Last Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu publicly complained that Washington has been withholding weapons shipments from Israel. U.S. officials have denied that this is so. Michael Doran notes evidence that strongly supports Netanyahu’s claim, and suggests that the White House has implemented the equivalent of a so-called Italian strike—the deliberate slowdown of work:

The beauty of the Italian strike is that it offers its leaders plausible deniability. Some military sales to Israel have proceeded without delay; some have slowed but not stopped; still others have been halted altogether. Transactions that were once stopped have started again. Biden and his team point to the restarting of stalled initiatives as proof of noninterference by the White House. Each new instance of stoppage that comes to light they attribute to this or that regulation. As Netanyahu and his defenders complain, the administration depicts them as delusional.

To the extent that administration officials have admitted withholding weapons, they have justified doing so by citing concerns about civilian casualties, as President Biden himself stated when he was trying to dissuade Israel from attacking Rafah.

But a close examination of the timeline reveals that the Italian strike began no later than last December, many months before the fight over Israel’s Rafah campaign had ever begun. What accounts for the early application of pressure?

Doran believes the White House in reality seeks to prevent Israeli action against Hizballah:

Hizballah represents the most formidable direct military threat that Israel faces. A full-scale conflict with it will burn up an enormous amount of equipment and ammunition in a very short period, and it risks drawing Iran more directly into the war.

The administration has little hope that the American people will understand why it is preventing Israel from defending itself against attacks from Hizballah and Iran. Publicly, therefore, it has drawn the line in the sand in Rafah and screamed about civilian deaths. Privately, however, it has its eyes locked like a laser on the Lebanese-Israeli border. If a full-scale war kicks off in the north, the Obama-Biden policy of achieving “equilibrium” in the Middle East by integrating Iran and its proxies into the regional order comes crashing down.

Over the weekend, that policy came a bit closer to crashing down, as the IDF shot down at least one Hizballah drone over the Lower Galilee; Hizballah fired anti-tank missiles into a village in northern Israel (possibly causing injuries); and Israel bombarded southern Lebanon in response.

Recent reports suggest that the White House has at last acted to allow the shipments of weapons that had been withheld from Israel and to end further the delays. On this topic, Elliott Abrams comments, “I don’t know what and how much has been held up, but it shouldn’t have happened. The level of delay should be zero.”

In this interview with Ariel Kahana, Abrams also comments on the failings of U.S. policy toward Iran, and the Biden administration’s refusal to enforce existing sanctions:

According to Abrams, Iran has indeed halted the advancement of its nuclear program on rare occasions. “This happened when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, and when [President] Trump eliminated Qassem Suleimani in 2020. The U.S. needs to be ready to use force in Iran, but credibility is critical here. Only if [Iran’s leaders] are convinced that the U.S. is willing to act will they stop.”

Abrams claims that the U.S. president tried for two-and-a-half years to revive the nuclear deal with Iran until he realized it wasn’t interested. “Iran has benefited from this situation, and everyone outside the administration sees it as a failure.”