Joe Biden’s cowardly, appeasement-oriented strategy in the Middle East has now gotten Americans officially killed.
It was only a matter of time until this happened. Iranian proxy forces have been attacking Americans all over the Middle East, from Iraq to Syria and now to Jordan. U.S. officials reported three U.S. service members were killed; at least 34 were injured in an Iran-backed militia drone strike on a base in northeast Jordan, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Now, that is a bit of a difference in kind from attacks in Iraq or Syria. Those are both countries but they are not officially U.S. allies. Jordan is officially an American ally.
So this would be an attack by an Iranian proxy force into an American allied space on Americans. The strike carried out by a one-way attack drone signals an escalation in fighting in the region.
The president and secretary of defense did put out a statement suggesting retaliation. President Biden’s statement was this: “Today, America’s heart is heavy. Last night, three U.S. service members were killed—and many wounded—during an unmanned aerial drone attack on our forces stationed in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border. While we are still gathering the facts of the attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.”
And then there was language about grieving for the fallen service members and how wonderful the soldiers are, all of which is true.
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But — if Biden had not spent every day since October 7 trying to make nice with Iran, demonstrating that his true interest in the Middle East has nothing to do with American interests but to do with his electoral interests, this would not have happened.
Here’s the very simple math in the Middle East: If you do not punch terrorists directly in the mouth incredibly hard and incredibly often, then they get more aggressive with you. And when you show your neck, they attack.
Biden has been showing his neck well before October 7. He started showing his neck in the Middle East when he took the Houthis off the terrorist watch list, started appeasing the Palestinian Authority, and reoriented away from the alliance-driven model that President Trump had embraced with the Abraham Accords model, which brought a lot of Sunni Arab countries into the fold, ranging from Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Morocco to Egypt and Jordan.
Biden decided to move away from that and, instead, seek the Barack Obamaesque idiocy of trying to pursue a deal with Iran. When you do that, you conclude by appeasing the largest terror sponsor in the region.
Naturally, as the doors began to close around the Middle East to Iran, Iran started to buck against that, and they started to use their terror proxies to upend the burgeoning relationships in the Middle East, as a way of scuttling any possibility of the broadening of the Abraham Accords to directly include Saudi Arabia.
That is why October 7 happened. Hamas was given a green light to attack Israel by Iran. Then Hezbollah, an Iranian terror group, was given the green light to attack Israel in the north. Then the Houthis were given the green light to attack shipping in the Red Sea. And at every turn, Biden made clear he was not going to hit them hard enough to make them stop.
The reason is because Biden is much more fearful of war with Iran than Iran is fearful of war with the United States.
Now, no one wants war with Iran. No one is interested in war with Iran. But if it comes down to it, who do you think has more to fear: Iran from going to war with the United States or the United States from going to war with Iran?
It’s not something I’m calling for; I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t think anyone in their right mind thinks that is a good idea. No one wants to spend blood or treasure on it, and that is correct.
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But containment can and should be pursued. Containment is a policy of deterrence that is applied in various regions surrounding Iran. You don’t have to go to war directly with Iran to secure shipping in the Red Sea, which is deeply necessary considering the container shipments now cost twice what they used to and everyone is now routing around the Cape of Good Hope instead of through the Red Sea. Oil is getting more expensive because of all of this.
Suggesting that Israel be supplied the munitions that it requires in order to take out the Iranian proxy Hamas and to deter or take out the Iranian proxy Hezbollah in the north has nothing to do with America going directly to war. When Americans get killed, the proper response to that is to make sure the other side of the “F around and find out” equation actually applies. That does not mean you have to directly attack Iran; it doesn’t mean you’re going to have F-22s flying over Tehran.
There are ways the United States can apply force in the face of the deaths of Americans that actually establish deterrence. If you’re not going to do that, you shouldn’t have troops there. It’s that simple.
If you think that the United States should completely pull out of the region and have no troops there at all — which I believe is a specious argument, considering the United States does have deep and abiding reasons to care about the Middle East, ranging from oil supply to shipping strategy to democracy — the fact remains that if U.S. troops are there, you have to protect them. It is immoral and wrong not to protect them.
And Biden has been in the business of trying to appease the people who have killed thousands of Americans since the day he took office.
He’s been in a delusional state about Iran, the same delusional state embraced by Barack Obama. And that led to the rise of Iranian power throughout the Middle East.
Donald Trump contained it. Donald Trump hampered the Iranians. Donald Trump put in place some of the strictest sanctions in world history. He impoverished the Iranian regime. He boxed them in with the Abraham Accords and they knew it.
What they also knew is that if they screwed around with the United States under Donald Trump, he might punch them in the mouth. That was an excellent and effective foreign policy.
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But Biden, just as he did with the border, decided to destroy that foreign policy because it had a big gold Trump sign on it. Anything associated with Trump had to be destroyed no matter how good the policy was.
Biden inherited a working border policy. He also inherited a working Middle East, which would have been considered impossible before Trump.
And he decided to destroy both of them.
Biden has basically said to the Iranians, “Guys, as long as you don’t go to full-scale war, you can do whatever you want, whenever you want. You can kill Americans, keep it relatively low-level; I’ll keep it relatively low-level, and everything will be fine until I get my reelection.”