OPINION:
Iran is asserting its dominance over the Middle East. From its covert prosecution of a proxy war on Israel to its fomenting of violent protests in Western capitals, the Islamic Republic’s achievements are made possible by President Biden’s reluctance to trace the strife to its obvious source. His failure to resist Iran’s momentum will prove costly over time.
While the president admirably has lent Israel material and moral support in its six-week-old battle against the invasive forces of Hamas, he has shown little resolve in standing up to the recent surge of youthful pro-Palestine protesters flooding city streets across the nation to recite Iran’s Israel-annihilating curse, “From the river to the sea.”
Informed Westerners understand Iran is the ideological and financial engine enabling Hamas’ occupation of Gaza and its periodic attacks on the Jewish state. It is only the ill-informed, raised with the privilege of freedom, who turn out to rally in support of the Iranian-sponsored Palestinian liberation movement that despises them. Sadly, those cohorts number in the millions.
The corrosive effects of the mass demonstrations are weakening whatever feeble resolve the Biden administration once had. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently conceded that “far too many Palestinians have been killed.” Like loud calls from Hamas apologists for a “cease-fire,” the assertion glosses over the damning fact that no Palestinian — or Israeli — lives would have been lost if Hamas hadn’t landed the deadly sucker punch that started the war.
Rhetorical concessions are part and parcel with the president’s hesitancy in responding to a rising crescendo of rocket and drone attacks on American forces across the region. As of Friday, U.S. bases in Syria and Iraq had suffered 61 attacks by Iran-proxy forces since the Oct. 7 invasion of Israel. At least 60 U.S. personnel have been injured.
In response, Mr. Biden has ordered warships and aircraft to the region. The U.S. has only dispatched three retaliatory air sorties so far. Taken with the president’s decision last week to reward Iran with a $10 billion sanctions waiver extension, the mullahs can only conclude that it pays to strike the red, white and blue.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported recently that the International Atomic Energy Agency has evidence Iran has produced enough enriched uranium that, once fully refined to weapons-grade, could make three nuclear bombs. Given his pin-prick response to Iran’s proxy attacks on Americans, Mr. Biden is behaving as though he fears the regime is already armed with the doomsday weapons.
To be fair, it is not Mr. Biden, but former President Barack Obama, who set the mood of naivete toward Tehran’s aggression. Mr. Obama successfully crusaded for the now-moribund 2015 Iran nuclear deal, convincing Western powers to tolerate the mullahcracy’s sly, nuke-development scheme. After witnessing a decade of Iranian deception, Mr. Biden should know better than to coddle terrorism’s champion.
Reasonable Americans mustn’t crave a widening of war in the Middle East. But neither should they stand for Iran’s efforts to propagandize the West, destroy Israel and repress the Middle East.
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