The Biden-Harris administration’s weakness and appeasement is an invitation to terror.
In the span of 24 hours, Israel killed two top terrorists: Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Palestinian Hamas terror organization that was responsible for the massacre, rape, torture and hostage taking of more than 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7; and senior Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr.
Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy terror group in Lebanon.
Shukr was wanted in the U.S. for his role in planning the 1983 Beirut barracks suicide bombing that killed 241 American military personnel, 58 French soldiers and others. A Hezbollah rocket supplied by Iran killed 12 Israeli Druze children playing soccer on July 28.
A few hours before his death in Tehran, Haniyeh participated in the inauguration of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s figurehead president. As is customary with such gatherings, the assembled leaders chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
The escalating violence and chaos in the Middle East can be squarely laid at the feet of the Biden-Harris administration and its enthusiastic appeasement of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxy network in the Middle East — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.
After four years of former President Donald Trump’s maximum pressure campaign, Iran was broke, with no money for terror and no money to advance a nuclear weapons program aimed at the destruction of Israel.
As they did with the southern border and immigration, the Biden-Harris administration reversed all of Trump’s policy successes in the Middle East. As a result, a newly wealthy Iran is flush with dollars to underwrite terror and trouble around the globe.
But lest Americans think that Iran’s designs for Shi’ite Islamic domination are limited to the Middle East, on July 9, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines issued a statement warning: “Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their foreign influence efforts, seeking to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions… We have observed (Iran) providing financial support to protesters.”
In other words, Biden’s top intelligence official verified Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim before a joint session of Congress that America’s pro-Hamas demonstrators — like the ones who vandalized Washington’s Union Station, destroying federal property, burning American flags and hoisting Palestinian flags in their place — were “Iran’s useful idiots.” Vice President Kamala Harris boycotted Netanyahu’s speech, abandoning her presiding role as president of the Senate.
So, with Israel effectively fighting back against enemies who strive to wipe the Jewish state off the face of the Earth, Iran has one main preparatory objective — drive a wedge between America and Israel, choking off U.S. sales and supply of weapons and spare parts to cripple Israel’s ability to defend itself. And in that fight, Iran, and its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — have a clear favorite in the 2024 presidential election: Kamala Harris.
In June, anticipating an unprecedented election season, I worked with the Heritage Foundation to design and lead two academic exercises — election wargames — aimed at forecasting some of what we might see in the runup to Election Day on Nov. 5 and beyond. We gathered 50 experts, including former Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, former high-ranking federal officials, retired military and law enforcement officers, attorneys, journalists and academics in the Transition Integrity Project 2024.
A consistent feature of our findings, which we presented on July 11, were that Iranian-funded violent demonstrations were aimed at shaping public opinion and influencing the U.S. elections.
Unfortunately, as we saw last week in the wake of the pro-Hamas mob violence at D.C.’s Union Station, little is done to stop it and consequences for the perpetrators are weak to nonexistent. The limp responses from Democrat-run cities then invites more violence in a vicious circle. The Democratic convention in Chicago starting August 19 should be interesting.
Further, our exercises foresaw an increased likelihood of terror attacks on the American homeland, aided and abetted by the Biden-Harris administration’s border breakdown that has allowed terror suspects across our border.
Lastly, due to the Biden-Harris administration’s weakness in the face of Iran’s theocratic imperial ambitions, one of our simulations saw Iran conduct an underground test of a nuclear device, announcing to Israel and the world the advent of a fully nuclear Iranian regime thanks to the billions of dollars shoveled to Tehran by the Biden-Harris White House.
We need to understand that Iran will not sit this election out. Iran’s ayatollahs have their favorite in 2024 — and it is not Donald Trump.
Chuck DeVore is Chief National Initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He served in the California State Assembly and is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. He’s the author of “Crisis of the House Never United.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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