Category Archives: US foreign policy

Feedback loop: the tangled ties between the US election and the Middle East war

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Benjamin Netanyahu has humiliated Biden’s America and seems to anticipate Trump’s return, but what would that mean for Israel?

The year since the 7 October attack has demonstrated just how densely intertwined US presidential politics is with the trajectory of events in the Middle East. Each exerts a gravitational pull on the other, often in ways that are damaging for both.

Foreign policy rarely matters much in US presidential elections, but this year could be an exception. In a contest likely to be decided by small margins in a handful of states, the fallout from the conflicts in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, with a potential war with Iran looming, could have a significant impact on Kamala Harris’s prospects.

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Donald Trump will need Nato if elected as president, says new alliance chief

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Mark Rutte says US would risk isolation if Republican candidate decided to withdraw from military alliance

Mark Rutte, the new head of Nato, has brushed off anxieties about the possible election of Donald Trump, arguing that the US would risk isolation in “a harsh, uncompromising world” if he sought to withdraw from the military alliance.

Speaking in London on Thursday, after meeting the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Rutte said he believed both Trump and his presidential rival, Kamala Harris, recognised the value of continuing military aid to Ukraine.

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Biden and Netanyahu speak as Gallant warns of ‘deadly’ surprise attack on Iran

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Leaders talk for first time in weeks as US administration seeks to weigh in on Israel’s plans

Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time in weeks on Wednesday amid expectations of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran, which Yoav Gallant warned would be “deadly, precise and surprising”.

Netanyahu’s defence minister issued the warning in a video message on Israeli media on Wednesday night, broadcast after he postponed a scheduled trip to Washington.

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Zelenskyy ‘victory plan’ summit in doubt after Joe Biden pulls out

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US president prepares for arrival of Hurricane Milton as German chancellor says meeting will be rescheduled

Joe Biden has called off a four-day trip to Germany this week that had been intended to culminate in a summit to discuss Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “victory plan” for Ukraine.

The White House said on Tuesday evening that the president would stay at home “to oversee preparations for and the response” to Hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday.

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Trump marks 7 October anniversary and criticizes ‘weak’ Biden and Harris

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Republican nominee says attack – ‘one of the darkest days in all history’ – would not have happened if he were president

Donald Trump marked the first anniversary of the 7 October Hamas terrorist attacks, which he called “one of the darkest days in all of history”, with a commemoration for victims and hostages at his golf resort in Miami on Monday night, but swiftly turned the event into an attack on Kamala Harris.

He also repeated a previous claim that the attack on Israel would never have happened if he was still in the White House.

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Biden to visit Angola as global powers vie for African influence

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US and EU are supporting infrastructure projects in Angola, which has historically been closer to Russia and China

When Joe Biden travels to Angola on Sunday, it will be the first trip to an African country of his presidency and the first to the continent by a sitting US president since Barack Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia in 2015.

It is a marker of how Africa’s 54 countries are increasingly courted by global powers, drawn to the continent by geopolitical shifts and an abundance of minerals needed for electric cars and other battery-powered technologies.

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Biden issues terse words to Netanyahu over peace deal and election influence

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President says he does not know whether Israeli PM is delaying peace deal in order to influence US election

Joe Biden had terse words at the White House on Friday for Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he didn’t know whether the Israeli prime minister was holding up a peace deal in the Middle East – where Israel is at war with Hamas in Gaza and on a military offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon – in order to influence the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election.

“No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None. None, none. And I think Bibi should remember that,” Biden said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. He added: “And whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know – but I’m not counting on that.”

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Yazidi woman kidnapped by IS freed from Gaza after decade in captivity

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Officials say US, Israel, Jordan and Iraq involved in rescue of 21-year-old who had been captured in Iraq

A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago has been freed from Gaza in an operation led by the US.

The operation this week also involved Israel, Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.

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US would not support Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, says Biden

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Top Israeli diplomat at UN warns his country’s retaliation for Iranian missile attack will be heavier than Tehran ‘could ever have imagined’

Joe Biden has said he would not support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites, as the US sought to temper Israel’s response to Iran’s missile attack on Tuesday and contain a rapidly escalating regional conflict.

Biden’s comments came after the top Israeli diplomat at the UN warned his country’s retaliation for an Iranian salvo of nearly 200 ballistic missiles would be heavier than Tehran “could ever have imagined”.

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Biden reaffirms US support for Israel amid Iran’s missile attack

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President directed the military to aid Israel’s defense against any future assaults as US ‘fully supportive’ of ally

Joe Biden has reaffirmed US support for Israel after Iran’s ballistic missile attacks, describing the barrage as “defeated and ineffective” and ordering the US military to aid Israel’s defense against any future assaults.

“The attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective, and this is a testament to Israeli military capability and the US military,” the US president told reporters on Tuesday after Tehran launched an unprecedented salvo of 180 high-speed ballistic missiles.

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Missile attack on Israel signals that widely feared regional conflict has ignited

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As forces of restraint in the Middle East weaken with every passing day, Israeli officials declare Iranian attack a declaration of war

The sight of missiles descending on Tel Aviv on Tuesday night was the clearest sign imaginable that the regional conflict so widely feared over the past year may finally have ignited.

This is the second Iranian aerial attack on Israel in less than six months, but last time there was several days’ notice; the much slower drones and cruise missiles arrived first, and the principal target was a military base in the underpopulated Negev desert.

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US looks unable to talk Netanyahu out of planned invasion of Lebanon

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An emboldened Israel appears to believe it can safely ignore a lame duck US president and grab the chance to reset the Middle East’s security dynamics

The Biden administration is losing influence over whether Benjamin Netanyahu launches a ground invasion into southern Lebanon or not.

For more than a year, Joe Biden and his senior advisers have managed to forestall an Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon in fear of a larger war that could envelop the entire Middle East.

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US was not given notice of Israeli strike that killed Nasrallah, top Biden aide says

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National security spokesperson John Kirby reiterates ‘ironclad’ support for Israel but ‘mourns’ civilian deaths

The White House said on Sunday it had not been warned in advance of the airstrike that killed Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a Beirut suburb and assumed it had caused civilian casualties, while reaffirming its “ironclad” support to Israel.

John Kirby, the national security spokesperson, said the US had not been informed of the airstrike, and that the president, Joe Biden, only found out about it once Israeli planes were already in the air.

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The killing of Hassan Nasrallah leaves Iran with a fateful choice and the US humiliated

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Israel’s airstrike on Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon has far-reaching implications for Tehran and Washington

When Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, told reporters in New York on Friday that the coming days will determine the future path of the Middle East, he could not have been more prescient, even if at the time he was hoping that Hezbollah and Israel could be persuaded to step back from the brink.

Now, with the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah confirmed killed, the region, after 11 months, has finally stepped over the brink and into a place it has truly never been before.

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Trump vows to resolve Ukraine-Russia war ‘very quickly’ as he meets Zelenskyy

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Ex-president hails ‘very good relationship’ as Ukrainian leader says pair share ‘common view’ that Putin cannot win

Donald Trump has met Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York in a high-stakes meeting at which the Ukrainian leader hoped to repair ties with the former US president.

The two men met at Trump Tower on Friday amid a growing feud between Zelenskyy and Republicans that Ukraine fears could sabotage further US military aid if Trump wins in November.

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UN hostility will not trouble Netanyahu, but now he has angered the US | Patrick Wintour

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Tension between the Israeli PM and the UN has never been so high, but his behaviour over the Lebanon ceasefire has given him a bigger problem

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has for decades used set-piece speeches to the UN to denounce it. In 2017, he said it had been “the epicentre of global antisemitism” and there was “no limit to the UN’s absurdities when it comes to Israel”, but never have the tensions between him and the body he reviles reached such a pitch.

Since the 7 October massacre by Hamas, Israel has ignored four UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and has not just described the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa as a terrorist state, but launched a campaign to bankrupt it. Arab envoys have walked out when the Israeli ambassador has started to speak.

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Middle East crisis: Israel launches more strikes in Lebanon – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. Our latest live coverage of the Middle East crisis is here

The Israeli military said drones and rockets crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanon on Friday, as Lebanon’s Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on the Israeli city of Tiberias (see 9am BST).

The drones infiltrated the coastal area of Rosh HaNikra and were intercepted by the military’s defences, the Israeli military said, adding several rockets were also intercepted.

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Harris decries Trump’s ‘proposals of surrender’ as Zelenskyy visits White House

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Democratic nominee calls Republican plan to end war between Ukraine and Russia ‘dangerous and unacceptable’

Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, has indirectly denounced the Trump campaign’s policy on ending Russia’s war against Ukraine as “proposals of surrender” as the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Washington to present his own “victory plan”.

Addressing Zelenskyy at the White House, Harris said that “some in my country” would pressure Ukraine to accept a peace deal in which it surrendered its sovereign territory and neutrality in order to make peace with Vladimir Putin.

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‘Stop killing children’: protests as Netanyahu arrives for UN address

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Protesters gather outside UN headquarters in New York to oppose Israeli PM’s visit and to call for end to Gaza war

As the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, arrived in New York on Thursday ahead of his address to the United Nations general assembly, scheduled for Friday morning, protesters opposed to the war in Gaza gathered near UN headquarters.

One group of people who waved Israeli flags and campaign banners described themselves as an informal coalition of Jewish and Israeli-led organizations taking an anti-occupation and anti-war stance in relation to the Palestinian territories. They assembled close to the UN building in Manhattan to protest against Netanyahu’s arrival after he flew in from Israel overnight.

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US thwarts French and British push for Lebanon ceasefire call at UN

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Washington says Israel has legitimate security problem and more complex diplomatic agreement is required

An effort led by France and Britain to secure a joint statement by the UN security council calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon has stalled in the face of US objections.

Washington is eager to avoid any suggestion there is any equivalence of blame for the eruption of the crisis that has led to the loss of life of hundreds of people in Lebanon.

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