The looming war that could define a Kamala Harris presidency

As Kamala Harris sat alongside Joe Biden in the Situation Room on Monday evening, she may have felt some trepidation. The president and vice president were about to be briefed — for hours — on the threat of regional war between Israel and Iran. Harris was now advising as vice president on a war she may soon have to take on as president.

Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July, at a crucial moment in a months-long White House effort to reach a ceasefire deal, has brought the Middle East to the brink of war. It has also, importantly, brought US-Israel relations to breaking point.

Harris has been in the room as the Gaza war has spread over the past 10 months. As the White House now prepares for an Iranian response that would inevitably draw in US forces sent to the region to protect Israel, she has retained that front-row seat.

She was on the call when Biden reportedly erupted in fury at Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the assassination of Haniyeh, which sparked this latest round of fighting and likely collapsed a ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza.

“Stop bull*****ing me,” Biden reportedly told the Israeli prime minister on Thursday, frustrated over Netanyahu’s unwillingness to agree to a ceasefire.

“Don’t take the president for granted,” he added.

Biden finally losing his patience after months of seemingly being strung along by Netanyahu is a moment that may define US-Israel relations for years to come. And Harris’s proximity to the fallout should give her the opportunity to avoid repeating Biden’s mistakes.

“She has had a front-row seat and a fantastic mentor on foreign policy over these last ... four years,” Brett Bruen, a former US Foreign Service officer who served as director of global engagement during the Obama administration, told The Independent.

“Even the senators who present themselves as strong on national security have never sat in the Situation Room and had to drive towards a decision. They’ve never had to implement a policy, and those are points in Harris’s favor,” he added.

If Harris manages to defeat Donald Trump in November, she may face an even bigger regional crisis than the one Biden had to contend with.

As she campaigns for the presidency, the Middle East is bracing for an all-out regional war. US officials warn that Iran could launch retaliatory strikes on Israel at any moment.

The last time that happened — in retaliation to an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian consulate in Syria that killed 12 people, including two senior generals in the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force — US and British jets shot down hundreds of Iranian drones over Jordan, Iraq and Syria.

The reaction this time is expected to be much more severe. On Monday evening, just hours before the Situation Room briefing, at least five US personnel were injured in an attack against a military base in Iraq. More and much larger attacks are anticipated.

Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed “harsh punishment” against Israel for the assassination of Haniyeh.

Both killings were blamed on Israel, which also claimed to have killed the commander of Hamas’s armed wing Mohammed Deif, the architect of Hamas’s massacre on October 7th.

The war in Gaza, and the regional fallout, have loomed large over discussions about Biden’s legacy. The president’s unconditional support for Israel in the face of a massive civilian death toll and famine in Gaza had become a drag on his chances for re-election. It even prompted an organized campaign by Arab Americans — usually a reliable part of the Democratic base — to defeat him in November. And his unwillingness to condition military aid to Israel gave Netanyahu leeway to pursue a maximalist approach in Gaza and beyond.

Since announcing her candidacy, Harris has sought to strike a different tone on the Israel-Palestine conflict. She has spoken about Palestinian suffering with a directness that was missing from Biden’s own statements, calling the destruction in Gaza “devastating” and declaring that she “will not be silent” following a meeting with Netanyahu.

Harris also skipped Netanyahu’s controversial speech to Congress — a decision that angered some Israeli officials.

Many progressives, and those who oppose the war in Gaza, hope that these initial signals from Harris may turn into concrete policy changes.

“Just the fact that she’s been leaning into the humanitarian crisis a bit more and lifting up the needs of Palestinians and Palestinian lives and Palestinian rights and dignity in a way that Biden hasn’t, I think is important,” Matt Duss, former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders and now vice president of the Center for International Policy think tank, told The Independent.

“But the hope is that a President Harris would potentially be willing to enforce restrictions on the use of US weapons. That’s something Biden has not been willing to do,” he added.

Besides her shift in tone, and a more equal distribution of concern over civilian casualties on each side, Harris has not yet given any concrete proposals about how she would approach the Israel-Palestine conflict — and the subsequent fallout — any differently from Biden.

She does not have the same decades-long relationship with Israel that Biden has. But her on-the-job experience as vice president throughout the conflict, during which time she saw Biden repeatedly caught off-guard by Netanyahu, may make her more likely to take a tougher line. It is not unusual for American presidents to inherit wars from their predecessors — but rarely has a candidate for the Oval Office had this kind of access to a conflict that could define their own presidency.

Many were looking to Harris’s choice of running mate for clues on how she might approach the issue, with some activists expressing concern over the possibility that she might choose Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate.

Shapiro was, for much of the last few weeks, rumored to be the favorite to become the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee. In response to the rumors, pro-Palestinian voices took pains to brand him as “Genocide Josh” for his support for the war in Gaza and his condemnation of anti-war protesters.

Activists also raised concerns about his candidacy after it was revealed he had volunteered for the Israeli army as a high school student and worked in public relations at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC.

Tim Walz, a former member of the House of Representatives, has a different record. He has been a reliable backer of the Israeli government throughout his time in Congress and has described support for the US ally as a non-partisan issue. But the North Star State governor has also expressed a willingness to take into account the concerns of pro-Palestinian voters amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

When some 18 per cent of voters in his own state cast “uncommitted” votes in the Democratic Party primary — ostensibly in protest at Biden’s support for the Gaza war — Walz said they and their concerns should not be dismissed out of hand.

“We’ve got eight months. We’ve got to bring these people back in and listen to what they’re saying,” Walz said at the time. “Take them seriously. Their message is clear, that they think this is an intolerable situation and we can do more, and I think the president is hearing that.”

If US forces are forced to engage Iran in a significant way, Harris may be forced to spend more time in the Situation Room than on the campaign trail in the next three months. And if the crisis continues beyond this latest round of tit-for-tat, it will likely interfere with the best-laid plans for her presidency.