The U.S. is increasingly tied to Israel’s Iran war aims, with ground forces deploying despite Trump’s denials. Israel cannot sustain a prolonged ground war without American troops or massive funding. The U.S. risks becoming a subordinate partner, trapped in a conflict shaped by Netanyahu’s long-term ambitions for regional transformation.
If the struggle with Iran develops into a ground war involving substantial troop concentrations, the US will be going whither Netanyahu goeth, and if he maketh his bed in hell, there shall America be with him.
The Trump administration has been considerably less than coherent and unified regarding its aims in the current war with Iran, but the consensus among analysts is that the US is primarily interested in the short-term objective of eliminating Iran’s military and nuclear capability (now that the regime has proven more durable than expected), while Israel is willing to undertake a protracted fight, if necessary, to effect permanent change in the region.
The analysts might be correct about intentions, but they are less discerning about actualities.
In a Bible passage often read in weddings, Ruth tells Naomi, “Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge” (Ruth 1:16), a sentiment often cited as a foundation for the ideal marriage. Congratulations and best wishes, Lady Liberty, the bridegroom cometh, and Bibi is his name.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu said on March 19 that a revolution in Iran is not achievable via air war alone but will require a “ground component.” Meanwhile Trump continues to assert that Israel isn’t really calling the shots and that he will not dispatch American ground forces–even as thousands of additional Marines and airborne infantry are en route and the occupation of Kharg Island and other strategic sites is under discussion. In other words, the ground forces will soon be on the scene, ready to use, and ready to be killed and draw the US deeper into the war.
If the struggle with Iran develops into a ground war involving substantial troop concentrations, the US will be going whither Netanyahu goeth, and if he maketh his bed in hell, there shall America be with him. Israel on its own cannot tolerate a protracted, large-scale ground war, because putting a full-strength army in the field would mean depending on reservists whose long-term absence from civilian life would wreck Israel’s economy, which is already boosted by about $4 billion annually from the US, including approximately 15 percent of Israel’s defense budget. For the same reason, Israel cannot indefinitely maintain a sufficient occupying force in an immense territory.
If ground troops are required on a very substantial basis for a long period, guess who will provide them? Oh, the US could just ride off into the sunset and leave the Israelis to deal with the problem, but if you believe that could possibly happen, you have a lot of catching up to do regarding the last eighty years or so.
Theoretically the US could escape such an obligation via funding that would allow Israel to have guns and butter, as the economists say (or used to, before we quit paying for anything), but one dare not contemplate the size of the bill.
One also must ask if the US would be getting value for dollar. The Israelis are formidable, but they can be had, and indeed they have been had. They actually helped establish Hamas in the 1970s, thinking that a religious counterweight to the PLO would be helpful. I am just a country boy, but it seems to me that the plan has not worked out very well. Netanyahu’s various governments, over a period of many years, have essentiallypropped up Hamas with large infusions of cash as an antagonist to the Palestinian Authority and its ambitions for the Palestinian state that is anathema to the Israeli right. This is like drinking drain cleaner because Pepsi makes you feel bloated.
Then of course the Israeli military and intelligence services were completely blindsided by the Hamas assault in the fall of 2023. Going back a bit, the IDF didn’t look very sharp in its 2006 war with Lebanon, and shortly thereafter, it was forced to cancel certain operations in the West Bank because soldiers gave the game away on social media.
A prominent Jewish journalist–who shall remain nameless here–told me that Israel is a banana republic with a slick exterior. I believe him.
These are the people Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his heretical ilk believe to be entitled to everything between the Nile and the Euphrates. Nothing would suit the Israelis better than having American troops in the field indefinitely while the IDF reservists get back down to enjoying the mostly godless good life in a country that is secularized to a degree that would shock America’s Christian Zionist evangelicals if the latter actually knew anything about the place instead of thinking of it as a sort of Biblical theme park staffed with characters from Top Gun and Yentl. The United States would be cast as a martial version of the Gibeonites of old, who toiled as hewers of wood and drawers of water for their Israelite masters (Joshua 9).
This is where we’re already headed, my friends. Even those Americans who disapprove of the war had better start wearing out the carpet with prayers for a swift and total victory, because the alternative isn’t pretty. It’s too late now for American policy-makers to say “Hell no, we won’t go.” They’ve already said “I do.”