Did Biden just escalate the Gaza War? | Responsible Statecraft

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On Thursday night, President Joe Biden — acting without congressional approval — ordered airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, an escalation in the regional spillover from Israel’s war in Gaza that now directly involves US military personnel.

Biden chose to escalate the conflict and bomb Yemen in response to Houthi fighters' Red Sea attacks. His unconditional support and steady flow of weapons to Israel appears to be increasing the likelihood of a regional war. Instead of using the U.S.’s considerable leverage over Israel to push for a ceasefire, Biden is enabling a brutal war that has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, and ties his administration to Israel’s decisions as it inches toward an all out war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Biden should be honest with Americans: the longer Israel's siege of Gaza persists, the greater the chances of a regional conflagration that will put American lives in danger.

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Dan Caine

Top photo credit: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Air Force Gen. Dan Caine conduct a press briefing on Operation Epic Fury at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., March 4, 2026. (DoW photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza)

Did Caine just announce the Morgenthau option for Iran?

Gen. Dan Caine’s formulation of American war aims in Iran is remarkable not because it is bellicose, but because it is strategically incoherent.

In a press conference Tuesday morning, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not describe a limited campaign to suppress missile fire, blunt Iran’s naval threat, or even impose a severe but bounded setback on Tehran’s coercive instruments. He described a campaign against Iran’s “military and industrial base” designed to prevent the regime from attacking Americans, U.S. interests, and regional partners “for years to come.” In an earlier briefing he put the objective similarly: to prevent Iran from projecting power outside its borders. Rather than the language of a discrete coercive operation, this describes a war against a state’s capacity to regenerate power.

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Ilham Aliyev azerbaijan iran

Top photo credit: Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev visited Embassy of Islamic Republic of Iran, offered condolences over death of former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in 2017. (Office of the President of Azerbaijan/public domain)

Neocons wanted an Azeri uprising against Iran. They didn't get it.

With Iran resisting the U.S./Israeli onslaught for the second week, what was supposed to be a quick transition to a pro-U.S. regime following the decapitation strike that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is fast turning into a quagmire. While the U.S. and Israel continue to sow mayhem on Tehran from the skies, the previously unthinkable option of sending ground troops to Iran is gaining ground.

First, an apparent plan was being hatched to employ Kurdish fighters to take on Tehran. Then, when drones, allegedly flying from Iran although Tehran denied it, struck the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan — hitting an airport terminal and a village school, and wounding four civilians — the stage appeared set for the opening of a northern front against Iran. Here was an alleged act of aggression from Iranian territory against Israel's closest partner in the South Caucasus. It offered the pretext to goad Azerbaijan into joining the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

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Top photo credit: Trump press conference on Iran, Miami, 3/9/26 (PBS screengrab)

Trump press conference reveals a man who wants out of war

Trump’s “all over the place” press conference at his Miami resort on Monday appears to have had two key objectives: a) Calm the markets by signalling the conflict may soon be over because it has been so "successful,” and b) Prepare the ground for Trump ending the war through a unilateral declaration of victory.

Though ending a war that never should have been started in the first place — rather than fighting it endlessly in the pursuit of an illusory victory as the U.S. did in Afghanistan — is the right move, it won’t be as easy as Trump appears to think.

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