With less than three weeks before the 2024 presidential election, the Biden administration has deployed US combat troops to Israel as part of an agreement with the Netanyahu government to attack Iran. 

There is a long history of events taking place in October which have major effects on an upcoming US presidential election. By deploying US troops to Israel, the Biden administration is not so much seeking to impact Kamala Harris’s electoral prospects, as to ensure that plans for military escalation are underway before the election takes place. Instead of an “October surprise,” it is an “October conspiracy” to massively expand US involvement in war throughout the Middle East. 

On Wednesday, Biden held a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss joint plans related to Iran. During the call, Netanyahu informed Biden that “he was planning to target military infrastructure in Iran,” according to a US official, who described the call to the Washington Post. The Post reported that “the prime minister’s stance factored into Biden’s decision to send a powerful missile defense system to Israel, both officials said.”

In other words, Biden signed off on Netanyahu’s plans to attack Iran and made it clear that the US would provide “boots on the ground” to support such an operation. On Sunday, the Defense Department made the official announcement that it would send a THAAD missile defense system to Israel, operated by about 100 US soldiers.

The deployment of these combat troops opens the door for a much greater expansion of direct US involvement in the Middle East war. In an interview with CNN, retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton threatened, “If those troops are harmed in any way, that could then result in the US being dragged into the war, and that could have significant consequences beyond what we imagine at this point.”

In the days following the call with Biden, Israel dramatically escalated its attacks against the population of Gaza and directly attacked United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon, advancing across the “blue line” in Lebanon in defiance of a UN mandate.

On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Netanyahu is “considering” a “plan to empty northern Gaza of civilians and cut off aid to those left inside.”

It wrote that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out Hamas militants, a plan that, if implemented, could trap without food or water hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes.

“Those who remain would be considered combatants—meaning military regulations would allow troops to kill them—and denied food, water, medicine, and fuel.”

By the time the US media declares that the United States or its proxies are “considering” taking an action, it means the plan has already been decided. In reality, Israel has already sealed off northern Gaza, demanding that all remaining residents flee and is systematically killing those that remain.

Over the past two days, millions of people all over the world have been shocked and horrified by footage of patients at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital being burned alive by Israeli firebombs, launched as part of this escalating ethnic cleansing operation.

By announcing that the US is sending troops to Israel amidst this carnage, the Biden administration is demonstrating the complete hostility and contempt of the Democratic Party and the Harris campaign for mass anti-war sentiment. It also demonstrates the futility of all efforts to stop the genocide by appealing to any section of the political establishment, which is entirely complicit in slaughter on an industrial scale.

But the genocide itself is inextricably connected to a broader regional and global war. The immediate target is Iran. In an interview on “60 Minutes” last week, Harris declared that she believes Iran “to be our greatest adversary.” When asked about a potential US military attack against Iran, she declared, “I’m not going to talk about hypotheticals at this moment.”

But this is not a hypothetical scenario. It is an active plan by the United States to facilitate a war with Iran, with the most far-reaching and catastrophic consequences. The aim of the United States and Israel is the total reorganization of the Middle East under imperialist domination. The United States has never reconciled itself with the 1979 Iranian revolution that overthrew the US-backed dictatorship of the Shah. For decades, successive US governments have plotted regime change in Tehran and the replacement of the Iranian government with a new US-backed dictatorship.

Moves toward direct war with Iran are themselves connected to the US-NATO war against Russia and the developing conflict with China.

The deployment of US troops to Israel takes place in the context of a deepening series of setbacks for NATO in Ukraine, as Russian forces advance all across the front. Faced with this reality, the US is seeking to open up a new front in its war for global domination. 

US imperialism sees Iran as a central ally of Russia and enabler of its military operations. A recent report by the European Council on Foreign Relations declared that “Russia now finds itself reliant on Iran in ways that were unimaginable prior to February 2022. ... Iran, once a secondary player, is now one of Russia’s most significant collaborators in the war in Ukraine.”

US strategists believe that once they have secured Iran’s oil supplies, it would be in a better position to escalate its war with Russia and ultimately China. More and more, US war planners are referring to all of these countries targeted by US imperialism as a “new axis of evil,” taking up the phrase coined by the Bush administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. 

A new strategy is necessary for the struggle against war, not based on half-measures and appeals to the morality of the imperialist powers. In his remarks to the Socialist Equality Party’s online webinar last week commemorating the anniversary of the Gaza genocide, World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board Chairman David North declared, “As in every great period, it’s either-or. Either mankind advances, or it faces destruction. If the social revolution is impossible, then it means the survival of mankind is impossible.”

There is no “easy path” or shortcut in the struggle to avoid the military catastrophe looming over the whole world. It requires the building of a mass socialist anti-war movement rooted in the working class and armed with the perspective of international socialism.