The only thing that might stop the IDF from taking Rafah, short of Hamas’s surrender, would be U.S. pressure for a temporary ceasefire. Recently American officials have begun speaking of just that, a shift from the “humanitarian pause” that has until now been the key diplomatic buzzword. The U.S. has even circulated a draft ceasefire resolution at the UN.

Noah Rothman believes such moves are intended to appeal to the Democrats’ progressive, anti-Israel wing, and even more so to Arab-American voters in Michigan. In his view this isn’t just morally and strategically incoherent, but also bad politics:

Though it reads like an act of statecraft, the resolution is intended for the consumption of Biden’s monomaniacally anti-Israel domestic critics. Little else explains the administration’s willingness to sacrifice U.S. national interests but its political investment in self-preservation.

Because none of this makes any sense absent a consideration of the domestic political pressures a wildly unrepresentative class of activists are putting on this presidency, we must conclude that Biden has prioritized his reelection prospects over America’s permanent interests. If the Biden campaign genuinely believes its success hinges on a small number of malcontents in Michigan, it is in deep trouble well beyond the state’s borders. Biden would be better served appealing to the majority of Americans for whom Israel’s cause is a vital extension of American grand strategy abroad. At the very least, his administration would go down without putting American national interests on the chopping block in a cloying effort to appease the unappeasable.

On the same day the cease-fire went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, rebel forces launched an unexpected offensive, and within a few days captured much of Aleppo. This lightening advance originated in the northwestern part of the country, which has been relatively quiet over the past four years, since Bashar al-Assad effectively gave up on restoring control over the remaining rebel enclaves in the area. The fighting comes at an inopportune moment for the powers that Damascus has called on for help in the past: Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Hizballah has been shattered.

But the situation is extremely complex. David Wurmser points to the dangers that lie ahead:

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has not only left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the plates are beginning to move.

The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains the greatest strategic imperative in the region for the United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. . . . However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other, new threats. navigating the new reality taking shape.

The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of Islamic State is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—a descendant of Nusra Front led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of al-Qaeda’s system and cobbled together of IS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey.