Nicey-nice will not work with Iran

If Joe Biden is not reelected in 2024 — either because he withdraws from the race, or because he is defeated at the ballot box — the chief reason will likely prove to be his open-door policy at the United States southern border, through which over 370,000 illegal immigrants are now pouring every month. Biden began his presidency by rescinding all his predecessor’s executive orders regarding immigration, including the highly effective requirement that asylum-seekers first present their claims abroad prior to entering the United States.

But the manner in which the United States is being yanked around by the Iranian mullahs will be a close second. Nor are the two crises unrelated. The open southern border makes it easy for Iran to bring operatives into the United States. Among the hundreds of thousands of illegals entering the United States monthly are approximately 50,000 from Venezuela, whose Marxist leaders are closely allied with Iran.

FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress three months ago, “As the world’s largest state-sponsor of terrorism, the Iranians, for instance, have directly, or by hiring criminals, mounted assassination attempts against dissidents and high-ranking current and former US government officials, including right here on American soil. And... Hezbollah, Iran’s primary strategic partner, has a history of seeding operatives and infrastructure, obtaining money and weapons, and spying in this country going back years.”

Biden’s poll numbers began to plummet during the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, during which the US abandoned more than 10,000 locals employed by our forces to their fate at the hands of the Taliban and left behind tens of billions of dollars of our most advanced military hardware. And those poll numbers have never rebounded since.

His approach to Iran, however, is Afghanistan on steroids. Though there are strong isolationist tendencies on both the American right and left, even the isolationists, certainly those on the right, do not wish to see America humiliated. And they will be even less happy when the price increases and supply delays sure to be caused by allowing the Iranian-backed Houthis to close the Red Sea to shipping begin to hit hard.

Between Inauguration Day in January 2021 and March 2023, American forces in Iraq and Syria were attacked 78 times by Iranian proxies, the head of US Central Command told Congress. That was nothing compared to the three and a half months since October 7, during which there have been 165 attacks on American forces alone, culminating last week in three US Army servicemen at a border patrol station in Jordan being killed by an Iranian-supplied attack drone.

After nearly a week of delay following that drone attack, American bombers finally hit 85 Iranian-affiliated sites in Iraq and Syria. But only after first alerting Iran to the timing of the American response, and giving them ample time for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders to repair back to Iran. Nellie Bowles, the Free Press’s resident satirist, captured the moment well: “The key to military strategy is to announce it loudly and clearly a week or two ahead of time, that’s what it said in The Art of War, I’m pretty sure.”

Prior to those air strikes, the Biden administration’s initial response was to assure Iran that it did not seek escalation of tensions (Secretary of State Blinken) or view itself as at war with Iran (National Security Council spokesman John Kirby). “The US does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world,” President Biden announced.

To mitigate pressure for a strong American response against Iran, senior administration officials leaked “intelligence findings” that Iran does not have complete authority over its regional allies. Yes, Iran sends its regional proxies, through the IRGC’s Quds Force, money, weapons, and senior military advisors, sets up command-and-control infrastructure, and provides its allies with battlefield intelligence and target selection, but the mullahs may not specifically order each strike by one of its subsidiaries. In the eyes of the administration, then, all the above are not enough of a smoking gun to label Iran a major adversary.