Biden Draws a Red(Ish) Line on Israel

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep. This week, we’re marveling at the show of bipartisanship in Congress. And by that, we’re of course talking about Republican Rep. Tim Burchett catching a ride on his skateboard from Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen’s car.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: U.S. President Joe Biden pauses some military aid to Israel, Taiwan looks to buy suicide drones to deter China, the U.K. defense ministry suffers a massive data breach, and more.

‘It’s Just Wrong.’

For months, Biden has been trying to walk a precarious foreign-policy tightrope of supporting Israel in its campaign to defeat Hamas while urging the country’s leaders to do more to limit the grave humanitarian impacts the war is having on civilians in Gaza.

All the while, tensions have grown between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government and the Biden administration, the latter of which has found itself under immense pressure on the world stage over its support for Israel.

In the past week, though, something in Washington has snapped. Biden paused a shipment of 3,500 heavy bombs to Israel and then went on CNN to announce that he would withhold further offensive military aid to Israel if it launched a full-scale invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where some 1.5 million Palestinians displaced by the war have sought refuge. (Israel seized control of the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt but hasn’t yet mounted a major ground invasion.)

Growing frustrations. The U.S. decision to pause some military aid reflects mounting frustration in the White House over how Netanyahu’s government has carried out its war in Gaza, where an estimated 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to data from the area’s health authorities. The United Nations, meanwhile, says there’s a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza following seven months of war as Israel continues to block some humanitarian aid from entering the territory through some land crossings.

Biden administration officials haven’t yet signaled whether this withholding of aid is a one-off move to deter Israel’s plans for a full-fledged Rafah invasion or the start of a strategic shift and gloves-off pressure campaign on Netanyahu to try to dramatically shift the direction of Israel’s war strategy. But either way, it’s an unprecedented move for Biden, who has a deep personal connection to Israel and who resisted calls for months to take such action.

It’s also a rare—though not unprecedented—move for any U.S. president and one that certainly represents a low-water mark in modern U.S.-Israel relations.

Right back at ya. Back in Israel, those feelings of frustration are mutual. Israeli officials have voiced anger over the pause in U.S. shipments and how the Biden administration has released the information to the media. Other members of Netanyahu’s cabinet are going further: Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, tweeted that Hamas “loves” Biden in reaction to the news.

Is Israel losing the American left? What is clear is that Israel is losing support in some quarters of the Democratic Party—a trend that some stalwart and hawkish Israel supporters on the left side of the aisle in Congress are sounding the alarm on.

Biden represents the older generation of steadfast Israel supporters in the Democratic Party, while the newer generation of progressive Democrats is much more skeptical of U.S. support for the country and views the fight for Palestinian human rights as equally if not more deserving of U.S. support.

As such, Biden has taken a lot of political flack from his party’s grassroots for his Israel policy—to the point that some analysts question whether it could affect his prospects for reelection in November. Still, he has said a wave of public protests, including on college campuses across the country, hasn’t affected his decisions on Israel.

Battlefield impacts. The next question is what type of practical effects the withholding of the arms shipment could have on Israel’s war. Israeli defense officials told Haaretz that the pause won’t directly affect current operations in Gaza but could affect the military’s preparedness for future contingencies. They also fear it could convince other Israeli adversaries—namely Iran and Hezbollah—to strike out at Israel while they see this fallout in U.S.-Israel ties.

But there are counterarguments to those criticisms. For starters, the announced pause in aid doesn’t apply to the $26.4 billion in U.S. security assistance to Israel already passed by Congress in the national security supplemental last month, according to lawmakers briefed by administration officials. That supplemental includes $3.5 billion for the procurement of advanced weapons systems, $1 billion in artillery and munitions production, and $4.4 billion to replenish Israeli defense stocks.

Biden also made clear in his CNN interview that the United States would “continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently.” “But,” he added, “it’s just wrong. … We’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells” that could be used in a full-scale assault on Rafah.

As Biden put it: “We’re not walking away from Israel’s security. We’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in those areas.” Whether Israel’s government (and its adversaries) buys that argument remains to be seen.

Let’s Get Personnel

Biden has tapped Tonya Wilkerson, the current deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, to be undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security.

Biden has also named Abigail Dressel as U.S. ambassador to Angola as well as to São Tomé and Príncipe and James Holtsnider as his pick to be the U.S. envoy to Samoa. Both are career foreign service officers.

U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth has selected Ronald Shindel, Jeffrey Hamel, and Thomas Greco as civilian aides.

Maggie Goodlander, a former Biden White House and Justice Department official, has announced that she’s running for a U.S. House seat in New Hampshire. Goodlander is married to U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, who led U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency until earlier this year, will be the founding director of the Institute for National Defense and Global Security at Vanderbilt University.

And in China, President Xi Jinping has appointed senior diplomat Xu Feihong as Beijing’s next ambassador to India, the Indian Express reports.

On the Button 

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Aid inbound. The first shipment of aid from Cyprus to the U.S.-built pier off Gaza’s coast departed on Thursday, Cypriot officials said. The U.S. vessel Sagamore left Larnaca early Thursday, two months after the United States gave the go-ahead to build the floating pier. The U.S. military has finished construction of the pier but has been delayed in moving it into place by high sea levels.

Suicide drones. Taiwan is in the market for U.S.-made loitering munitions—also known as suicide drones—which have become one of the signature weapons on the modern battlefield, Jack reports. The weapons that can hover for hours before swooping in for the kill are attractive to Taipei as it has faced Chinese People’s Liberation Army fighter jets swarming the island’s air defense identification zone and going through the median line across the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan has asked the U.S. Defense Department for a drone that the AeroVironment Switchblade 300 would fit, although the drone is not specifically named. Taiwan has sent a second letter of request to the Pentagon for a larger drone variant, with competition between the bigger Switchblade 600 and Anduril’s Altius-600.

Hacked. The U.K. defense ministry suffered a major breach of its payroll systems, potentially compromising the data of nearly 300,000 soldiers, defense officials said this week. British government officials have not yet attributed the hack to any particular adversary, with Defense Secretary Grant Shapps only telling members of Parliament that it was likely a “malign actor” and that state involvement could not be ruled out, though multiple media reports have linked it to China.

Asked by Foreign Policy about the hack at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, William Middleton, the cyber director at the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, said the government’s assessment was still ongoing and is a process that can sometimes “take years” as authorities gather evidence. “There was a briefing which suggested that it was a state actor because of the type of attack and what we’ve seen so far,” he said. But he stressed that the government “did not formally attribute it to China.”—Rishi Iyengar

What We’re Listening to

Shameless plug alert, from Robbie. Foreign Policy is out with a new podcast, After Hotel Rwanda. It’s a project that Robbie has been working on for over a year involving a bizarre kidnapping plot, spies, Hollywood, and the painful legacy of genocide. The first episode is out, and interested listeners can find it here.

Snapshot 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press amid his trial for allegedly falsifying company records to cover up hush money payments to hide an affair with an adult film actress, at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse in New York on May 7. Trump is the first former U.S. president to face trial on criminal charges.Win McNamee/Getty Images

Put On Your Radar

Thursday, May 9: Xi concludes his three-country tour of Europe with a multiday visit to Hungary.

Friday, May 10: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Spanish counterpart, José Manuel Albares, are set to meet in Washington.

Sunday, May 12: Lithuania holds its presidential election.

Monday, May 13: U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is set to stand trial on federal charges that he accepted bribes, including cash and gold bars, in exchange for using his political influence to benefit the Egyptian government.

Tuesday, May 14: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is set to visit China.

Quote of the Week

“The dogs like to spend five minutes sniffing each other’s butts. That’s the phase I think we’re in. We just need to get off that. Nobody’s here to hurt anybody. Everybody’s a dog. We’re all on the same team. We’re all going to get a chance to play.”

—Lt. Gen. David Miller, the head of U.S. Space Operations Command, at a conference describing bureaucratic fights between the military and intelligence community over how satellite intelligence is used.

FP’s Most Read This Week

• Nobody Is Competing With the U.S. to Begin With by Anatol Lieven
• The Original Sin of Biden’s Foreign Policy by John Kampfner
• Can Xi Win Back Europe? by Christina Lu

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Brain worms. As if the 2024 presidential campaign weren’t wild enough, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says doctors found a dead worm in his head that had eaten part of his brain. RFK’s response on X: “I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate.”

Come on in. The head of a top Iranian university is offering scholarships to U.S. students facing reprisals after taking part in pro-Palestinian protests across the country. (Iran may have a hard time claiming any moral high ground here, though, considering it regularly sentences its own protesters to death.)