As the world prepares to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack and the ensuing war is set to drag into a second year with intense fighting on another front, many Americans are wondering why President Biden has been unable to end the conflict.

Contrary to plenty of commentary, it certainly has not been for lack of trying.

Since the war broke out, Biden has visited Israel and had a host of conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has made at least 10 trips to Israel. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has also made multiple visits to the country since Oct. 7 and had seemingly countless talks with his counterpart, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. This is all on top of lower-ranking U.S. officials’ continuous efforts to engage with Israel.

And yet for all the time and effort the Biden administration has expended, it has failed to broker a cease-fire between Israel and the militant group Hamas. Meanwhile, the threat of a wider war loomed again this week as Iran launched a missile attack on Israel in retaliation for the escalation of its conflict with the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Biden administration is hardly alone in its struggle to find diplomatic common ground in the Middle East. Ever since the Oslo accords some three decades ago, a series of American administrations have tried and failed to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

At the same time, although Americans may want wars to be short and relatively restrained, they rarely are. The unfortunate battlefield reality is that any war against a group such as Hamas — with its estimated 30,000 fighters and hundreds of miles of tunnels embedded in one of the most densely populated places on Earth — was going to be a long, bloody slog. There is very little that anyone — even an American president — can do to change that.

Biden’s critics counter that the administration could put more pressure on Netanyahu to force a cease-fire. They note that Israel receives billions of dollars’ worth of American military aid and depends on American diplomatic cover. They say that provides sufficient leverage to force Netanyahu’s hand. But does it?

In practice, the United States often has less influence over its allies than one might think. Historically, economic sanctions have a poor track record of forcing major concessions, particularly when existential security matters are at stake — which, in Israel’s case, they are. Indeed, threats to sanction the hard-right elements of Netanyahu’s coalition have yet to produce any sort of moderation. At the same time, the International Criminal Court’s announcement that it would seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant produced what few other policies could: It united Israel’s fractured political spectrum around the current government.

Even if U.S. pressure were effective enough to motivate the Netanyahu government to try to end the war, it still might not succeed. Ending the war, after all, would require the cooperation of both Israel and Hamas — and more specifically Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who shows no signs of budging.

Sinwar could unilaterally declare a cease-fire, release all the remaining Israeli hostages and deny Israel one of its core justifications for the war. But Hamas seems intent on executing hostages and otherwise doubling down on the hostilities. Presumably, despite all the devastation and suffering in Gaza, Sinwar on some level still believes that he is winning.

Even if America had successfully secured a bilateral cease-fire, it would be unlikely to produce a lasting peace. Indeed, all the structural and political reasons that have prevented peace for decades remain.

Because Israel would have to free hundreds of militants serving life sentences for murder in exchange for the release of remaining hostages, Hamas’ ranks would swell during a cease-fire. Eventually the battered organization would rebuild and strike again. Moreover, regional spoilers — most notably Iran — view a continuing proxy conflict with Israel as being in their strategic interest.

A year in, the Biden administration’s diplomatic offensive has yielded some modest results. The rate of casualties — even as reported by Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry — has slowed. Aid to Gaza’s civilians, albeit insufficient, is flowing. More than three-fifths of the hostages taken on Oct. 7 have either been freed or recovered, although 97 have not. And, most important, a full-blown, regional Middle East war — widely feared at several junctures over the last year — has been averted, at least for the moment.

All that is admittedly cold comfort to the Palestinians caught in the crossfire, the Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza and the growing displaced populations of southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

In the wake of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Americans have become far more aware of the bounds of what military power can achieve. But other tools of national power, including diplomacy, have their limits too. Outside mediators can’t end this war, particularly if the combatants themselves don’t want to stop fighting.

Raphael S. Cohen is the director of the strategy and doctrine program at Rand Project Air Force and of the national security program at the Pardee Rand Graduate School.

Former President Trump will headline the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) Defend the 2nd event in Savannah, Georgia, Oct. 22, the organization announced Friday morning.

“This election is a pivotal one for America’s gun owners. Kamala Harris and her far-left allies have big plans to erode Second Amendment protections,” NRA Vice President and CEO Doug Hamlin said in a statement. 

“Donald J. Trump has proven himself a fighter for Americans’ right to keep and bear arms. We are excited to have him speak at our Defend the 2nd event and to support his return to the White House in January.”

NRA TARGETS SEN SHERROD BROWN IN 7-FIGURE AD BUY IN OHIO

Earlier this year, the NRA endorsed Trump in his presidential campaign. Trump also spoke at the NRA’s convention in May. 

The NRA has been ramping up its attacks on certain Democratic candidates who are softer on gun owners’ rights. Ohio is the second state the NRA Political Victory Fund has targeted this election cycle. Last month, the gun group launched a major radio campaign against vulnerable Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana.

NRA BETS BIG ON MONTANA IN GUN RIGHTS PUSH AS TESTER TEETERS IN SENATE RACE

Former President Trump speaks during the NRA ILA Leadership Forum at the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting in May. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

“When it comes to preserving and strengthening our constitutional rights in America, the stakes could not be higher in this presidential election,” the NRA’s news release said. “No matter your reason for owning a firearm — whether for hunting, self-defense or just as an exercise of your constitutional right — law-abiding gun owners have a clear choice this fall if they hope to preserve their Second Amendment rights.”

An aerial firefighting task force has been thwarted — and sometimes grounded — by a new interpretation of a U.S. Forest Service policy that prohibits contractors from providing flight supervision over federal lands, according to Southern California fire chiefs.

“I don’t understand why they’ve chosen this time to reinterpret this longstanding procedure,” said Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone. “Why are they moving the goalposts now, during fire season? The timing couldn’t be worse.”

The dispute is the latest to have local fire authorities at odds with the Forest Service amid a punishing season that’s seen more than a million acres of land burn across the state. Some county chiefs have also spoken out about Forest Service staffing shortages they say resulted in delayed federal responses to recent fires, including the Airport fire that destroyed homes in Orange and Riverside counties.

Orange County Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy has written to Congress requesting an investigation into the issue.

“This policy application defies common sense at a time when we all know wildfire is, if not the worst threat to public safety in the state of California and throughout the West, pretty close to the top,” he said.

The Forest Service said the policy is a longstanding business rule that applies to aviation operations nationwide. “We had a lack of clarity on the policy, so some people were using it inappropriately,” said Adrienne Freeman, an agency spokesperson.

At the heart of the dispute is the Quick Reaction Force, a 24/7 aerial task force staffed by the fire departments of Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties. Its fleet consists of three night-flying helitankers, a mobile base that can mix 18,000 gallons of retardant per hour and an intelligence helicopter that is typically staffed by pilots under contract with the Orange County Fire Authority who manage the airspace and tell the other helicopters where to make drops.

The task force has been operating for several years without issue. But in July, the local agencies received word from the Forest Service that contractors could no longer provide aerial supervision over fires burning on federal land. When the QRF is deployed to these fires, it generally must be overseen by an aerial supervisor who is an agency employee.

The Forest Service has 11 aircraft capable of performing this supervision in California, but only one — an airplane — can do so at night, Freeman said. That plane is at times unavailable because it’s already deployed, has logged too many flight hours, needs to refuel or requires repairs or maintenance.

“As a result of that, we’ve had to pull off of some fires that were threatening communities,” Fennessy said.

For instance, as the task force fought the Bridge fire the afternoon of Sept. 11, the Forest Service airplane supervising the effort, AA-52, had to return to base, according to Fennessy and a written statement provided by Ken Craw, an aerial supervisor who was flying Copter-76 under contract with the Orange County Fire Authority.

Rather than call in Copter-76 to relieve the plane as supervisor, all air operations — six helicopters and two water scoping air tankers — were shut down until another Forest Service plane could arrive a short time later, Craw wrote.

“In my opinion the choice of AA-52 to shut down the aerial firefighting operations instead of using Copter-76 put the public and firefighters at risk, and reduced the efficiency of the efforts to contain the Bridge Fire,” he wrote.

A similar situation resulted in a two-hour delay in QRF helicopters dropping retardant on the Fork fire in the Angeles National Forest on July 19, Fennessy said. Helicopters also were released from the Borel fire in the Sequoia National Forest the night of July 28, even though they had hours of flight time left, he said.

Fennessy and other Southern California fire chiefs have met and exchanged letters with Region 5 Director Jaimie Gamboa, sharing their concerns.

The requirement that an agency employee supervise night operations is impractical when that employee is flying a plane, which circles thousands of feet above helicopters and has limited visibility into what’s going on below, some of the county chiefs said.

“The helicopter coordinator position is more beneficial during nighttime helicopter operations than a fixed-wing aerial supervision platform that’s way too high above the fire,” said Marrone, who was previously in charge of the county’s air operations.

Robert Garcia, fire chief of the Angeles National Forest, has called on the QRF many times, as he has just one night-flying helicopter — the Forest Service’s only night-flying helicopter in the nation, he said.

Garcia said the Forest Service plane can provide adequate nighttime supervision to helicopters because it has technology on board to monitor the effectiveness of drops.

Still, he said, he’s expressed concerns about the policy interpretation to others in the Forest Service because of his forest’s reliance on the QRF intelligence helicopter to provide relief when the Forest Service plane is unavailable.

“I think it’s worth taking a hard look at this policy, because the QRF is really, to my knowledge, a singular example of this particular scenario,” he said. “But the consequences are high.”

The Forest Service may deviate from the policy when it’s in a unified command, or if there’s imminent threat to life or property, he said. Garcia has done so at least two or three times since July, enabling him to use the QRF helicopter for aerial supervision. Such supervision is needed only if more than two aircraft are flying over a fire, he added.

Garcia acknowledged that confusion over the new policy interpretation has at times resulted in some delays in decision-making, but said that hasn’t affected the outcome of any fires in Angeles National Forest. The probability of success in keeping the Bridge fire small was low from the start because of hot, dry conditions and steep, rugged terrain that hadn’t burned in more than 100 years, and the Fork fire was contained relatively quickly at 301 acres, he said.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection also prohibits the use of contractors as aerial supervisors, a policy that was formalized this year but was in practice for a couple years before that, said Nick Schuler, deputy director of communications for Cal Fire.

But that hasn’t posed as much of an issue to the QRF because Cal Fire has agreements with Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties for them to provide initial attack fire suppression in many areas where the task force does its night flying work, Fennessy said. As a result, the counties dictate operations within those areas, he said.

The timing of the Forest Service’s change in policy interpretation has left him scratching his head. The contract pilots are “the best of the best,” with all the appropriate training and qualifications, and no one has raised safety concerns about them, Fennessy said.

He wonders whether the shift was retaliation for a 2022 60 Minutes episode in which he said the Forest Service was slow to use the QRF to fight the Caldor fire in Northern California and only greenlighted its use when he threatened to take the helicopters back home.

“It caused a lot of tension between the agencies — L.A., Ventura, Orange — and the Forest Service,” Fennessy said. “That’s the only thing I can think of because why now, years into this?”

Freeman of the Forest Service vigorously disputed that allegation. “No one gave that a thought, and we continue not to,” she said.

The Forest Service has been working to beef up its night flying operations, including by changing policy in Region 5 so that its employees can fly in contract aircraft to gain experience in nighttime aerial supervision, she said.

“We have worked incredibly hard to try to get to a place where we can utilize the QRF as well as all the resources in these counties,” she said. “This shouldn’t be about who has what. This is about trying to figure out ways to work together.”