The Biden administration acknowledged Wednesday that the CIA and U.S. military special operations forces were helping Israel locate and track Hamas leaders, an involvement in the Gaza war that goes far beyond what the government has previously disclosed. The revelation follows the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on Wednesday, but also comes after months of White House assurances that U.S. intelligence and special operatives were only involved in retrieving the hostages.

Despite the fact that Sinwar was killed by accident (and not as part of a targeted operation), the Biden administration’s desperation to grab some of the spotlight is a political desire to show success in its decision to support Israel. It also shows an acceptance of one of Israel’s core beliefs about its wars against its enemies in the so-called axis of resistance, which the United States has embraced: that killing leaders eliminates threats and even amounts to victory.

Israel is demanding that Hamas release the hostages and “surrender,” and they are pushing their fantasy and narrative about the importance of Sinwar’s death, which is used to continue the war on Gaza indefinitely. But lost in all the noise is the fact that Washington has consistently lied to the American people.

The United States has ground forces in Israel. The United States is directly involved in Israel’s war on Gaza (and Lebanon) for a year. The United States is an integral part of “Israel’s ability to defend itself against its enemies,” as the administration repeats daily. It is also the guarantor, according to experts, of Israel’s military adventures. All this without much ability or apparent interest in restraining Israel or seeking any real negotiated outcome.

“Shortly after the October 7 massacre, I directed our Special Operations personnel and intelligence professionals to work alongside their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza,” President Biden said in a press release Wednesday after announcing Sinwar’s death. Vice President Harris issued a nearly identical statement.

It is noteworthy that in October of last year, when Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder was asked whether there were American special agents on the ground in Israel, he responded evasively. “We are providing planning and intelligence support to the Israelis, with regard to the recovery of the hostages.” Hostage recovery has been the official line of the administration ever since. Such statements were often accompanied by the reminder that American citizens were among the hostages held by Hamas. For Washington, it was a clever play: Who could oppose the rescue of Americans?

But behind the scenes, the Biden administration has been providing assistance in locating not only Sinwar but also other Hamas leaders (along with more than 50,000 tons of military equipment and materiel). Adopting the same framework of searching for the Palestinian movement’s leaders, similar to the war on terror adopted by the Bush administration after 9/11, runs counter to Biden’s public rhetoric “about the need for Israel to resist the temptation to retaliate.”

When asked on Wednesday whether US special agents had located Sinwar, Ryder declined to elaborate on the White House statement, suggesting that the hostage recovery mission had always been used to track down Hamas leaders.

“I won’t talk about intelligence,” Ryder said. “What I will say is that this was an Israeli operation and that we were exchanging information and intelligence to support the efforts to recover the hostages and track these leaders who were holding hostages, including American hostages. So, to the extent that that helped inform the Israeli operations in general, it certainly played a role.”

“After more than 20 years of hunting al-Qaeda and other terrorists,” officials claim, U.S. intelligence has become increasingly adept at the daunting task, mastering real-time intelligence processing, precise geolocation, and rapid attacks on individuals. Multiple sources have been added to the post-9/11 arsenal, from big data analysis to highly sensitive signals collection. New weapons and drones have been developed. Specialized organizations have been created.

Behind all this is a special access program in a joint CIA-U.S. military cell at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, that directs what it calls the most sensitive “high-value targeting.”

Experts are looking for any clues to the target’s location, a process that is a form of forensic analysis that includes aerial reconnaissance, signals interception, and on-the-ground scouting. The U.S. has provided Israel with similar proficiency, experts say, but the United States has many more tools—from stealthy satellites to sophisticated tracking algorithms—that can cover an area more completely and efficiently. Yet Sinwar was not killed as a result of this device, not after a year of intensive work. Washington is overstating the impact of the massive effort as a means not only of continuing the perpetual war in the Middle East but also of creating an aura of success, an outcome that eludes both Israel and the United States.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday drew parallels between the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, though his death had no resemblance to Israel’s war on Gaza. The United States had been searching for bin Laden for a decade, and while his death served as a vindication of the effort, it came at a time when al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, had already morphed into other organizations. Biden’s praise of those same forces for helping Israel in some ways proves that the war never ended and never will.

Israel may claim that Sinwar’s death marks a turning point, but that, experts say, seems unlikely. While Hamas (and Hezbollah in Lebanon) continue to wage a leaderless war, there is no evidence whatsoever that either group is exhausted or faltering in its efforts.