Americans already have their hands full with what is happening at home, they very rarely let international events influence their political choice. Does the war that is unfolding a little more every day in the Middle East risk this time making the difference between the victory of one and the defeat of the other?
Since Hamas’ savage assault on Israel on October 7 last year, the American presidential campaign has had to compete in global visibility with Israel’s massive reprisals in Gaza and the slow conflagration of the Middle East.
The week that has just ended proved it once again: the debate of the vice-presidential candidates held attention for a few hours, quickly relayed by the salvo of ballistic missiles fired by Iran and the invasion from Lebanon by Israeli soldiers.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, A LOCAL AFFAIR
It has become evidence of electoral wisdom in the United States: international news, foreign political crises, even wars are not among the factors that voters take into consideration on voting day.
It is sometimes argued that the defeat of Republican John McCain in 2008 was due, in part, to collective fatigue with regard to the two wars led by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. That said, we can undoubtedly legitimately assert that the exceptionally inspiring nature of the candidacy of his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, will have played an even more fundamental role that year.
This election, however, could be an exception. The tensions in the Middle East, still latent, are engaged in an infernal spiral which leaves no one time to assimilate the latest dramatic event. The region, as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres bluntly pointed out to the UN Security Council, is caught in “a sickening cycle of escalation after escalation that is driving the people of the Middle East directly to the brink of the precipice.” .
A CYCLE OF BOMBINGS AND ASSASSINATIONS
The Americans therefore have difficulty remaining disinterested: the Gaza Strip is a pile of ruins; Iran attacks Israel, which responds by assassinating two legendary figures of the “Axis of Resistance” established by the Iranians, Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and Ismaël Haniyeh of Hamas, the latter killed with audacity in Tehran itself.
Not to mention the pagers and walkie-talkies that explode in the faces of Hezbollah militants, the missiles and rockets that continue to fall on Israel and the increasingly ferocious Israeli reaction, this time at the expense of Lebanon. The Americans, it was inevitable, were going to be overtaken by this warlike madness.
President Biden, asked Thursday whether he would support an Israeli strike on Iranian oil facilities, said only: “We’re discussing it right now.” It was enough for the price of oil to jump by 5%, Iran being the seventh largest oil producer in the world.
DETACHED TO A CERTAIN POINT
With the price of gasoline averaging three dollars and eighteen per gallon across the country, or eighty-four cents per liter, Americans are doing pretty well these days. But so close to the presidential election, even the slightest increase in importance will be frowned upon.
In the same way, the mere mention of increased support for Israel makes many fear the sending of even more American troops to the region, which President Biden has not ruled out. Yesterday, it was the turn of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution, to affirm that Iran “will not back down and that Israel will not survive for long.” There is a month left in the presidential campaign, plenty of time for the United States to get seriously caught up in the Middle East conundrum.
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