An 85th Birthday Celebration for Iran’s Supreme Leader
As the United States considers imposing sanctions on one or more Israeli battalions accused of human rights violations during operations in the occupied West Bank, there is much to consider. What emboldened Iran to launch under international law an act of war against Israel? Would anyone be surprised to learn that Iran is nuclear capable? That, according to the WSJ, should help “motivate” President Joe Biden “to abandon his appeasement strategy toward Iran.”
Although President Joe Biden has been looking for restraint in the Middle East, getting it doesn’t remove the menace from Iran’s nuclear program.
In what many experts consider a toast to Israel’s military prowess and will, Iran’s strike on Israel (185 drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles) was an act of war under international law. Iran’s homeland also showed that, despite the presence of the Russian S-300 missile defense system, Israel could hit a target near a nuclear facility,. Happy Birthday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei!
Suicidal, Lawless Measures Threaten Our Nation
Senator Dan Sullivan (AK) in the WSJ asks readers to consider Biden’s policy on Iran:
Under sanctions pressure from the Trump administration, Iranian oil exports in 2020 were at about 200,000 barrels a day, leaving Tehran with about $4 billion in foreign reserves, a small pool relative to the country’s size. In an effort to appease the mullahs, however, the Biden administration hasn’t enforced comprehensive sanctions since 2021. As a result, Iranian oil exports today are at nearly 1.6 million barrels a day and its regime has been enriched by more than $70 billion. Iran uses this windfall in part to fund its terrorist proxies, including the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah. Iranian oil development also allows the regime to deepen its ties with China, which buys about 80% of Iran’s oil exports.
Meantime the Biden administration is doing the reverse at home—weakening America’s domestic energy production by restricting development on two important sites, the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and Alaska’s Ambler Mining District.
… the damage to U.S. national security will be even greater, as the White House announces to our adversaries: We won’t use our resources, but we’ll let you develop yours. No wonder authoritarians are on the march.
In an interview presented in the WSJ, Elliot Kaufman talks with Mark Dubowitz about Tehran’s increasing ability to acquire nuclear weapons. Mr. Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, accuses the Biden administration after 7 October of “disconnecting the dots”. The White House did distance itself from Iran but echoed the line that “Hamas is ISIS.” “It would be more natural, argues Mr. Dubowitz, to say, “Hamas is Iran.”
Getting Rid of the Mantle
But if the focus is on Iran, then the question becomes: What’s your Iran policy? What are you going to do about the head of the octopus?”
After Iran attacked Israel last month, the questions became unavoidable, continues Mr. Kaufman. Mr. Dubowitz has been asking this since 2003, however, when he focused not on Iraq but on Iran sanctions, explains Mr. Kaufman:
(Dubowitz) was the leading U.S. opponent of the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal and worked with the Trump administration on its “maximum pressure” strategy—which, to his disappointment, rarely went beyond sanctions.
Dubowitz says Trump responded well enough but in a technical fashion. Support was limited. He accuses the Biden administration of missing a huge opportunity with the whole Women, Life, Freedom protest movement” sparked by the 2022 murder by Iran’s morality police of 22-year-old Masih Alinejad.
Mr. Dubowitz’s eyes close as he recalls how America stood by while the regime put down the protests: “Before the supreme leader trained, financed and armed Hamas to go rape and torture Israeli women, his thugs had been raping and torturing Iranian women.”
Mr. Dubowitz wants to be in the business of weakening Israel’s enemy. His many conversations with the heads of Israeli agencies result, he says, in blank looks. He wants Israel to be in the business of weakening its enemy.
Luck might still be in play, and the regime may not collapse, continues Mr. Dubowitz. But it is always good to put your enemy on the defense instead of having to play offense.
The Biden administration rejects that. “Its takeaway from the Trump years is that flexing of American muscle leads to Iranian nuclear expansion,” (Dubowitz) says. Yet “almost all of Iran’s nuclear escalation since May 2018,” when Mr. Trump quit the Iran deal, “has occurred since President Biden was elected promising de-escalation.”
Since Mr. Biden stopped enforcing sanctions, Iran’s oil sales have increased tenfold. Tehran isn’t appeased. “Biden’s Plan A, a deal, has failed for three years. The bribes didn’t work. A longer deal didn’t work. A shorter deal didn’t work,” Mr. Dubowitz says, “but there is no Plan B from the administration. Only de-escalation.”
Israel Left to Sort Things Out and Take the Blame
“Fundamentally, the Biden administration doesn’t believe in the use of power against Iran,” Mr. Dubowitz says. “That is why they loathe the Israeli approach, because Israelis, they don’t buy into this sort of CBMs, off-ramps, incentives, deference approach to Iran.”
For years, Israel has argued that this Iranian regime will never be cajoled into abandoning its pursuit of Israel’s destruction. To obtain that goal, Israel is convinced Iran is willing to set the region ablaze and fight to the last Arab.
“In a way, Khamenei did all of us a favor with last weekend’s attack, “Mr. Dubowitz says, “(Khamenei) has reconnected the dots. It turns out that it’s been the Islamic Republic all along. It’s a war between Israel and Iran.”
Will Mr. Biden be able to cover up what has now been exposed?