Washington’s Israeli Rottweiler: Is it on or off the leash?

In the 40-plus years I’ve been studying the US-Israeli relationship up close, my views of its dynamics have changed (as have the dynamics themselves.) However, one view of the relationship that has lasting validity and some inherent elasticity of its own is to view Israel as a sometimes out-of-control attack dog that over the past few decades has been built and sustained overwhelmingly through the support of- and as perceived longterm investment for- the U.S. military-industrial-governance complex.

But has the Rottweiler now slipped the leash and started to turn on its master?

Not wholly.

The problem right now is that the “master”, that is Pres. Joe Biden and his administration, has basically dropped the leash, due to a combination of factors. And that has left the Rottweiler rampaging across the battle-fields and “norms” of global politics with very little apparent restraint or discipline but only an outsized desire to visit death and destruction (in the name of “deterrence”) on as many of its neighbors in West Asia as possible.

So what has caused the Biden administration to drop the leash? Firstly, of course, it is the evident mental incapacity of not just that ageing narcissist the president himself but also of just about all of the “principals” in his National…