In his final months in office, U.S. President Joe Biden is signaling new willingness to use U.S. military assistance to Israel as both a carrot and a stick to influence its high-stakes confrontation with Iran and Iran-backed militant groups.
But while the approach increases Washington's involvement in Israeli decision-making just weeks before the U.S. presidential election, it is unclear whether it will help achieve Biden's goals, including preventing a broader regional conflict and getting Israel to address the increasingly dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, experts say.
Biden's administration announced on Sunday it would send about 100 soldiers to Israel along with an advanced U.S. anti-missile system, a rare deployment that came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government weighs a retaliatory attack on Iran after an Oct. 1 Iranian missile strike.
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