Iranian-backed militias have attacked American facilities and troops in Syria, Iraq, and Jordan about 170 times.
Ostensibly, these terrorist groups claim they are attacking U.S. forces to force the United States to end its support for Israel and demand a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
In reality, these satellite terrorist attacks, like the 1983 Marine Corps barracks bombing, are directed toward a larger effort by Iran to remove the United States from the Middle East.
Iran would then become a nuclear shield for a new Shiite/Persian axis of terror from Tehran to Damascus, Beirut, the West Bank and Gaza, encircling Israel and destroying the Gulf regime and moderate Gulf states. He will be free to fulfill his old dream of intimidation. Jordan and Egypt made concessions.
These Iranian appendages are making many unfortunately correct assumptions about America in general and the Biden administration in particular.
One is the passivity of watching Chinese reconnaissance balloons cross the U.S. mainland with impunity after the recent series of humiliations on planes from Afghanistan, mixed American cues on the eve of war in Ukraine. , troubled Pentagon recruitment and leadership failures, and the destruction of the U.S. southern border, both Iran and its proxies believe that the U.S. can do little or nothing against their aggression. I feel like I have no intention of doing so.
They say the U.S. military is short of thousands of new recruits and its leadership is politicized, that arms shipments to Ukraine and Israel are depleting munitions, and that large quantities of weapons are being sold in Kabul. We are witnessing abandonment.
Second, they see Joe Biden’s series of appeasement policies as a force multiplier on this perception of American weakness. After his inauguration, the Biden administration begged for a new deal with Iran to rein in the theocracy. It sought to ensure peace by removing the Houthis from the global terrorist designation and transferring hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas and militant Palestinians to buy good deeds.
Biden may have agreed that Iran is the spider at the center of the Middle East Islamic terrorist network, but it will lift the embargo and sanctions to secure a windfall of more than $90 billion in Iranian oil sales revenue. The only purpose was to win Iran over to their side through bribes such as
Mr. Biden gave the go-ahead to pay Iran $6 billion in bribes to return American hostages, thereby ensuring that more hostages would be captured. He loudly distanced himself from the Netanyahu government. The Gulf led militants to believe they could force Israel to accept the Islamic extremist state of the West Bank and Gaza.
Third, after attacking American bases and bases 170 times, with little sustained, let alone disproportionate, response, Iran and its satellites now feel they are winning the proxy war with the United States. ing.
They have all but shut down the Red Sea as an international shipping route, harming Europe, Egypt and Israel, which rely on Red Sea commerce for vital imports and exports.
Iran forced Biden to publicly alienate the Netanyahu government and impose a ceasefire on Israel. And it has helped spark international pro-Hamas protests across Europe and the United States, leaving a timid and submissive left-wing government fearful of losing a close election.
But most harmful are the administration’s spokespeople who utter the same empty script every time they launch a series of attacks. 1) The United States will respond at a time and place of its own choosing. 2) The US has found no direct evidence of Iranian involvement, even though it clearly provided it to the attackers. 3) The US does not want a major war and has no plans to attack Iran itself.
Translated to his enemies, this means that an 80-year-old non-constructivist president is in no position to prevent, much less win, the theater-scale Middle East war that his series of appeasement policies has now all but produced. do.
As National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan pointed out shortly before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Biden and Democrats know that his administration is inheriting deterrence and a quiet Middle East. . And then it exploded on their calm watch.
Now, they fear a theater-scale conflict erupting in an election year—a fact that all of America’s Middle Eastern adversaries know.
Biden and his allies have forgotten the ancient wisdom that only a vocal preparation for peace guarantees war. To prevent war, we must reinstate oil sanctions on Iran, impose a banking embargo, impose travel bans on Iran and its allies, cut off all aid to Hamas and the West Bank, and designate the Houthis as true terrorists. should be restored.
US officials need to stop chatting aimlessly. If the administration must speak, Washington should speak by communicating imbalance and unpredictability. And if America were to attack, it should be done quietly and in a devastating way.
Responding to repeated attacks by simply fighting back proportionately and shouting that you hope a large-scale war does not occur will only ensure a large and ugly war.
Victor Davis Hanson is a historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.