On October 7th, the world, or at least the part of the world that isn’t anti-Semitic, saw the most monstrous coordinated attack on Israel since the Holocaust in World War II. Anyone with a functioning brain stem knows that the attacks were not carried out just on a whim only with Hamas timing, personnel and materials. People, they have. Components and coordination, they severely lack. Iran is the hidden hand at work here. Without the blessing from Tehran, none of what we saw happens.
The same statement can be made for all of the other proxies of Iran besides Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The amalgam of evil is what makes Iran the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Whether it’s Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Kata’ib Hizballah in Iraq, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and there are more, our foreign policy should be one that calls out the evil for what it is and confront it directly, and destroy it before it eventually comes for us or for our allies. And make no mistake. It will eventually come for us. Even FBI Christopher Wray knows this.
Joe Biden has been about as passive about the need to call out Iran as one can possibly be and still claim to be on the side of Israel in the conflict. Even though the pogrom began on the 7th, it took four days before Joe Biden got his footing and figured out what the policy will be. Here’s what he said from the White House Roosevelt Room.
Don’t. Who is supposed to hear the word “don’t”? It’s unspoken. It’s obviously Iran, but Biden, for some reason, can’t call them out directly, because perhaps that might call into question his foreign policy desires of normalizing relations with Iran, getting back into a nuclear deal with Iran, and how Iranian assets have permeated his White House and Department of Defense in order to help Iran recover from crippling sanctions leveled on them by the Trump administration.
This was on the 11th. Was his warning heeded? Apparently not, because Hamas continued its attacks, Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon continued to ratchet up activities, causing Israelis to flee the border region and get ready for a two-front war.
Did Joe Biden fly to the Middle East to announce what the “Find Out” part of FAFO would be? No. Instead, he announced he was giving $100 million more to the terrorists as humanitarian relief.
The President rinsed and repeated his cryptic warning in an interview on 60 Minutes with Scott Pelley on the 15th.
During this week and a half period, while maintaining the line that there’s no evidence Iran was involved in the attacks, the White House caved on the $6 billion transfer to Iran, re-bottling it back up with Qatar, not because evidence came forward, but because the optics of giving Tehran money while American and Israeli hostages are still being held by a known terror proxy client of Tehran, was deemed to be politically untenable.
But back to Biden’s veiled “Don’t” threat. To bad actors, this is supposed to be interpreted as a red line to Iran, or as close to a red line as an aging, feckless, appeasing shell of a president can say to a country without actually telling that country publicly. But it’s nevertheless, at least in theory, a warning that if you continue down this road, whatever road you may or may not have been proceeding down thus far, continuing down that road will result in us…and this is where it gets a little fuzzy.
Since Biden’s twin “Don’t” statements, what has Iran done? Well, there have been stepped up attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, two places where Iran has proxy terror clients and great influence.
Hezbollah in Lebanon are getting busier.
The Houthis got involved by launching rockets out of Yemen.
Tehran is showing no signs whatsoever of de-escalation. Their proxy states are either launching exploratory strikes to see what response they get, or preparing for war. So how is all this increased aggression and tension around the Middle East being met by the Biden administration? Are they getting ready to show Iran what “Find Out” actually means?
Well, to their credit, they’re deploying the THAAD missile defense system. That’s good. It shows that you at least recognize that they’re not listening to you and your feeble warnings. But that’s a defensive system. What are we considering on the offensive side of the ball?
That’s our Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, who hasn’t been seen or heard much since his last major escapade, the catastrophic failure that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan, repeating the same warning – Don’t.
Iran has already not listening. They didn’t “Don’t” after the warnings. They in fact, “did”. They’ve always done. They’re going to continue to “do”. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. And they’ll continue to “do” so long as this administration is not at all committed to showing them what “don’t” means.
If you as the parent keep telling your kids fighting in the back seat, “Don’t make me pull this car over,” and you never actually do pull the car over and spank the hell out of their backsides a couple times, they’re never going to stop fighting.
The problem with this administration is they have shown zero willingness to back up their words with action, and they’ve shown no evidence that their commitment to Israel is anything more than words to placate the Jewish-American Democratic voting bloc while simultaneously trying not to disaffect the growing Muslim-American Democratic voters.
And never mind the fact that they’ve hollowed out the military to absurdly dangerous levels so that if we were to find ourselves sleepwalked by Joe Biden into a hot war, we might have take more casualties than we should have to bear. And if that weren’t bad enough, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is there primarily to serve as emergency oil supply were a war to break out and our military needed it to fight in an unstable world, has been depleted to less than 17 days’ worth for no other reason than to ease Joe Biden’s economic problems at home. And it hasn’t been refilled, as is legally required.
Joe Biden has left the country in a financial mess, with a weaker military to defend it, with a porous border that has let in countless potential sleeper cell terrorists, undermined our only true ally in the Middle East out of one corner of his mouth while saying he backs them 100% out of the other corner.
He knows who is responsible for all the malign activity in the region, but also knows he’s personally responsible for it metastasizing, so he can’t mention them by name, nor can he do much about it without admitting his policy was an abject failure.
Whenever Ronald Reagan said don’t, bad actors didn’t, because they knew he’d respond with overwhelming force. When Donald Trump said don’t, bad actors had no idea if he would or wouldn’t until Qasem Soleimani took a Hellfire up the tailpipe. Then, they knew Trump would response, and prudence dictated they should wait it out until the next guy.
Joe Biden is the next guy. No bad actor around the world is waiting anymore. And unfortunately, Biden’s hapless Middle East policy isn’t being conducted in a geopolitical vacuum.
Watching everything that is said or unsaid, actions taken or untaken, is Xi Jinping in Beijing. And with each passing “Don’t”, Xi looks at Taiwan as being more and more doable.
