(Official Washington Examiner editorial, Nov. 25) One of President Joe Biden’s most inexcusable foreign policy failings is his refusal to get tough economically against the radical Islamist state of Iran. Congress, rightly, seems on the verge of forcing him to punish the mullahs. It should go ahead and do so.
The president has tried fecklessly to cajole Iran back into former President Barack Obama’s fanciful and dangerous nuclear deal, which always lacked adequate verification. It hardly pressures Iran even to pretend to limit its use of nuclear technology but nevertheless granted the mullahs access to tens of billions of dollars in increased worldwide trade. He agreed to release $6 billion to Iran, although he has, thankfully, been forced to refreeze this in light of Iran’s support for mass murder by Hamas.
Still, on Nov. 14, he waived sanctions in a way that provides Iran with more than $10 billion in revenue from electricity generation. He repeatedly responds to Iranian-backed attacks on U.S. citizens, including service members in the Middle East, with weak, barely tit-for-tat airstrikes against Iranian proxies. Iran’s proxy murdered Americans in Israel on Oct 7. Where is the U.S. response? Biden has also let lapse an international embargo against Iran’s missile and drone programs.
According to Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), “Since President Biden took office, Iran has profited nearly $80 billion from oil sales alone.”
Yet Iran is the major sponsor, to the tune of nearly a billion dollars annually, of all three of the Middle East’s most active terrorist groups, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, all of which are regularly firing missiles at our ally Israel (along with plenteous other deadly mischief). Even before Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, Iranian-backed groups had launched 83 attacks on Americans during the Biden presidency, but our president fired back only four times. Since Oct. 7, Iranian-backed militias have attacked U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq and Syria at least 58 times, wounding at least 59 American military personnel.
Because Biden won’t stand up to Iran voluntarily, a large bipartisan coalition in Congress is trying to force him to do so. …. [The full editorial is at this link.]
