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Seems to me to be an incorrect frame. Surely he doesn't really want a large war with Iran, precisely because that would be the inflection point at which their "aegis" (and exaggeration IMO) of the US is likely to break down. Just as with Ukraine, the main value proposition of supporting Israel is that no American blood need be spilt, and particularly with Israel (less so for Ukraine, but still mostly so) its super cheap for the amount of threat they absorb.
Now, some on the left don't particularly like the Israel alliance because they sympathize with Palestinians, or others have an Iran fetish. But, almost all of the Right and most of the center left agree with this general value proposition. But more of the left is slowly getting upset about it because the Hamas caucus is increasing in size on that side of the aisle and is making threats (IMO not credible ones) to not vote straight Democrat in the next election.
No American blood need be spilt in conflict with Iran? Why would it need to be even if we let Israel get steam rolled? Does Iran have ambitions in the Americas? If it's about oil and imperialism than plenty of American blood has already been spilt in the ME and Israel was less helpful than Europe.
Yes. An Iran with the ability to do so would be meddling in western hemisphere geopolitics; they already do a little bit with backing anti-American regimes(granted, their support to Cuba doesn’t amount to much).
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Why would it when Iran is focused on harassing Israel and its other neighbors? A full scale war in the ME between the two is much more likely to draw in the US, which will eventually generate a backlash and possibly cause the US-Israel alliance to break down
There is the problem then of, either a mass refugee crisis or another holocaust-level-genocide. America will get dragged into that methinks.
Yes. A consistent problem with left of center perspectives on ME policy is mistaking Islamic countries' incompetence with lack of ambition. If they had the means Iran and their proxies would roll into Tel Aviv, kill 7 million Jews, and then be onto southern Europe, then Northern and then they'd start thinking about crossing the sea.
I mean, I wish it was about oil an imperialism. Its actually about civilizational conflict, and you might have noticed that Israel is conducting a 60 year+ defensive war on that front while being mostly on our side.
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None of that is really practical, though. In practice both the Democrats and the Republicans support Israel over Hamas for obvious reasons. Left-wing support for Hamas is just an electoral liability for the Democrats, not a real reason for them to actually support Hamas (which would be a much worse liability). The reason is exactly as you say: The support is cheap relative to how much threat they absorb. It's better that someone else be the canary in the coal mine. It's better that someone else take the missile attacks so that you can test your missile defense technology from thousands of miles away.
Also, in general, the American electorate is against organizations that are explicitly anti-America and/or have called for terrorist attacks against America and/or have literally murdered Americans out of sheer anti-American hatred.
No one who has any serious engagement with American foreign policy could possibly be pro-Hamas, because Hamas is anti-America. You can't sit in the Situation Room, get a briefing from the top brass, and then express your support for an organization that wants you, personally, the President of the United States, to be murdered, and is only held back from literally murdering you by the strength of your bodyguards and intelligence agencies. At some point your self-preservation instincts kick in and you realize that rhetoric can only go so far.
I would say that being anti-American is a core tenet of a small, but influential, segment of the American foreign policy establishment.
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Yes, and so is Iran. But the progressives are pro-both anyway, seeing their hostility towards America as the result of American foreign policy failures that we could fix by throwing Israel to the wolves. As we see in this thread, that particular view is shared with the dissident right and others
And this is why serious progressives either tone down their foreign policy views or lose their elections.
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