It was so close. If just one rocket or drone had gone through and killed many Israelis, US officials fear, the area could have burned to the ground.
So when Israeli and US forces, aided by Arab allies, mounted a near-perfect defense against last weekend’s aerial barrage from Iran, it represented not only an extraordinary military and diplomatic feat but also a major victory for the effort of President Biden to prevent escalation. of the war in the Middle East.
Mr. Biden and his team hoped that developments over the weekend could give all three major players enough to claim victory and walk away. Iran could claim justification for taking aggressive action in response to the Israeli strike that killed some of its top military officers. Israel has shown the world that its military is too formidable to challenge and that Iran is powerless against it. And the United States kept the region from exploding for another day.
It might not turn out that way though. Instead of claiming victory, as it were, Israeli officials said on Monday they would respond — without saying exactly when or how — and Mr. Biden’s advisers were preparing to see what that might entail.
A less visible cyber attack or sharp but limited military action might satisfy Israel’s desire to restore deterrence without provoking Iran to strike back again. A more widespread and in-person attack on Iranian soil, on the other hand, could prompt Tehran to launch a counterattack, and suddenly the conflict could explode into a sustained and increasingly dangerous war.
“This weekend was Biden at his best,” said Laura Blumenfeld, a Middle East analyst at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former State Department policy adviser. “US-led air show with European and Arab regional partners played like an action movie trailer for a new air defense alliance in the Middle East.”
But, he added, the reality is that the Israel Defense Forces will inevitably respond. “Turning the other cheek is not in the IDF playbook,” he said. “A simple ‘don’t’ won’t work. Israel’s response is not a matter of if, but when and how. You can’t escape the mathematics of the Middle East – a grave, across from a grave.”
Some hawkish analysts said Mr. Biden had it all wrong. His effort to avoid escalation may instead spark, they argued, because Iran and other foes have been emboldened by increasingly public disagreements between Washington and Jerusalem over the conduct of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
“This perception of separation may have been a factor in Iran taking the unprecedented step of attacking Israel directly,” said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
It was not enough to shoot down Iranian missiles, he added.
“Stopping attacks after they are launched is not the same as preventing them from being launched,” he said. “If the Biden team once again seeks to carve a space between itself and Israel, then it will cause further conflict.”
The successful defense of Israel was the result of 10 days of intense diplomatic and military coordination by the Biden administration and years of security relationships built by multiple administrations across the region. After it became clear that Iran was planning to strike Israel for the first time in decades of shadow wars, US officials sought to activate, for the first time, regional air defense plans that had been in the works for years.
U.S. military officials worked closely with their Israeli counterparts to draw up a plan to shoot down incoming missiles and drones, coordinating with British and French forces in the region and negotiating with Arab allies to provide intelligence and surveillance data and license the use of their airspace.
Jordan, which has been a vocal critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, has nevertheless shot down Iranian drones crossing its territory into Israel. A US Patriot battery based in Iraq shot down an Iranian ballistic missile that was crossing Iraqi airspace.
In some ways, the broader cooperation against Iran is the result of the changing politics of the region, as evidenced by the Abraham Accords sealed under President Donald J. Trump, through which Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain established normal diplomatic relations with Israel for the first time. The Biden administration is trying to drag Saudi Arabia into the deals, and while no agreement has been reached, the sheikhs in Riyadh have been ready to build ties with Israel in part because of their shared hostility to Iran.
Intercepting almost every one of the more than 300 rockets and drones without Israeli casualties or even significant bodily harm felt like validation for those who worked to build a web of security arrangements in the region.
John F. Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, called it a “spectacular” success. “This is the result here,” he said at a briefing on Monday. “A stronger Israel, a weaker Iran, a more unified alliance and partners. That was not Iran’s intention when it launched this attack on Saturday night, not even close. Again they failed. They failed completely.”
Mr Kirby disputed speculation that Iran did not really intend to do damage because it had been telegraphing its impending attack for more than a week and denied reports that Tehran had even passed messages through intermediaries detailing the timing and targets. . He scoffed at the suggestion that more than 300 missiles and drones amounted to a mere face-saving exercise.
“Maybe they want to make it look like this was some kind of small attack that they never wanted to succeed,” he said. “You can’t throw as much metal in the air as they did, in the time frame they did, and realistically convince anyone that you weren’t trying to cause casualties and you weren’t trying to cause harm. It absolutely was.”
Mr. Biden himself has spoken little publicly about the strike. “Together with our partners, we defeated this attack,” he said Monday in his first public appearance since the strike, a meeting at the White House with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. “The United States is committed to Israel’s security.”
Mr. Sudani, whose country maintains a fragile balance between the United States and Iran, said he favored efforts to stop “the expansion of the area of conflict, especially the latest development.”
But he also used the opportunity to press Mr. Biden for his support for Israel’s war on Gaza. “We are really very keen to stop this war, which has cost the lives of thousands of civilians — women and children,” Mr Sudani said.
The flare-up with Iran has diverted attention from the Gaza war at a time when Mr. Biden had begun to press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do more to ease civilian suffering.
Shibley Telhami, a Middle East scholar at the University of Maryland, said Mr. Netanyahu had an interest in prolonging the conflict with Tehran, “both as a distraction from the horrors of Gaza and as a way to change the subject on an issue where he is most likely to gain sympathy in the US and the West.”
Mr Telhami said the weekend success did little to undo the “damage of Biden’s strategic failure” to end the crisis in Gaza. “It should not take our attention away from this larger strategic failure, the cost of which has been enormous and is still unfolding,” he said.
But Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said it was no small matter to avoid a larger regional war, at least for now.
“Biden deserves a lot of credit,” he said. At the same time, he added, it can fade quickly. “We are still on the edge because the conditions are exceptional and the crisis can escalate any day.”
