FOR nearly a year, one of United States (US) President Joe Biden's top priorities has been to prevent the Gaza war from spiralling into an all-out regional conflict.
Weeks ahead of an election — and just as Biden begins his farewell visit to the United Nations General Assembly — Israel is pounding Lebanon, killing hundreds and highlighting the powerlessness of his warnings.
Biden, meeting the leader of the United Arab Emirates on Monday, insisted that his administration was still "working to de-escalate" in coordination with counterparts.
A US official on the sidelines of the UN gathering said the Biden administration was presenting "concrete ideas" to provide an "off-ramp" to prevent further fighting and lead to a diplomatic solution.
But events have quickly moved out of US control. Last week, when pagers exploded across Lebanon targeting the Iranian-backed Hizbollah group, the US said it had no foreknowledge of the operation widely attributed to Israel and appealed for calm.
Instead, Israel stepped up its attacks, saying on Monday it had hit 1,000 Hizbollah sites over the past 24 hours. Lebanese authorities said 558 people were killed.
Nearly a year after an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel that prompted its relentless assault on Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brushed aside warnings of the dangers of regional war and said his country's goal was to change the "security balance" with its northern neighbour Lebanon.
The operation came after weeks of painstaking US-led diplomacy to reach a Gaza ceasefire failed to seal a deal, with Netanyahu insisting on an Israeli troop presence on the Gaza-Egypt border, and a dispute with Hamas on the release of prisoners.
Michael Hanna, director of the US programme at the International Crisis Group, said US diplomats had based efforts for calm in Lebanon on reaching a Gaza ceasefire.
The Gaza truce effort "looks like it's at a dead end, and efforts to decouple the two — to reach an agreement between Hizbollah and Israel while the war in Gaza continues, has also proven to be a dead end", he said.
Complicating matters is the US political calendar, with Biden's heir Kamala Harris locked in a tough race against Donald Trump for the US presidency ahead of Nov 5 elections.
While Biden and Harris would be eager to avoid all-out war and the impression of chaos, few believe that the US administration would take major steps against Israel, given the domestic political risks involved, so close to the election.
"It is not particularly far-fetched to imagine that the US political calendar may have played into Israeli decision-making on when to expand" into Lebanon, Hanna said.
James Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkiye who takes a hard line against Iran, said US policymakers instinctively promoted ceasefires but that Netanyahu, like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was more concerned about his country's security.
"We are already in a regional war and have been for the past 20 years," said Jeffrey, now at the Wilson Center in Washington.
"Iran is being pushed back and has lost one of its major proxies at least for the moment — Hamas — and another, Hizbollah, is under stress."
Netanyahu "has prioritised restoring deterrence and regaining military superiority over anything like pleasing Washington and the international community", he said.
Biden has repeatedly voiced concern to Netanyahu over the plight of civilians in Gaza but has mostly held off on using the ultimate US leverage — withholding the billions of dollars in US military aid to Israel.
The Pentagon on Monday said that the US would send additional troops to the Middle East, a move taken by Israel as a sign of US commitment to its ally if the conflict escalates further.
Also potentially emboldening Israel has been Washington's muted responses to actions attributed to Israel, including the assassination of the Hamas political chief as he visited Teheran in July.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, visiting the UN, accused Israel of seeking a wider conflict and said Teheran had shown restraint due to assurances that a truce could be secured in Gaza.
"They kept telling us we are within reach of peace, perhaps in a week or so," Pezeshkian, considered a reformist within the theocracy, said in New York.
"But we never reached that elusive peace."
The writer is from AFP