With worst-case scenario averted for now, White House and Harris campaign still face a serious risk in Middle East conflict

By Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — Ten days before the American presidential election, uncontrollable war in the Middle East appears to have been avoided for now, much to the relief of President Joe Biden’s aides at the White House and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team in Delaware.

“It looks like they didn’t hit anything other than military targets. My hope is this is the end,” Biden said after receiving an update on Israel’s strikes on Iran early Saturday from his intelligence analysts. 

Such an outcome was hardly a foregone conclusion at the start of this month, when a massive Iranian ballistic missile barrage launched on Israel led to fears of major, escalatory reprisal — potentially targeting Iranian nuclear or oil sites. Still, if in Biden’s mind a worst-case scenario was prevented, the larger knot that is the Middle East conflict remains as firmly gnarled as ever.

The direct attack inside Iran brings the region to a new, more dangerous place, with Tehran now mulling its own response to the response.

Biden and Harris joined a call Saturday with their national security team and were briefed on the the latest developments in the region according to the White House.

“We maintain the importance of supporting Israel’s right to defend itself,” Harris told reporters not long after that briefing, “and we are also very adamant that we must see de-escalation in the region going forward, and that will be our focus.”

Asked her message to Iran, Harris said, “We as the United States feel very strongly that Iran must stop what it is doing in terms of this threat that it presents to the region, and we will always defend Israel against any attack by Iran, in that way.”

Beyond Iran’s actions, however, the region remains at a boil.

Israel continues to expand its operations in Lebanon, which have killed hundreds of women and children and tested American patience — but so far not leading to a major break.

And the conflict in Gaza appears no closer to ending than it was before the death this month of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, whose demise Biden hoped would lead to renewed efforts toward a hostages-for-ceasefire deal.

That window of opportunity remains cracked, at least in the mind of top Western diplomats, and negotiations will resume this week in Qatar.

But few believe there will be any resolution before the November 5 US presidential election, leaving Biden and Harris’ inability to bring stability to the region a serious political liability.

That is not where the US was hoping it would be in the immediate lead-up to Election Day, even if full-blown war between Iran and Israel isn’t currently breaking out.

American officials don’t believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees much incentive to end his multifront operations before the election.

And there is little question in their minds Netanyahu sees former President Donald Trump — whom he has phoned up at multiple points in the weeks preceding Election Day — as a close ally.

Campaigning in Michigan on Saturday, Trump brought a group of imams on stage after what he said was a private meeting backstage.

“Muslim and Arab voters in Michigan across the country want a stop to endless wars and a return to peace in the Middle East like we had under President Donald J. Trump, have you ever heard of him?” Trump said. “They want strength in the Oval Office, law and order, and common sense.”

Speaking Saturday before heading off on what has become a rare campaign trail appearance, Biden declared himself “not surprised” that Trump was in regular contact with Netanyahu. He acknowledged some concern that the Republican nominee was not representing the US in those conversations.

For her part, Harris has offered little evidence she would adopt a different approach if elected. Questioned by a voter at CNN’s recent town hall in Pennsylvania about how she would “ensure not another Palestinian dies due to bombs being funded by US tax dollars,” Harris pointed, again, to the nascent ceasefire deal, without saying how she would succeed where Biden has failed.

But pressed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper on what she would say to voters who won’t vote for her because of their fury over the administration’s handling of Gaza, she said — essentially — that Trump would just make things worse.

“Listen, I am not going to deny the strong feelings that people have. I don’t know that anyone who has seen the images who would not have strong feelings about what has happened,” Harris said. “But I also do know that for many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries. They also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

Those answers have done little to convince Arab American voters to throw their support behind Harris, who has given them little to indicate she would not simply act as an extension of the Biden administration on the issue.

Abdullah Hammoud, the Democratic mayor of Dearborn, Michigan — a city with one of the highest concentrations of Arab Americans — declined this week to endorse any candidate, encouraging residents instead to “vote your moral conscience.”

“I have not found any candidate, especially the candidate with the party I’ve affiliated myself with, who has been willing to depart from the current course that President Biden has taken us down on the genocide in Gaza and the broader conflict that has now touched Lebanon,” he told The Hill in an interview on Wednesday.

A trip across the region this week by Secretary of State Antony Blinken yielded little discernible evidence either that Hamas was willing to update its demands for releasing the hostages or that Israel was newly interested in reaching a deal.

While a main focus of his attention was planning for a post-war Gaza, the steps to reach that day remain as elusive as ever.

For months, Biden has been trying without success to pressure Netanyahu into an agreement that would end the fighting in Gaza, which in his mind would lower temperatures across the region and potentially unlock a wider, transformative normalization across the Middle East.

He’s been rebuffed at nearly every turn, leading to enormous frustration and long periods of silence between the two men.

That pattern lent a degree of uncertainty to the past weeks, as Biden and his aides sought to discern how Israel would retaliate against Iran’s October 1 ballistic missiles attack.

From the start, they signaled a different approach from April, when Israel’s successful interception of Iranian rockets and drones led Biden to encourage Netanyahu to “take the win” and forgo a response.

The scale of the ballistic missile barrage made this time different, Biden’s aides said, necessitating action.

But in a notably candid string of public comments, the president made clear he opposed strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and recommended against going after the country’s oil reserves.

In a phone call on October 9 — their first in nearly two months — Netanyahu provided reassurance those targets were not in Israel’s sights, despite pressure from some conservatives in his own government to seize a moment of Iranian weakness to go after them.

It made for a rare instance over the past year of Biden’s advice being adopted by his Israeli counterpart, even if Netanyahu had his own reasons for avoiding the most sensitive Iranian targets and made clear his country’s decision-making was independent of Washington’s guidance.

“It was extensive. It was targeted. It was precise. It was against military targets across Iran. It was in multiple ways, very carefully prepared. And again, I think it was designed to be effective,” a senior US administration official said late Friday.

“As far as we’re concerned, that should close out the direct exchange between Israel and Iran,” the official went on.

Whether that is what ultimately transpires, of course, is an outcome entirely out of Biden’s hands.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN’s Betsy Klein and Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this report.

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