Source: Nonzero Newsletter
by Robert Wright
“Two big things happened in the Middle East this week — big even by the standards of the past year: 1) Israel finally managed to kill Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the prime mover behind the October 7 attack on Israel. 2) The US finally put boots on the ground in Israel. It sent 100 soldiers, along with a missile defense system …. The first development raised hopes that the second one would prove superfluous — that the expanding Middle East conflict might now be wound down, and those anti-missile missiles might not be needed after all. … maybe, if Biden finally uses his full leverage as Israel’s arms supplier, he can compellingly argue that, as he put it at an earlier juncture, Netanyahu should ‘take the win.’ But there’s little chance that much of this will happen, and this week’s second big development — the deployment to Israel of that American anti-missile battery — helps explain why.” (10/18/24)