Almost immediately after the Hamas-led Palestinian invasion of Israel last Oct. 7, the Biden-Harris administration began demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu present his “day after” plan for Gaza. Netanyahu insisted that the day after had to wait until the war was won.
But over time, Netanyahu began explaining contours of his post-war plans. They included the de-Hamasification of Gaza and permanent Israeli military control over Gaza. Since genocidal Jew-hatred and the goal of annihilating Israel is shared by Hamas and the U.S.-supported Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu insisted the P.A. cannot succeed Hamas in running Gaza.
The Biden-Harris administration didn’t like Netanyahu’s plans. But since they made sense to the vast majority of Israelis, and because 80% of Americans consistently told pollsters that they support Israeli victory, rather than fight Netanyahu, the administration maintained an outward stance of supporting Israel while using the U.S.’s formidable leverage over Israel to inhibit or block Israel from carrying out operations that would fundamentally change the strategic reality on the ground permanently, enabling the implementation of Netanyahu’s “day after” plans.
The administration’s demand for a “day after” plan wasn’t a request for an actual plan. The administration was demanding an Israeli commitment not to seek to use the war to fundamentally change the strategic realities on the ground that existed on Oct. 6, 2023. The U.S. wanted those conditions, which enabled Hamas to build its army of genocide, to continue to exist at the end of the war. And it wanted Netanyahu to accept this condition, which if accepted would block all prospects for Israeli victory.
From the administration’s position, the only acceptable “day after” plan would be one that reverted the strategic balance back to what it was on Oct. 6. Gaza would be a quasi-independent Palestinian statelet. The U.S. would use the momentum of international pressure and Israeli humiliation to compel Israel to accept the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, in keeping with the goals that both Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and their advisers have repeatedly set out.
This was why the U.S. opposed Israel’s ground operation in Gaza; supported Egypt in blocking Gazans from fleeing Gaza for shelter in Egypt or third countries; opposed Israel’s takeover of Rafah and the border with Gaza; slow-walked the delivery of offensive weapons, including assault rifles, tank and artillery shells and bombs for the air force in an effort to compel Israel to adopt a defensive posture; and consistently sought to coerce Israel to accept hostage deals with Hamas that would precipitate its strategic defeat in the war. This is why the administration began sanctioning Israeli citizens who they claim obstruct their goal of establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Likewise, the administration’s consistent, unswerving pressure on Israel to admit massive quantities of goods into Gaza, under the headline “humanitarian aid,” facilitated Hamas’s survival in power.
The prospect of an Israeli rout of Hamas and permanent takeover of Gaza would make Israel “too strong,” in the words of Barack Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry. And a “too strong” Israel would be an Israel unwilling to “make peace.”
The administration’s determination to see Hamas survive and so win the war is not driven solely by its top officials’ support for Palestinian statehood. It is also driven by its overarching aim to “balance Israel” with Iran. This goal, also bequeathed to the Biden-Harris team by Obama and his team, views Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear arsenal as justified in light of Israel’s presumptive nuclear capabilities. Similarly, Iran’s rise as a regional power through its terror armies which ring Israel and the Sunni Arab states is desirable because it strikes a “balance of power.”
Since Hamas is a member of Iran’s terror axis, the administration’s rejection of Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas and fundamentally changing the way that Gaza operates is aligned with its overarching strategic objective of preserving the Iran-centric regional strategic balance that existed on Oct. 6.
From their earliest days in power, Obama and his colleagues faced a complicated challenge. The American public opposed their strategic objective, and so did America’s allies. To get past this obstacle, the Obama team developed a multipronged policy based on doing one thing and pretending to do its opposite. For instance, the administration enabled Iran to develop nuclear weapons by negotiating a deal which it billed as a nuclear non-proliferation agreement.
Israel in contrast was presented as a warmonger. Since Netanyahu was the most strident opponent of Obama’s nuclear gifts to Iran, the Obama team developed a comprehensive strategy for undermining Netanyahu’s efforts to block Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The U.S. effectively placed the IDF in a box. It showered Israel with defensive systems and compelled it to sign a military assistance deal that crippled Israel’s domestic military industries to remove its strategic independence. If Israel got all its bombs from the U.S., then any offensive operations had to receive U.S. approval. Same with its air platforms, its tank and artillery ammunition and its assault rifles.
The administration engaged in full-scale subversion of Netanyahu’s power by cultivating former and serving security brass to view them – rather than Netanyahu as “the responsible adult,” and to inform them of any plans Netanyahu had to take offensive action against Iran. To this end, in 2010, Mossad chief Meir Dagan informed his CIA counterpart of Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran’s nuclear installations and the administration quickly blocked those plans.
Biden and Harris reinstated Obama’s policies both vis-à-vis the Palestinians and Iran and in regards to weakening and subverting Netanyahu—and Israel—politically and strategically immediately upon entering office.
This brings us back to the issue of the “day after.”
As for Lebanon, far from supporting Israel’s efforts to devastate Hezbollah, Iran’s largest and most deadly terror army, the administration has spent the past year trying to block Israel from going on the offense against Hezbollah. Although Biden was publicly supportive of Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah, the administration was reportedly enraged that Israel assassinated Nasrallah. On Oct. 10, Harris repeated, yet again, that the administration seeks an immediate ceasefire and de-escalation in both Lebanon and Gaza. The implication, again, is that Harris and Biden want to protect Hezbollah—like Hamas—from defeat because they seek to revert to the Oct. 6, 2023, strategic balance which left Iran in place as a rising regional hegemon just a few steps from a nuclear arsenal.
As for Iran itself, since the Tehran regime’s Oct. 1, 2024, missile attack on Israel, the administration been working feverishly to block Israel from taking out any strategic targets in a counterattack against Iran. Administration officials have consistently hinted that Israel is trying to drag the U.S. into a Middle East war. And last week, CIA Director William Burns and other top administration officials insisted in a series of statements that there are no indications that Iran seeks a nuclear arsenal. A mere glance at Iran’s front pages and parliament debates, which are flooded with calls for Iran to build nuclear weapons, exposes these claims as both fraudulent and manipulative.
Despite the comprehensiveness of its echo-chamber strategy of flooding the media with anti-Netanyahu innuendo, demoralizing messages of Israeli weakness and claims that Israel is trying to pull the U.S. into an unnecessary war, the administration’s messaging is hitting a wall.
Israel’s astounding success in devastating Hezbollah’s leadership and a large percentage of its massive arsenal of projectiles increased American support for Israeli victory. Whereas a few months ago, “experts” scoffed at Netanyahu’s pledge to bring Israel “Absolute Victory” in the war, now experts like Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s MI6 spy agency, are saying that Israel is on the road to achieving just that.
And so we come to Netanyahu’s day-after plan. Rebuffed by Biden-Harris, Netanyahu waited until after Israel turned the tide in the war to present his actual strategic vision for a post-war Middle East to the administration. He outlined it in two English-language video messages, first to the Iranian people and then to the Lebanese people.
In both videos, he described how Iran and Hezbollah, respectively, have destroyed Iran and Lebanon. Israel, he explained to the Lebanese, has weakened Hezbollah sufficiently for the Lebanese people to rise up against it.
In his words, “We have degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities; we took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself, and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of his replacement. Today, Hezbollah is weaker than it has been for many, many years.
“Now you, the Lebanese people, you stand at a significant crossroads. It is your choice. You can now take back your country.”
He told the Iranians, “You know one simple thing, Iran’s tyrants don’t care about your future. But you do.”
He told the Iranian people that Iran will be freed from the regime “a lot sooner than people think,” and presented them with a vision of peace after its fall.
“Our two countries, Israel and Iran, will be at peace. When that day comes, the terror network that the regime built in five continents will be bankrupt, dismantled. Iran will thrive as never before.”
Netanyahu’s vision is the opposite of the Obama-Biden-Harris vision. And the American public supports it. This state of affairs limits the administration’s capacity to block Israel’s plans in relation to its much-vaunted retaliatory strike following Iran’s missile assault on Oct. 1.
The Biden-Harris team’s efforts to bar Israel from attacking either Iran’s nuclear installations or its oil installations involve the familiar mix of contradictory messaging and political and strategic subversion that we have experienced from Democratic administrations since 2009. On the one hand, the U.S. supports Israel. On the other hand, the administration has flooded the media with its claims that Israel is too weak to take effective action, that its efforts are geared towards dragging the U.S. into a war, and that Iran poses no threat to anyone.
All the same, Israel’s unexpected and demoralizing delays in carrying out its retaliatory attack on Iran raise fears that the administration is successfully blocking Israel from taking any strategically meaningful action against the regime. If that is in fact the case, the momentum Israel gained from its stunning intelligence operations and airstrikes against Hezbollah will be squandered. The conviction will resurface that Israel doesn’t have what it takes to win the war.
While a source of anxiety, the prospect that Netanyahu will stand down now is minuscule. Israel’s momentum is too strong. Iranians and Lebanese, empowered by Israel’s achievement, are already echoing his messaging. The administration’s continued demands for immediate ceasefires and Israeli strategic reticence strike the average American and U.S. ally as irrational and out of step with events.
While the shape of things to come is still unknowable, it is clear that Iran wasn’t the only party whose strategic goals were undermined by Israel’s seizure of the upper hand in this war. The Obama-Biden-Harris foreign policy establishment’s Iran-centric vision of the Middle East was also scuttled.