History will record Biden’s obsessive efforts to negotiate with the ayatollahs as one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds

The Middle East is tense, with Iran considering its response to Israel’s April 1 elimination of high-ranking Quds Force officers, and a possibly decisive Israeli attack in Rafah against Hamas terrorists pending. Commentary reverberates with worries about “escalation” and “wider war”, as if Hamas’s October 7 barbarity was not escalation enough, or Iran’s mandate to Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraq’s Shia militias thereafter is not already a wider war. 

Tehran’s ayatollahs have two overarching objectives: hegemony in the region and hegemony within Islam. Under its publicly declared “ring of fire” strategy, the brainchild of now-deceased Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, Iran is now assaulting Israel. The “ring of fire” embodies Iran’s indirect efforts through belligerent terrorist proxies, combined with its own military forces, against Israel (and, not often mentioned, against Gulf Arab states). 

Israel’s pounding of Hamas means things are not going well for Iran, but the decisive strategic decisions, in both Jerusalem and Tehran, still lie ahead. 

Most likely to occur first, and strategically more important, is Iran’s answer to Israel’s strike against its Damascus embassy. Whether embassy territory is “sovereign” varies, but international conventions provide that diplomatic premises are “inviolable,” at least to the receiving state. Common sense, however, tells us that, like churches or hospitals, diplomatic premises lose any protected status if used for military purposes, and it is clear that Iran’s Damascus embassy is essentially a Quds force headquarters. 

Nonetheless, Israel has unmistakably challenged Iran, much like America’s early exit for Soleimani in 2020. The stakes for both Israel and Iran are enormous. If Tehran’s riposte to Jerusalem is perceived as weak or ineffective, it risks losing sway over its terrorist surrogates and others, dismayed by the ayatollahs’ unwillingness to risk additional harm to Iran while still leaving them in mortal peril. 

Alternatively, significant, direct Iranian retaliation could impel Israel to strike Iran itself. Or, if Iran acts indirectly through a proxy such as Hezbollah, Israel would feel justified in seeking to cripple Hezbollah, as its Gaza operation seeks to cripple Hamas. There is no doubt Hezbollah is the A-team of Iran’s terrorist proxies and the greater military threat to Israel. 

Whether Israel is prepared to fight a two-front war its government must decide, and there is no doubt that decision is now squarely presented. 

Appropriately or not, however, commentators and politicians have focused since April 1 not on Damascus, but on Israel’s mistaken attack in Gaza on a humanitarian organisation’s convoy. This emotional response has objectively benefited Hamas by again delaying Israel’s offensive against the terrorist group in Rafah; resurrecting calls for an immediate, unconditional cease-fire (ie, unlinked to releasing Israel’s Hamas-held hostages); and compounding Israel’s domestic and international political difficulties. 

The Biden administration has significantly contributed to Israel’s isolation, as its distaste for Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu becomes ever-more evident. The White House has now twisted itself into a pretzel, largely because it fears the Democratic Party’s Left-wing threat to withhold support this November in a close, hard-fought election. Sensing Biden’s political vulnerability, these progressives are amping up efforts to restrict or prohibit additional arms sales to Israel, potentially crippling Jerusalem’s ability to exercise its right of self-defence. 

For those worried about Republican isolationism threatening Ukraine aid, Democratic unwillingness to support Israel should provide no comfort about America’s role in the wider world. 

Biden’s unwillingness these past six months to recognise Iran as the central actor in the Middle East’s ongoing terrorist aggression has already materially damaged America’s support for Israel. History will record his administration’s obsessive efforts to negotiate with the ayatollahs as one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds in politico-military affairs. 

Biden is equally unable or unwilling to recognise that the real criminal in Gaza is Hamas, cynically abusing its own supporters and Gazans generally, not merely as human shields, but as cannon fodder to protect themselves, a war crime if there ever was one. 

The consequences of Biden’s weakness, and indecisiveness in Israel, are serious and lasting. Israel has for too long delayed the Rafah offensive. Further delay will only increase domestic and international complaining and second-guessing, without reaping the benefits of destroying the remainder of Hamas’s organised combat capabilities and seizing full control of Hamas’s massive tunnel system under Gaza. 

Mopping up residual Hamas guerrilla/terrorist activities will be time-consuming, but dismantling it means Israel is freer and less at risk if it must confront Hezbollah full on. Or confronting Iran and its nuclear-weapons programme now, before Iran has a reliable deliverable capacity. 

Israel should finish the job of destroying Hamas’s military and political organisations soonest. Also soonest, the United States and Europe should declare openly that Iran is the real threat to peace and security in the Middle East, and act accordingly. The fastest way to end the ongoing conflict is to defeat the aggressor.

This article was first published in The Telegraph on April 11, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Humiliation in international affairs comes in many forms, often unexpectedly. It buried President Joe Biden on Friday, piling mortification onto his administration’s foreign policy cowardice.

First, the White House effectively abandoned Israel by sponsoring a Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate and sustained cease-fire” in Gaza. Then, unforeseen Russian and Chinese vetoes, cast almost for the fun of it, slapped America in the face. U.S. media, unfamiliar with U.N. performance art, has not fully appreciated the extent of Friday’s diplomatic reverses, although Biden added to his own problems on Monday by not vetoing yet another anti-Israel cease-fire resolution.

After weeks of negotiating one textual retreat after another, the U.S. draft resolution’s final, critical language was that the Security Council “determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire,” and that “towards that end, unequivocally supports ongoing international diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.”

Previously, Washington vetoed three proposals not directly linking a cease-fire to freeing hostages and because council action could have derailed talks to reach a hostages-for-ceasefire deal. Washington had also circulated draft resolutions embodying this linkage, thus differing significantly from what Moscow and Beijing vetoed. One prior text reportedly expressed council “support for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as soon as practical, based on the formula of all hostages being released” and also “lifting all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale” in Gaza. Importantly, these earlier U.S. drafts had also called for a cease-fire “as soon as practical,” a far cry from “immediate,” which is now a concession almost impossible to reverse.

This time, however, the White House itself disconnected hostages from the cease-fire, albeit ambiguously, in a vain effort to bridge what is for Israel (and should have been for Biden’s negotiators) an unbridgeable gap. So clear was the priority to get agreement regardless of cost that one American diplomat conceded on Thursday that the U.S. draft was written for other countries to “read into it what they need to” to support it.

This is the kind of weakness that invites humiliation, which is precisely what happened. Ironically, it was Russian U.N. Ambassador Vasily Nabenzia who understood the domestic U.S. politics behind Washington’s motivation. He called the text “a diluted formulation” aimed to “play to voters and throw them a bone in the form of some kind of a mention of a cease-fire in Gaza.”

Europeans quickly took credit for shifting the U.S. view, foreshadowing new resolutions even more at variance with the administration’s initial post-Oct. 7 approach. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo boasted, “gradually other countries joined our position and the fact that the U.S. have adopted [it] too played a part.” French President Emmanuel Macron was even more explicit about Washington’s shift: “What’s important to note is that the United States has changed its position, and shown its will to defend, very clearly now, a cease-fire. For a long time, the Americans were reticent. That reticence is now gone.”

Indeed, on Monday, the U.S. abstained on the latest anti-Israel resolution, thereby allowing its adoption by all 14 other Security Council members. So doing will only strain Washington-Jerusalem relations even further, to the disadvantage of both.

However, Israel’s next moves to finish off Hamas are the real issue. There, Friday brought Biden more humiliation. Meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu unreservedly rejected postponing or canceling Israeli military action. Acknowledging Biden’s earlier support, Netanyahu declared, “but I also told him that we don’t have a way to defeat Hamas without going into Rafah, and eliminating the remaining battalions there. And I told him that I hope that we will do it with America’s support, but if we need, we will do it alone.”

The critical question is whether Biden agrees that Israel’s legitimate right of self-defense includes its clearly-stated objective of eliminating Hamas’s military and political capabilities. Fully backed by Iran, Hamas has barbarically precipitated Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Having endangered its own civilians, Hamas hopes to save itself from destruction by persuading others to prevent an Israeli victory. If Biden’s ongoing intellectual confusion prevails, enabling Hamas to assert such a “terrorist veto” over legitimate self-defense, Israel will be permanently weakened. So too will global anti-terrorism efforts, with fatal consequences for even more innocent victims. America should flatly reject the concept of a “terrorist veto.”

Biden’s declining support for Israeli self-defense is intimately tied to his failing effort (so far) to topple Netanyahu’s government. Ironically, hoping that ousting Netanyahu will solve the Israel “problem” reveals Biden’s fundamental misreading of Israeli politics, which are always complex, especially now. Whatever Netanyahu’s personal approval ratings, his war cabinet, which includes several prominent political rivals, faces no substantial dissent from its anti-Hamas military objectives. In fact, by attacking Netanyahu, Biden has likely strengthened him through a backlash against outside interference.

Israel’s attack on Hamas in Rafah could come at any moment, and victory there could be a decisive turning point in the struggle against the ultimate aggressor: Iran. This is not the time for the United States to show weakness, especially at the U.N.

Jerusalem is following Winston Churchill’s insight, “without victory, there is no survival.” Washington should concur.

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019 and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006. He held senior State Department posts in 1981-83, 1989-93 and 2001-2005.

This article was first published in The Hill on March 26, 2024. Click here to read the original article.