs because they feel safer and more protected, but they’d also be more willing to listen to the United States.
Well, here we are, in the wake of Biden’s so-called ultimatum to Israel that Netanyahu is already making clear that there will be a date set for the invasion of Rafah with nothing being said about the 1.5 million civilians who are now huddled in Rafah in the worst possible conditions that are threatening famine for so many people.
For more information, visit Mel Goodman’s website at melvingoodman.com.
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