On Thursday, Biden admitted he was in discussion with Netanyahu about an Israeli strike on Iran’s oilfields. Iran has in the past signalled that it would retaliate to any such strike with attacks on oil infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The Brent price of oil has already risen from $70 a barrel on Monday to $78 by Friday.
A new round of strikes could send it hurtling towards $100. Asked about such a prospect, all Biden could do was interrupt himself. “I think that would be a little . . . anyway,” he replied.
What Biden may have stopped himself from adding is that such an escalation could badly damage Kamala Harris’s chances of beating Donald Trump next month. Yet it is Netanyahu, not Biden, who will decide what happens next.
Recent history shows that Israel’s prime minister is unlikely to pay heed to whatever restraint Biden is urging on him in private. “Netanyahu is riding high,” says Marwan al-Muasher, Jordan’s former foreign minister, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He won’t want to do anything to help Harris’s election prospects.”
Be the first to reply to this general discussion.