Ari Shapiro interviews former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes about the expansion of the conflict in the Middle East and what the U.S. can do to contain it.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Since Israel’s war against Hamas began, the U.S. has tried to contain the conflict to prevent a wider regional war from breaking out. Now, with U.S. attacks against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen, drone strikes in Iraq and fighting across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, we have to ask, is that regional conflict the U.S. wanted to avoid already here? The last three presidents have tried to shrink the U.S. footprint in the Middle East, and our next guest, Ben Rhodes, worked for one of them. He was deputy national security adviser to President Obama. Welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
BEN RHODES: Good talking to you, Ari.
SHAPIRO: So, in your view, at this moment, is the U.S. already involved in a regional war in the Middle East?
RHODES: Yes. I think that regional war is here. And if you look at what’s happened since October 7, you’ve seen violence break out between a variety of different groups, often backed by Iran, and the U.S. and then, of course, Israel and Gaza. So I think by any definition, you would call that a regional war.
SHAPIRO: By any definition, that seems like a bad thing. So how can the U.S. try to tamp this down or get out of it? Or what should the U.S. strategy even be at this point?
RHODES: Well, from my perspective, obviously, this started with the horrific Hamas attack on October 7. And then you’ve had this really brutal and massive escalation over the last several months of the Israeli military operation in Gaza. And that’s really the root of this wave of escalation. And so any pathway to de-escalation, I think, necessarily has to involve de-escalation and some form of cease-fire in Gaza.
SHAPIRO: So you think as long as Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza, this wider regional war is not going to…
Read the full article here