Joined: 10-21-2000 Posts: 55,498 |
Was Bidenâs Speech as Pro-Israel as You Think? No. Because it was missing the only word that matters.
There is only one word that mattered in President Joe Bidenâs remarks on the terrorist attack on Israelâand it was a word he didnât say.
For those who care about actual U.S. policy rather than feel-good schmaltz, the point of Bidenâs speech was not the oft-repeated dubious anecdote about meeting with Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War. Nor was it Bidenâs rich declarations about how he was raised in synagoguesâalong with being raised in Puerto Rican communities and growing up in Black churches. Rather, the entire speech was centered around the absence of one word: Iran.
Bidenâs glaring omission of Iran, the chief sponsor, funder, and weapons supplier of Hamas, and the intended beneficiary of its monstrous suicide attack, was an affirmation that his administrationâs policies remain unchanged after a weekend of unprecedented horror in Israel. Namely, Biden still fully intends to continue providing cover for the Iranian regime, to whom he released $16 billion of held funds before the attackâin addition to the tens of billions more that the administration has gifted Iran by not enforcing sanctions on its oil sales.
Instead, the administration has rather bizarrely been expending all its diplomatic capital since the attack to avoid connecting Iran in any way to a massacre perpetrated by a terror group that Iran clearly funds, arms, trains and directs. The administration has expended particularly large amounts of energy responding to an inconvenient Wall Street Journal article that reported that the Iranians planned the attack in the joint operations room they have established in Lebanon (the existence of which Hezbollah media had announced in 2021 after the last Gaza war).
Responding to the Journal article, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the press that they have absolutely no âconfirmationââzero, noneâto back up the claim of Iranian foreknowledge, planning, or help in directing this particular attack. Yet in nearly the same breath, Sullivan called Iran âcomplicitâ in Hamasâ attack. âThey have provided the lionâs share of the funding for the military wing of Hamas. They provide training, they have provided capabilities, they have provided support, and they have had engagement in contact with Hamas over the years and years.â Come again? NSC spokesman John Kirby then added that there was nothing that suggests the Iranians were âwitting, involved in the planning, or involved in the resourcing and the training that went into this very complex set of attacks over the weekend.â
Bidenâs address was actually the second statement the administration put out that deliberately avoided mentioning Iran. On Monday, the U.S. released a joint statement with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, which not only avoided to mention Iran by name (never mind holding it responsible) but also made sure to include the administrationâs term of art for its pro-Iran policy: âintegration.â That is, the moral of the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was that Iran and its regional assets like Hezbollah must continue to be âintegratedâ into the American regional architecture by forcing them down the throats of old allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia. They should not only âshare the neighborhoodâ with those who seek their destruction, but they must prop up the polities these terrorists control.
What we heard in Bidenâs speech, therefore, wasnât the most moving articulation of the longstanding American alliance with Israel ever in human history, as a deluge of pro-administration propagandists rather stridently insisted. Rather, what we heard was the deliberate obfuscation of a reality that is plain, stark, and staring everyone in the face.
Bidenâs glaring omission of Iran, the chief sponsor, funder, and weapons supplier of Hamas, and the intended beneficiary of its monstrous suicide attack, was an affirmation that his administrationâs policies remain unchanged.
The reason the word âIranâ canât be mentioned in public by the White House is that the Hamas massacre on Saturday is the direct product of a decade of U.S. regional policy directed at funding and reinforcing and strengthening a terrorist and terror-sponsoring regime in Tehran. Itâs a vision built on a realignment of U.S. interests with this regime, to be cemented with gifting them a nuclear bomb. Itâs a statement of ongoing commitment to this policy, which explains a comment made by a senior administration official in a briefing with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he spoke of âfuture initiativesâ with Iran that the administration doesnât want to see jeopardized. In other words, the administrationâs priority is to ensure that none of the ugly business in Israel on Saturday is allowed to interfere with âfuture initiativesâ with the mullahs.
Well, take a good look. What happened on Saturday is so ugly in part because thatâs what the administrationâs Iran policy looks like. Yes, the pictures, videos, and recorded voice calls are distastefully harrowing to some. But thatâs the policyâwhich is often referred to as Barack Obamaâs âlegacyâ or âsignature initiative.â The policy is that Iran must be allowed a free hand to conduct its massacres through its regional Jew-hating proxies, while being given de facto immunity by the United States from Israeli retribution.
But wait, didnât Biden say, as he again told American Jewish community leaders yesterday, that his administration was âenhancingâ the U.S. posture by sending a U.S. carrier fleet to the eastern Mediterranean, which a senior defense official explained was sent to serve as âa deterrent signalâ (whatever that means) to Iran and Hezbollah? Didnât he say that sending the ship made it âvery clearâ to the Iranians to âbe carefulâ?
So what do you suppose that aircraft carrier means? We already know, because Jake Sullivan said so explicitly, that the USS Gerald Ford is not in the region to strike Hamas. Itâs there to ensure, as one administration official after another has said, that the war doesnât expand to other fronts. But Hezbollah has spent days launching and orchestrating attacks from south Lebanon. Did they miss the âdeterrent signalâ? On the contrary. They understood exactly what it means, and to whom itâs intended: Israel is being deterred by the United States from striking them.
Senior administration officials told CNN that they âdo not believe at this point that Hezbollah is likely to join Hamasâ war in force against Israel.â They also âthink the warnings are having an impact even though there has been some escalation on the border.â So, Hezbollah will continue to use Lebanon as a launching pad against Israel, but not âin force.â Sure, there will be âsome escalation,â but Israel will need to absorb those attacks, in order to âavoid igniting a larger regional warââwith Iran.
In other words, what the U.S. is signaling is Iran and Hezbollahâs preferred scenario: cost-free attacks from south Lebanon without fear of devastating Israeli retaliation. The U.S. carrier group, in other words, is there to ensure Israel does not attack Iran or Hezbollah, even if it wanted to. Integrate. Donât escalate.
Israel just suffered the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. It cannot afford to indulge in wishful thinking and fanciful readings of the U.S. strategic posture. Nor should it misread the vociferous statements of condemnations of Hamas as support for Israel, except insofar as it is willing to accept its new regional status as a punching bag for Iran.
After two days of radio silence, the architect of Americaâs Iran policy, Barack Obama, finally offered a single tweet.
All Americans should be horrified and outraged by the brazen terrorist attacks on Israel and the slaughter of innocent civilians. We grieve for those who died, pray for the safe return of those whoâve been held hostage, and stand squarely alongside our ally, Israel, as it dismantles Hamas. As we support Israelâs right to defend itself against terror, we must keep striving for a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Apparently, terrorists who kill 1,200 people in their homes and at a music festival is not the kind of thing you comment on at once. It takes a good 48 hours to think it through. That was the message.
Yet the text of Obamaâs tweet is not entirely unimportant. It clarifies the point of American policy, which is to compel Israel to focus on Hamas in isolation, and not attempt to climb the escalation ladder against Americaâs preferred Middle Eastern partner. Yes, go ahead, âdismantle Hamas.â The trap is already set, as evidenced in Bidenâs speech and in the âadviceâ of the deputy national security council adviser, Jon Finer, who reminded Benjamin Netanyahu of the need to act according to the rule of law. âWe uphold the laws of war. It matters.â
Israeli retaliation was built into both the Iranian war plan and Obamaâs info op. In other words, Israel is being encouraged to retaliate against Hamasâat which point it will be duly roasted for killing civilians. Release your anger, Luke. But whatever you do, donât hit the Iranians.
This dichotomy is an important article of faith for Team Obama-Biden, and is in clear contrast to the policies of President Trump, who ended the fictional distinctions between Iran and its terror tentacles in the region. Trumpâs regional policy was based on backing Israel and the Gulf states against Iran. By contrast, the current policy, disguised with florid promises about âhaving Israelâs back,â is designed precisely to protect Iran while it dismembers Americaâs alliesâquite literally.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/was-bidens-speech-as-pro-israel-as-you-thinkJOhnKErry has a penchant for meeting with Iranians...anybody see him lately?
|
