In a detailed long-form report<\/a> for the magazine, several former administration officials said that former president Joe Biden reportedly believed that any pressure that the US put on Israel during the war in Gaza would lead to bigger attacks from Iran. This would mean that the US would have to step in to defend Israel, even if it caused a larger regional war.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s former White House coordinator for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, argued that immovable support for Israel would help contain Iran.<\/p>\n Even though the administration told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> on multiple occasions to refrain from provoking Iran or its terror proxies in the region, he continued to blindside the US administration by launching strikes with no real notification ahead of time.<\/p>\n For instance, sources told the New Yorker that the Israeli government did not warn the Biden administration before it carried out several strikes on Hezbollah and Iranian officials, including the September 2024 beeper attack<\/a>.<\/p>\n One former White House official added that Israel assassinating former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah nearly two days after the US called for Israel and Hezbollah to observe a temporary ceasefire was a \u201chumiliation\u201d for Biden.<\/p>\n However, the former administration did not publicly criticize<\/a> Israel for the moves, although many times it led to clashes where the US felt compelled to defend Israel.<\/p>\n Most notably in April and October of 2024, when the US helped defend Israel against Iranian strikes during which very few people were injured.<\/p>\n Netanyahu unsuccessfully pushed unwilling Biden officials to attack Iran<\/p>\n However, officials told the New Yorker that Netanyahu wanted to attack more of Iranian infrastructure in additional strikes, and only backed down \u201creluctantly.\u201d<\/p>\n Former Biden administration officials told the New Yorker that looking back, they regret that the protection the US \u00a0provided unintentionally led Netanyahu to push boundaries with Israel\u2019s closest ally.<\/p>\n \u201cWe could advise them very firmly, and Biden did that with Bibi repeatedly: \u2018Goddammit, take the win and don\u2019t drag us into a further war.\u2019 But the Israelis knew we were going to defend them,\u201d Philip Gordon, former national-security adviser to then-vice-president Kamala Harris, told the New Yorker.<\/p>\n Former defense secretary Lloyd Austin reportedly went so far as to compare Netanyahu to a gambler \u201cplaying with house money.\u201d<\/p>\n But then, US President Donald Trump was elected to office. One former senior Pentagon official said Biden’s team warned the incoming Trump administration that “the Israelis were not going to let this opportunity go.”<\/p>\n Within the first half of Trump\u2019s term, the US has engaged twice in conflict with Iran.<\/p>\n In the latest round of fighting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the US struck<\/a> because American intelligence believed that Israeli strikes on Iran were imminent, which would have launched a subsequent attack on US forces in the Middle East.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that they would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn\u2019t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,\u201d Rubio told reporters in March.<\/p>\nPRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu meets with then-US president Joe Biden in the Oval Office last July. Throughout much of 2024, Netanyahu bravely resisted US pressure, eventually fighting hard enough to crush Hamas, smash Hezbollah, humiliate Iran, and watch Syria\u2019s regime collapse, says the writer (credit: Elizabeth Frantz\/Reuters)Biden officials feared Israel would expand war in Gaza<\/p>\n
Scenes in Iran after a series of Israeli retaliation strikes on October 26. (credit: SCREENSHOT ACCORDING TO 27A OF COPYRIGHT ACT)<\/p>\n