{"id":117977,"date":"2024-12-27T17:05:25","date_gmt":"2024-12-27T15:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=117977"},"modified":"2024-12-26T14:27:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T12:27:39","slug":"28-05-102","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=117977","title":{"rendered":"Obama Plays a Dead Man\u2019s Hand in Lebanon, and Wins"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Obama Plays a Dead Man\u2019s Hand in Lebanon, and Wins<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n


\nTony Badran<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Rising up from his political grave, the ex-president cements a U.S. partnership with Iran in Lebanon while Israel meekly gives up its gains<\/strong>.<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein arrives to meet Lebanon\u2019s parliament speaker in Beirut on Nov. 19, 2024 \/ Fadel Itani\/Middle East Images\/AFP via Getty Images<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Barely three weeks ago, Barack Obama\u2019s legacy was in tatters. His party was roundly defeated in the election, after he personally engineered the defenestration of his doddering former vice president from the Oval Office. Instead of greeting the sight of Obama emerging from the shadows with relief, Americans reacted with horror. His handpicked candidate was trounced, while the Party he directed lost both houses of Congress. The Iran deal, which he once saw as his ticket to Mount Rushmore, would be consigned to the dustbin of history by self-proclaimed master dealmaker Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And yet, two months before the end of his lengthy shadow presidency, and faced with the final undoing of his signature legacy project in the Middle East, Obama went all in\u2014and won big. By forcing Israel to accept a deal with Hezbollah that will formalize America\u2019s role as the terror group\u2019s protector, Obama will have locked in a key piece of his decade-old policy of leveraging American power to secure both Iran\u2019s continuing regional influence and its direct control over Israel\u2019s borders.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After nearly two months of operating in Lebanon, the Israeli cabinet agreed on Tuesday to the cease-fire deal brokered by President Joe Biden\u2019s special envoy, Amos Hochstein. The details of the deal are, for the most part, as irrelevant as they are meaningless. In essence, they represent a return to the Oct. 6, 2023, status quo ante. Namely, that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) will again deploy in south Lebanon, and again pretend to \u201cimplement UNSCR 1701\u201d\u2014the meaningless 2006 U.N. resolution which supposedly prevents Hezbollah\u2019s rearmament and the reconstruction of its infrastructure south of the Litani River. To prop up this threadbare charade, the U.S. will now up its annual taxpayer subsidization of Hezbollah\u2019s base\u2014reportedly by at least another $400 million\u2014to account for the enlargement of the LAF with new, U.S.-subsidized recruits. With these additions, U.S. taxpayer funding for Hezbollahland will now sit at around a $1 billion a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Netanyahu made his deposit of a \u2018cease-fire\u2019 in Obama\u2019s account, locking in the disastrous precedent of having the U.S. adjudicate between Israel and Hezbollah, and buttressing its role as patron and protector of the Hezbollah territory.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The relevant parts of the agreement have to do with the formalization of the U.S. role in Lebanon\u2014a process that began with Hochstein\u2019s maritime deal in 2022\u2014as an arbiter between Israel and Hezbollah, increasing America\u2019s direct management of the Lebanese special province and of Israel\u2019s defense policy. The vehicle for this role that the deal introduces is the creation of a so-called monitoring committee headed by the U.S., which will be represented presumably by a CENTCOM officer.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In other words, the U.S. is now responsible for handling Israel\u2019s complaints about the myriad violations of 1701 that will doubtlessly be forthcoming as Hezbollah\u2019s forces and supporters stream back into their villages on Israel\u2019s northern border. And since the U.S. underwrites the LAF, in which it has been heavily invested for two decades, the Americans will be inclined to cover for the LAF\u2019s collusion with Hezbollah\u2014in the process becoming directly complicit for the aid that the LAF will give to its symbiotic terrorist partner. The lawyerly language<\/a> that Team Obama planted in the side letter they gave Israel, as well as the text of the agreement itself, make it plain that the U.S. will now restrict Israeli actions, certainly in the parts of the country north of the Litani. As a senior administration official told its Israeli stenographer Barak Ravid, \u201cThere are restrictions on the military activity that Israel can carry out. It is impossible to sign a ceasefire agreement if Israel can shoot afterwards whatever it wants in Lebanon and whenever it wants.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Instead, as Hochstein told Al Jazeera, \u201cThe United States will send diplomats and military personnel to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, whose mission will be to work with the Lebanese Armed Forces and Lebanese authorities.\u201d And if Israel has a complaint, it will need to notify the U.S., and share intelligence with it in the context of the monitoring committee, so that the CENTCOM officer can then relay those concerns to the LAF, which has long operated in partnership with Hezbollah\u2019s forces, and whose political sponsors in Beirut are dominated by the Iranian-run militia.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In other words, the agreement affirms that Israel is a province that lacks full sovereignty, especially when it comes to its defense policy in territory where Washington has decided to partner with Iran and establish a joint protectorate dedicated to Israel\u2019s destruction.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But none of this explains how and why Netanyahu decided to play what appeared to be a strong hand in order to achieve such a dubious-seeming result. For an entire year, the Israeli prime minister managed to outmaneuver a hostile administration determined to destroy him and to end Israel\u2019s operation in Gaza (it had openly intervened to block an early strike on Hezbollah back in October of last year). Netanyahu patiently built his stack, and then started taking huge pots when he called the administration\u2019s bluff, pushed into Rafah and broke Hamas\u2019 back. In a stunning series of operations, the IDF then killed all of Hamas\u2019 leaders, including Yahya Sinwar.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Contrary to the advice of his General Staff, Netanyahu then turned north and within weeks, he had decapitated Hezbollah\u2019s entire command. The entire world watched in awe as each crushing blow followed the last. Exploding beepers! Nasrallah killed inside his bunker. What would come next?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even as the kangaroo court at the ICC pronounced him to be a genocidal war criminal, Netanyahu\u2019s winning streak only got longer. Barack Obama and the Democrats received a surprise shellacking, ensuring Donald Trump\u2019s triumphant return to the White House. The Iranians lost a key part of their nuclear complex, and were so shaken\u2014with their trusty shield in Lebanon now dashed to pieces\u2014that they didn\u2019t have the means or the nerve to respond. Netanyahu was holding a full house with aces; a surefire winner. And then he folded.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Of these, the family of arguments that go something like, \u201cwell, Israel was running out of meaningful targets, making the returns increasingly smaller,\u201d and \u201cnow it can turn its attention fully to Iran,\u201d are the most patently offensive to reason. Israel could have simply run the clock down. And while it actually did not need a \u201cdeal\u201d in Lebanon\u2014there being no sovereign entity to make a \u201cdeal\u201d with aside from Hezbollah, which was clearly losing its military engagements with the IDF\u2014if it were determined to indulge in one then it should\u2019ve waited for the new administration, so that whatever arrangement ensued would not reinforce a hostile framework, but rather help tear it down.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On the face of it, this is a clear-cut case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But then came a flurry of other Israeli statements on background suggesting that Israel was coerced. An Israeli official told<\/a> the Times of Israel that \u201cIsrael had no choice but to accept a cease-fire, out of fear that U.S. President Joe Biden\u2019s administration could punish Israel with a United Nations Security Council resolution in its final weeks.\u201d Reports from Israel were that, in his address to the cabinet, Netanyahu drove home precisely this justification<\/a> for accepting the deal. By accepting a less-than-ideal agreement, Netanyahu reportedly said, Israel was avoiding a greater risk: a Biden administration-sponsored Security Council resolution that could lead to international sanctions against Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It remains unclear what the resolution in question might have been. A resolution calling for a cease-fire, by itself, is irrelevant and could safely be ignored. For it to mean something, such a resolution would have had to have real-world, long-term material repercussions that would be tricky to reverse.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sen. Ted Cruz, in a critical statement<\/a> on the cease-fire agreement, mentioned the Biden administration \u201cthreatening to facilitate a further, broader, binding international arms embargo through the United Nations.\u201d There is speculation that this resolution was being prepared by the French, doubtless in direct coordination with the administration, which would have, in a replay of Obama\u2019s December 2016 gambit with UNSCR 2334, allowed the passage of the resolution through abstention, after quarterbacking the entire play. The French may have already given a preview of this scheme when they called<\/a> for an arms embargo on Israel in October.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Would Team Obama do this on their way out? Of course they would. They played pretty much the same hand on their way out the door the last time. Was such a resolution really in the works to be passed in the next 60 days? Maybe. Would Joe Biden, who prides himself on being a defender of Israel, really have stripped Israel naked on his way out the door, in order to make the guy who pushed him out the window happy? Possibly. But it hardly seems like a slam dunk.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Perhaps more will become clearer in the coming days. In any case, whether Team Obama bluffed Bibi with a pair of eights, or whether they showed their stronger hand at this point is moot. Obama won in Lebanon.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some will argue that the deal inherently is nonsensical and based on paradoxical gibberish or fake things like the LAF and UNIFIL, and is therefore meaningless and bound to collapse, while Israel will be free to do what it wants\u2014with U.S. backing\u2014the moment Trump takes office. Again, maybe. But what this ostensible real-world logic misses is that while the deal may be a way of tap dancing until the danger passes, it also has lasting, real-world consequences. Never mind that it will bring tens of thousands of Hezbollah fighters and their families along with convenient human shields back to Israel\u2019s border, where they can rebuild their tunnel networks and weapons depots with hundreds of millions of dollars in international funding. And that the Israelis will be pressured against breaking the cease-fire in order to stop them and instead will be encouraged to file a complaint.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even more significantly, it locks in Obama\u2019s conceptualization of the U.S. position in Lebanon, aspects of which\u2014such as increased U.S. investment in the LAF, and the added prominence of the billion-dollar U.S. Embassy which will host even more American personnel whose job is to constrain Israel\u2014have support within the Republican Party, and therefore are likely to be consolidated under the Trump administration.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It is hard to imagine that at some point\u2014following a cross-border raid by Hezbollah, or an Israeli retaliatory attack that kills LAF personnel or so-called Western advisers\u2014President Donald Trump won\u2019t review the facts he is given, and ask which idiot thought it was a good idea for the United States to be spending $1 billion a year to protect an Iranian terror army. No doubt, someone in his administration will answer \u201cthe Israelis.\u201d It would be better for Israel and America alike if that answer was actually wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Tony Badran<\/strong> is Tablet\u2019s news editor and Levant analyst.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Obama Plays a Dead Man\u2019s Hand in Lebanon, and Wins Tony Badran Rising up from his political grave, the ex-president cements a U.S. partnership with Iran in Lebanon while Israel meekly gives up its gains. U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein arrives to meet Lebanon\u2019s parliament speaker in Beirut on Nov. 19, 2024 \/ Fadel Itani\/Middle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117977"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117977"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117991,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117977\/revisions\/117991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}