Biden Works Against the Clock as Violence Escalates in the Middle East

President Biden is beginning to acknowledge that he is simply running out of time to help forge a cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas, his aides say. And the risk of a wider war has never looked greater.

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For a year now, President Biden has warned publicly and privately about the need to avoid a broader war in the Middle East, one that could easily escalate into direct conflict between Israel and Iran.

Israel’s ferocious assault on Hezbollah, its most violent exchange with the Lebanese militant group since 2006, is not only a major widening of the war but also a significant widening of the breach between President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For a year now, Mr. Biden has warned publicly and privately about the need to avoid a regional war, one that could easily escalate into direct conflict between Israel and Iran. His caution was a major topic of conversation when he traveled to Israel days after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, both to promise Israel that America would stand by it, and to caution against making the same mistakes the United States made after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Biden even held on to hope for the transformative peace deal for the Middle East that he thought was within grasp a year ago, believing it could survive even as the war between Hamas and Israel tore at its foundations.

Now, Mr. Biden’s aides say, the president is beginning to acknowledge that he is simply running out of time. With only four months left in office, the chances of a cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas look dimmer than at any time since Mr. Biden laid out a plan at the beginning of the summer. And the risk of a wider war has never looked greater.

In public, at least, administration officials insist they have not given up. They say they simply cannot move ahead while missiles are bringing death and destruction to northern Israel and southern Lebanon. And they are clinging to the hope that even this level of missile and rocket exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah will not turn into the regional war they have been trying to stave off.

“We could pick any moment, any set of rockets launched by Hezbollah, any set of strikes by Israel, and say, ‘Is this an escalation? Is that an escalation?’” Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, insisted over the weekend. He spoke just hours after Israel killed a Hezbollah leader wanted for his role in two 1983 bombings in Beirut that killed over 350 people, most of them U.S. service members.

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