Hamas attack on Israel puts pressure on Joe Biden and the Democrats Severe flooding in Myanmar: 14,000 displaced – 29 killed in attack on camp

The US State Department spokesperson wanted to make one thing clear immediately. Immediately following the Palestinian Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, the State Department’s Matthew Miller said:

In doing so, Antony Blinken’s spokesperson immediately sought to refute the massive political allegations made by high-ranking Republicans against the Biden administration. They accuse the US president of co-financing the attack, given the hundreds of dead Israelis, including US citizens. Republican senator and presidential candidate Tim Scott wrote on the X platform (formerly Twitter): “Biden’s negotiations financed the attack.”

The background to such allegations is said to be payments to the Iranian government totaling $6 billion. As part of a swap deal in August, these funds, which had been frozen by South Korean banks, were effectively released to Iran. In return, five American citizens held by Tehran were released. These were Iranian oil revenues that were blocked under Donald Trump in 2019 as part of a complete ban on Iranian oil exports.

In this political dispute, which was extremely dangerous for the Biden administration, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken subsequently succeeded personally. Accordingly, the funds have not yet arrived in Iran, but are controlled by the central bank in Qatar. “The facts are these: No American taxpayer dollars were involved,” Blinken said on CNN’s State of the Union program.

An explosion in the middle of the election campaign

This skirmish is just one of many that have taken place between Democrats and Republicans in the United States since Hamas’s massive attack on Israel. As brutal as the reality in the Middle East is after the attack on Israel, Israel’s fight against Hamas terrorists is becoming an issue in the US primary campaign. A political firestorm is brewing.

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican Party, made no secret of it. In an interview on Fox News television she said:

Politically, the US government cannot afford an escalation in the Middle East a year before the upcoming presidential elections. Joe Biden had actually tried to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel in recent months. Just last month, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in an interview with Fox News that normalization, i.e. recognition of Israel, was getting closer every day. He no longer even calls for the creation of a Palestinian state. The kingdom had insisted on this for decades.

However, current developments are likely to make the project extremely difficult. The Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a statement blaming Israel for the escalation. “The Kingdom recalls its repeated warnings about the risk of aggravation of the situation due to the continued occupation, the deprivation of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and the recurrence of systematic provocations against its sanctuaries,” Riyadh said.

A direct commitment from the US

A statement from an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia makes clear how easily the so-called powder keg in the Middle East can explode. It was announced on Sunday that US bases and troops in Iraq would also be declared “legitimate targets” if the government in Washington decided to intervene directly in the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza.

If direct American involvement in the current conflict were truly necessary, it would be a catastrophe for the Biden administration. Once again, it could appear that Democrats are losing control of foreign policy. The domestic political pressure for this is already enormous.

Donald Trump, Biden’s likely opponent in the 2024 presidential elections, is already spreading the following narrative: the choice between him and Biden is a choice between peace and war. The world has become considerably unsafe under Joe Biden. Trump and his team include the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine and now the escalation in the Middle East.

“The terrible attack on Israel, like the attack on Ukraine, would never have happened if I had been president. “Not a chance,” Trump wrote on his social network Truth.

Trump’s betrayal of secrets

The Democratic camp immediately pointed out that Trump could actually be the cause of the attack on Israel. The Washington Post reported during Trump’s presidency that he passed top-secret information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the United States in 2017.

This also included information from the Israeli secret services. There was already concern that these could now reach Iran via Russia and thus endanger Israel.

Defensive battle of the Democrats

In the meantime, the Biden administration is trying to do everything possible to ensure that the war does not spread beyond the borders of Israel and the Palestinian territories. The White House clearly understands that this means demonstrating its own military strength on the ground. Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced this weekend that he would send the “USS Gerald R. Ford,” the most modern American aircraft carrier and its battle group of destroyers and other warships, to the eastern Mediterranean. “No one else should try to take advantage of this situation,” Blinken said during his appearance on CNN. This would be monitored very closely.

At the same time, the Democrats dare to carry out political maneuvers in the US Congress. Accordingly, the billions in aid money for Ukraine must now be matched with planned additional funding for Israel. The goal is to increase pressure on Republicans in the currently leaderless Congress to approve these funds. As part of their criticism of high government spending, radical Republicans in particular demand that no more money be transferred to Ukraine.

At the same time, Joe Biden must also be careful not to alienate Israel critics in his own party. Numerous left-wing Democrats are committed to the rights of Palestinians and oppose Israeli occupation policies.

But support for Ukraine is not only at risk within the United States. The war in Israel could also jeopardize the position of Arab states that have so far not been on Russia’s side. Because although the West is clearly on Israel’s side, large parts of the Arab world support the Palestinians. Every step the US takes in the Middle East is therefore closely monitored.

Pressure on Joe Biden to act is likely to increase in the coming days. The US State Department has so far only been able to release information about the killings of at least eleven Americans. It remains unclear how many American citizens were captured by Hamas terrorists. America is more alarmed than it has been in a long time. The Middle East is suddenly once again the center of political debates.

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