'Regional War Is Here': Biden Urged to Act Before Catastrophe Engulfs Middle East

Amid reports that the Biden administration has dropped its push for a cease-fire deal on the Lebanon-Israel border, a U.S. peace group said Thursday that the White House "appears both in the dark and in denial about how much worse the current wars in the Middle East could get" and demanded an urgent cease-fire push to avert catastrophe.

"As Palestinians in northern Gaza are displaced by yet another IDF offensive while still contending with a humanitarian crisis, as thousands of people flee Lebanon, as Iranian families wonder whether their cities and towns will be bombed, as children in Syria are killed by the IDF—likely with U.S.-made bombs—and as Israeli civilians continue to flee to shelters and hostages still languish, it's time to admit that a regional war is here," said Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of Win Without War.

"Right now, tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed across the Middle East are also in acute danger—and the risk the United States is drawn further and more directly into this war is terrifyingly high," Haghdoosti added. "Unless the Biden administration changes course immediately, the likelihood we see even more violence, more displacement, and tens—if not hundreds—of thousands more lives lost in this conflict will only spike."

For the first time in two months, Biden on Wednesday spoke on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly obstructed cease-fire talks with hardline demands and publicly undermined a U.S.-led effort last month to institute a pause along the Lebanon-Israel border.

According to a White House readout of the Wednesday conversation, Biden "emphasized the need for a diplomatic arrangement to safely return both Lebanese and Israeli civilians to their homes on both sides of the Blue Line" but did not push Netanyahu to stop Israel's large-scale bombardment of Lebanon, which has killed more than 2,100 people since mid-September.

Days before the call, CNNreported that the Biden administration was "not actively trying to revive" the three-week cease-fire proposal that Netanyahu tanked last month and "resigned itself to trying to shape and limit Israeli operations in Lebanon and against Iran rather than halting hostilities."

As Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, wrote for Foreign Policy earlier this week, "The Biden administration has now become an active participant in the very outcome it had spent months warning against and working to prevent."

"Whereas only weeks ago it had been frantically working to negotiate a cease-fire in Lebanon, the administration has now openly embraced an Israeli bombing campaign and invasion that it once cautioned against," Elgindy added. "The Biden administration's single-minded focus on Israeli demands, needs, and pain has blinded it not only to the humanity of Palestinians and Lebanese but to the long-term damage done to the region, U.S. interests, and even Israeli security."

"We have to engage every diplomatic tool available to us for a permanent cease-fire, and we have got to stop sending bombs."

On Thursday, Israel's cabinet met to discuss a response to Iran's ballistic missile attack earlier this month, which was retaliation for Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

The cabinet was expected to authorize Mr. Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, to initiate the response at their discretion," The New York Timesreported, citing unnamed officials. "The results of the meeting were not released."

Gallant pledged Wednesday that Israel's attack on Iran would be "deadly, precise and, above all, surprising."

"They will not understand what happened and how it happened," he added. "They will see the results."

The Israeli government has declined to provide assurances that it does not intend to target Iran's nuclear energy facilities and reportedly has not briefed the U.S.—its principal ally and arms supplier—on the specifics of its plans.

Senior Biden administration officials have also discussed the possibility of "very limited" U.S. strikes "against Iranian targets," according toNBC News.

As the possibility of an Israeli and U.S. attack looms, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday that Iran "is fully prepared to take more and stronger defensive measures against any act of aggression, and will have no hesitation in this regard." Iran's ballistic missile attack on Israel earlier this month was limited to military targets and did not kill any Israeli civilians.

Peace advocates and regional experts say Israel's intensifying assaults on the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and its looming attack on Iran underscore the need for immediate deescalation and renewed cease-fire talks.

But the prospect of a deal appears as remote as ever—and the Biden administration has refused to use U.S. military aid as leverage to force Netanyahu's hand.

"We can't just pray for peace, we can't just hope for peace—we have to work for peace," U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said earlier this week. "And that's why we have to engage every diplomatic tool available to us for a permanent cease-fire, and we have got to stop sending bombs."