Russia has received new deadly ballistic missiles from Iran for use in Ukraine and is likely to use them, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, announced on Tuesday in London as he prepared to travel with the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, to Kyiv.
The news, confirmed by the US for the first time and seen as of huge significance to the battlefield balance ahead of Ukraine’s difficult winter, led the US and Europe to impose new sanctions on Iran, so apparently slamming the door on the prospect of a rapprochement between the new reformist Iranian government and the west.
The move may also add to the pressure on the US to end its restrictions on Ukraine using British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia and not just in occupied parts of Ukraine.
I’m a bit confused where the line actually is - it seems to be a very low bar - but at least some red lines for the US do seem to exist.
E.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/15/biden-israel-occupy-gaza-big-mistake/ (don’t retake Gaza)
The flip side is that the US being allied with Israel can sometimes be asset - able to push for justice by asking Israel to investigate it’s own forces in https://www.npr.org/2024/09/09/nx-s1-5106819/us-israel-american-woman-shooting-west-bank (though admittedly the “expression of deep regret” as per https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/10/israel-says-highly-likely-its-troops-killed-turkish-american-aysenur-ezgi-eygi sounds a lot like “thoughts and prayers”)
A slightly more successful version, https://theintercept.com/2024/08/09/israel-prison-sde-teiman-palestinian-abuse-torture/ , where the US asked Israel to investigate, resulting in some arrests…
That said, I do hope that the US soon follows suit with the UK on this, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/10/australian-government-backs-uk-decision-to-curb-arms-sales-to-israel