President Biden called Nasrallah’s extrajudicial killing “a measure of justice for his many victims”—a sentiment echoed by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The administration had
warned against this same assassination effort last October, mindful of the danger to US personnel across the Middle East in the event of a regional war. Even the hawkish Reagan mustered the moral outrage to
phone up Begin in 1982 and order an end to the bombing after seeing a burnt baby with its arms blown off on television. Biden will do no such thing. Before Nasrallah’s assassination, the president
mused on the potential for an “all out war” in the Middle East, sounding more like a weatherman reporting scattered showers than a primary agent of such swelling catastrophe. Despite his lip service to the need for a ceasefire, he now proffers the green light either as a cynical political display of pre-election fealty to Israel or an enthusiastic vote of confidence in this deadly regional transformation. As
Politico reported, two leading figures in the administration—presidential adviser Amos Hochstein and Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk—had already privately committed US support to Israel’s escalation in Lebanon. Biden’s diplomats at the UN likewise worked to
thwart a joint French and British call for a ceasefire in Lebanon at the Security Council.