In an interview on Sunday with NBC News, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken was questioned about President Joe Biden’s recent threat to withhold offensive weaponry from Israel in the event of an all-out assault on Rafah, the city in the southern Gaza Strip where more than 1.4 Palestinians are sheltering.

When asked by the interviewer what exactly Biden’s “red line” is and “what would trigger him to say, ‘I am now withholding weapons,’” Blinken responded: “Look, we don’t talk about red lines when it comes to Israel.”

This was a curious statement, to say the least, since Biden himself has talked about red lines when it comes to Israel. During an interview with CNN last week, the president laid out the latest red line with characteristic eloquence: “I made it clear that if they [the Israelis] go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem.”

Clear, indeed.

Clarity, it turns out, was also an ostensible aim of Blinken’s NBC intervention – and, after announcing “Let me be clear”, the secretary went on to explain that “what the president said is that if Israel goes in with a major military operation in Rafah, in that case, there are certain systems that we will not provide to Israel that would aid in – aid that effort.”

In other words, perhaps, a red line.

But........

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