The Middle East is currently aflame, thanks to the willed ignorance of the Biden administration.
Ignorance on display in President Biden’s pathetic “I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East” remarks Tuesday after a drone attack killed three American soldiers in Jordan over the weekend.
From his first days in office, Biden sought to pivot away from the Mideast, withdrawing crucial military and intelligence resources and ceding ever more ground to Iran.
The result: Iran and its proxy armies are now engaged in open warfare against US interests, for which Biden still refuses to properly hold Tehran responsible.
The idea — which Biden’s old boss Barack Obama shared — was that an ascendant Iran would somehow “balance” the region, obviating the need for US involvement.
And for years, Biden & Co. deluded themselves into believing it had worked.
Witness National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s now-infamous essay in Foreign Affairs claiming that the Biden team had “de-escalated crises in Gaza,” making the Middle East “quieter than it has been for decades” with its “disciplined” approach that “reduces the risk of new Middle Eastern conflict.”
Days later came Oct. 7, destroying Sullivan’s absurd claims — which he then scrubbed from the piece, but without any changes in the policies now exposed as utter failures.
In the pursuit of his dangerous dream, Biden has shown willing to pay any price: bribing Tehran for the return of American hostages; rushing to aid the mullahs as they move ever closer to nuclear breakout; allowing Iran’s militias to assault our assets with zero deterrence.
All in the name of refusing to see the reality plainly confronting him.
Namely, that the Middle East remains a vital theater in our global contest: Its centrality to energy markets, and its role as a birthplace of worldwide political instability, mean we must remain focused on it — withdrawing and letting Iran run things is not an option.
Even setting aside the fact that the Islamic Republic’s very DNA is viciously anti-American: We’re the “Great Satan” to Tehran.
Donald Trump, no interventionist, understood that to the core.
Witness his killing of Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani and his diplomatic success with the Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain.
Successful action in the region depends on abandoning fantasies of day-after-tomorrow liberal democracy for the Arab states, constraining Iran and deepening ties with our actual allies.
Because reality is re-asserting itself, make no mistake.
“I’ve spent a long time in the Middle East, and part of me wants to forget it, too. That’s not the way it is,” one Trump administration senior official put it. Biden and his team “ignored it. And now they are paying the price.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
