If history is any judge, President Joe Biden’s warning to Iran on Israel will go the way of Barack Obama’s 2012 “red line” warning to Syria’s Bashar al-Asaad to stop using poison gas to kill his opponents.
Nowhere.
And his personal grandstand visit will make little difference.
And that is too bad for the Americans held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, and too late for the Americans already killed by the terrorists who invaded Israel and launched a grisly killing spree.
Like Obama before him, Joe Biden will fold. He will not punish the Iranian terrorist schemers behind it all.
It is not in his nature. He is an appeaser, like Obama, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and their ilk in the Democratic Party.
Back then, Obama vowed that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, fighting forces seeking his ouster, would face military consequences if Assad used chemical weapons against them.
Within a year Assad launched a deadly sarin gas attack on a suburb of Damascus he allegedly thought harbored rebels. Instead, he used sarin gas to kill 1,400 innocent men, women and children, all of whom died ghastly deaths.
What did Obama do? Nothing.
Instead of ordering a military strike on Assad, he backed down. For cover he sought Congress’ blessing for a strike, which he knew he would not get. Case closed.
Now comes Joe Biden who, contrary to all proof, says there is “no clear evidence” that Iran is behind Hamas’ barbaric invasion of Israel. Perhaps the president does not watch television.
Or maybe Biden is waiting for a phone call from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to set him straight.
Biden could probably get more straight information from Khamenei than he is getting from National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
Eight days prior to Hamas’ shocking terrorist attack on Israel, Sullivan said, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”
If that is the information Sullivan gave Biden, one shudders what rubbish he must be pouring into the president’s ears today. Sullivan is Biden’s top advisor on Iran, Israel and the Middle East.
You can blame Sullivan all you want, but he is probably telling Joe Biden what Joe Biden wants to hear. And that is because Biden and the Democratic progressives around him will do just about anything to get Iran back to the negotiating table over a treaty that Donald Trump thrashed.
This includes making Iran oil rich again by suspending Trump-initiated economic sanctions, and by largely ignoring repeated Iranian proxy attacks on U.S. personnel in the region.
If you tie this to Biden’s humiliating and deadly pullout from Afghanistan and his surrender of the U.S. southern border to immigrants, then it is little wonder why the Iranians look upon Biden as a weak.
Included in the millions of illegal immigrants Biden has let into the country, some two million are “getaways,” meaning that nobody knows who they are or where they came from
Still, Sullivan’s advice is probably far less damaging than the advice Biden had been getting on Iran from Rob Malley.
Malley is Biden’s Special Envoy to Iran, who is currently under State Department investigation for allegedly mishandling classified material related to Iran. He was quietly suspended in June and placed on leave. And the State Department is not commenting on the case.
Biden will supply Israel with all the military equipment it needs. But like Obama before him, Biden will seek to ease his way out of the situation without taking any meaningful action against Iran.
Yes, Biden is sending a second carrier strike group — the USS Dwight D, Eisenhower — to join the Gerald R. Ford strike group — to the Mediterranean Sea region and the coast of Israel, but don’t expect it to launch any rockets or land any US Marines to rescue the Americans held hostage by Hamas.
It is more a matter of a show of force, like his trip, to dissuade Iran and its proxies from intensifying its attacks on Israel.
Asked what advice he would give to Iran or any Islamic terrorist or military groups from joining in on the invasion, Biden told “60 Minutes” “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.”
That ought to do it. It is too bad he did not go to Afghanistan, or at least to the southern border.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
