Joe Biden’s inadequate response to Iran risks sparking open conflict
Yet another feeble US strike on a weapons warehouse: That’s how President Biden responded to the latest wave of attacks on American bases by Iran.
Tehran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen shot down one of our Reaper drones flying through international airspace; we blew up a weapons facility in Syria.
And that’s all.
As former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “This is anything but a strong response.”
It sends “a message to Tehran that the green light is still on and that we will not have achieved deterrence.”
Indeed: The number of attacks on US assets by Iran and her proxies across Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17 has now reached more than three dozen — and this is our response?
“The president has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel,” said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
That’s plainly false: Biden’s hesitant and insufficient response to this aggression has in fact endangered US personnel across the region.
Recall that at least 21 service members have been hurt in the past weeks by Iran-directed aggression, many severely.
Unless Biden grows a spine, the terrorists and their masters in Tehran will clearly escalate to killing US soldiers (and civilians) outright.
No, the president’s priorities here are political: He wants to avoid offending the pro-terror wing of his own party by being too aggressive against the Islamic State.
It’s the same madness behind his efforts to hold back Israel in its justified counterattack against Hamas after the terror cadre’s Oct. 7 atrocities.
He and his team also clearly have not yet given up on their hope of bringing to ugly fruition Barack Obama’s dream of an ascendant Iran as regional hegemon, with Israel and other US allies like the Saudis cast down.
This defined his foreign policy before the Oct. 7 attacks and continues to define it now — defying every basic tenet of deterrence.
Turning back the Iranian ascent will require kinetic force against Iran’s proxies and the Revolutionary Guard commanders giving them their orders.
As well as raining hellfire down on any and every piece of local infrastructure Tehran’s paramilitaries rely on.
Unless and until Biden proves brave enough to ditch political considerations for strategic ones, the carnage will continue.
