I’m sure it occurred to Benjamin Netanyahu that bombing the Iranian embassy in Damascus had the potential to shatter an extraordinarily tenuous, unofficial semi-ceasefire between the US military and Iran’s allied militias in Iraq.

In the days after a drone attack on a remote American outpost in Jordan killed three US service members in late January, Kataib Hezbollah, the most influential of those militias, issued a bizarre statement declaring its intention to halt “operations” against US forces in the area, citing respect for the Iraqi government. It was a transparent attempt to absolve the group’s benefactors in Tehran. “Our brothers in the Axis, especially in the Islamic Republic of Iran, do not know how we conduct our operations,” the group said. “And they often object to the pressure and escalation against the American occupation forces in Iraq and Syria.”

In the post-Soleimani era, it’s less clear how much direct control Iran exercises over the groups on a day-to-day basis. It’s not unrealistic to suggest they have considerable operational latitude to conduct their affairs, which means Iran probably doesn’t bear direct responsibility for each and every aggression committed against US forces in Iraq and Syria by Kataib Hezbollah, Al-Nujaba and the rest of the groups that comprise the IRI, an umbrella label for the most fervent Quds acolytes among the confederation of militias that make up the PMF. The PMF, you’re reminded, essentially functions as Iraq’s shadow military.

You could plausibly argue the IRI’s just a cover story — an idiotic rebranding exercise aimed at putting some distance between the PMF and the Quds. The Kataib Hezbollah statement was the IRI trying to put some distance between itself and Tehran just in case Joe Biden was considering bombing Iran directly in retaliation for the first American troop deaths of the current escalatory cycle.

The whole thing’s a game of “spot the Ayatollah,” and exactly no one’s convinced by that openly ridiculous charade. While it may be true that Iran’s proxies do things Iran didn’t tell them to do, it’s almost never true that they do something Iran explicitly tells them not to do. And that’s the crux of the issue.

Maybe Esmail Qaani knew about the attack on the US base in Jordan ahead of time, maybe he didn’t, but you can be sure the relative calm since Biden dispatched B-1B bombers against 90 IRI targets in early February is more the result of Qaani’s insistence than it is any fear instilled by Joe’s airstrikes. Indeed, Reuters said Kataib Hezbollah’s statement was issued at Qaani’s request. (The statement wasn’t enough to stop the US bombing run, nor was it sufficient to prevent the Pentagon from killing one of the group’s underbosses on February 7.)

At the end of the day, Iraq’s an Iranian client state. An Iranian client state that’s still sparsely occupied by the US military. That’s a precarious scenario, and Netanyahu’s rather brazen attack on Iran’s “diplomatic” (note the scare quotes) complex in Damascus could destabilize the situation in Iraq anew.

According to a pretty good AP story published mid-week, the US was quick to tell Tehran — through back channels, as usual — that the Pentagon wasn’t given any notice of the IDF’s intentions. “Shortly after an airstrike widely attributed to Israel destroyed an Iranian consulate building in Syria, the United States had an urgent message for Iran: We had nothing to do with it,” the AP article begins.

The problem for the US was spelled out later in the piece by Charles Lister, a resident fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “What the Iranians have always done when they have felt most aggressively targeted by Israel is not to hit back at the Israelis, but Americans,” he said, adding that US assets in the region are viewed in Tehran as “soft targets.”

I should clarify. Because Lister apparently didn’t. US targets aren’t “soft” in the sense that Iran fears the IDF more than the US military from an existential perspective. The main reason Iran never really retaliated in a meaningful way for the Soleimani assassination was the fear that Donald Trump might invade, and in January, Qaani told IRI leaders that Iran was concerned about the prospect of a direct confrontation with the US. Rather, “soft” in the sense that from a “here and now,” “what happens tomorrow if we do XYZ today?” perspective, green-lighting the IRI to attack US personnel in Iraq and Syria carries very little risk compared even to Hezbollah escalations on Israel’s border with Lebanon, to say nothing of an IRGC attack on an Israeli metro area, a non-starter to the extent it’d be met with near instantaneous IDF strikes on every IRGC site Israel can identify inside Iran, which is to say all of them.

That asymmetry’s a problem for the White House. Netanyahu effectively has carte blanche to target the IRGC indiscriminately. The situation on the border with Lebanon is a “last straw” scenario: One more big Hezbollah volley and Israel may well invade. Hezbollah (and we’re talking about “main” Hezbollah here, not Kataib Hezbollah) says it’s prepared, and history shows the group’s more than capable of holding its own, but Iran would probably rather that not happen. And Hamas can’t respond on Iran’s behalf — they’re indisposed at the moment, holed up (figuratively and literally) in Rafah.

The risk, then, from events like Monday’s strikes against the Iranian consulate in Syria, are borne by US personnel in Iraq. (And by anyone suicidal enough to sail through the Red Sea.) As the same AP article put it, “if Netanyahu’s recent broadening of targeted strikes on adversaries around the region to include Iranian security operatives and leaders deepens regional hostilities, it’s not clear the United States can avoid being pulled into deeper regional conflict as well.”

This comes as the Biden White House spent every day this week trying to explain why the Pentagon continues to support Netanyahu’s war effort after Israel killed seven food volunteers trying to deliver meals in Gaza. Chef José Andrés, who runs the World Central Kitchen charity, told Reuters that in his opinion, the incident wasn’t an accident.

“This was not just a bad luck situation where, ‘Oops, we dropped a bomb in the wrong place,'” Andrés said. “It’s very clear who we are and what we do. They were targeting us in a deconflicting zone, in an area controlled by IDF. They, knowing that it was our teams moving on that road… with three cars [targeted us] systematically, car by car.” Andrés effectively accused Israel of cold-blooded murder.

Israel says that’s completely untrue and that the whole thing was an unfortunate accident. It was unfortunate, that’s for sure. And unfortunately for Israel, the dead weren’t “just” Gazans this time. The IDF killed three British citizens, a Pole, an Australian and a Canadian-American dual national. So, a handful of white people. Israel killed some white people. Of course, those white people knew where they were, and they knew it was dangerous. That’s why the distinction between “killed” and “murdered” matters so much. If the IDF murdered six white people… well, that’d be a problem.

But let’s face it: Netanyahu’s a problem in general. Increasingly, it’s necessary to delineate between his government and Israel itself. There’s the “Netanyahu government” and then there’s Israel. When that becomes necessary, it’s typically a sign that a given government, or a given leader, is seen by the international community as a pariah, an autocrat or something worse. That’s where we are with Netanyahu. It’s not a big leap from there to the “Netanyahu regime.”

Israel knows that. It’s not lost on Israelis that their leader’s unhinged and leaning in the direction of authoritarianism. Benny Gantz is trying to intervene before it’s too late. This week, he called for elections in September. “The Israeli public needs to know that we will soon ask for their trust,” he said.

Part of that’s just opportunism. The Israeli electorate’s sick and tired of Netanyahu and Gantz’s polling lead is commensurately large. But he’s right: Netanyahu’s dangerous. That’s not exactly new, and it’s certainly not news (with an “s”), but it seems to be getting worse, which is to say he seems to be getting more dangerous all the time. More dangerous for Israel. More dangerous for the world. And to my point here, more dangerous for the US.

America’s national security interests aren’t served by Netanyahu’s approach to the war in Gaza, nor by his increasingly reckless (if admittedly justifiable in some respects) strikes against uniformed Iranian officials. I realize reader opinions vary widely on the war in Gaza, but the fact is, the international community doesn’t support it. Or at least not as it’s being conducted currently.

Bottom line: Netanyahu isn’t making anybody safer. Just the opposite. The US should make additional military aid and funding contingent on early elections in Israel.

In the same Reuters interview mentioned above, Andrés, the celebrity chef, said, “It’s very complicated to understand: America is going to be sending its Navy and its military to do humanitarian work, but at the same time weapons provided by America are killing civilians.”