OPINION:
This past weekend highlighted how the Biden administration has traded peace for global chaos. Iran launched a late-night flurry of missiles and drones toward Israel in an overt act of war. The United States was drawn into the battle, with two U.S. destroyers assisting Israel in neutralizing the incoming volley.
This assault was not a surprise. Iran-backed Hamas forces launched the Oct. 7 sucker punch that murdered nearly 1,200 Israelis. Jerusalem responded on an unchecked mission of revenge in the Gaza Strip, leaving behind 30,000 bodies and extracting blood for blood. At the beginning of the month, an Israeli airstrike targeted the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, killing 16 — including the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The mullahcracy had to retaliate with actions made possible, at least in part, by Washington enablers.
The Iran nuclear deal under then-President Barack Obama watered down a restriction on Iran’s development of weapons of the sort used in the bombardment. Foreign policy bureaucrats quietly inserted a 2020 expiration date on the U.N. arms embargo that prevented ballistic missile-related technology transfer to the Islamic Republic. Mr. Obama also shipped $1.7 billion in hard currency to Tehran, a shameful payment rewarding Iran for taking four Americans hostage.
President Biden has resumed the policy of financially placating Iran. In November, the White House waived sanctions to allow Iran to collect $10 billion in frozen assets related to Iraqi electricity payments. That was in addition to the $6 billion in frozen South Korean oil payments he had released earlier. State Department officials claimed at the time that the $16 billion in payoffs could be used only for “humanitarian purposes.”
In a Senate hearing last week, a senior administration official admitted such statements were inaccurate.
“What we’ve seen time and time again from the Iranian regime,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, “is they fail to feed their people, and they put the IRGC first. Any dollar they have will go towards their violent activity before they deal with their people. That’s partially why almost none of the humanitarian money has been used for humanitarian purposes, because they don’t care about getting drugs and food for their people.”
That’s not the only inaccuracy. If we turn the clock back to 2020, it was candidate Joe Biden who suggested that then-President Donald Trump would cause war in the Middle East, saying: “I’m worried he’s going to get us into war with Iran. Unfortunately, I may have been right. There’s a lot at stake in this election.”
Mr. Trump presided over an unprecedented thawing of relations between Middle Eastern nations and Israel. By contrast, Mr. Biden’s weakness and appeasement reversed that progress, leaving us on the edge of a widespread regional conflagration.
A statement from Iran’s mission to the United Nations suggests this limited strike was a face-saving move in response to the Damascus attack. “The matter can be deemed concluded,” the regime tweeted.
Israel wants payback. What happens next depends on whether the Israeli reprisal is tempered by an understanding that all-out conflict in the Middle East serves no one.
Instead of fueling the cycle of violence, the United States should abandon appeasement in favor of the strategy that worked under Mr. Trump: Isolate Tehran from the sources, financial and otherwise, underwriting its global terror operation.
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