{"id":19332,"date":"2024-10-12T12:44:31","date_gmt":"2024-10-12T09:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=19332"},"modified":"2024-12-03T13:12:24","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T11:12:24","slug":"biden-should-tell-israel-weve-got-this-and-bomb-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/biden-should-tell-israel-weve-got-this-and-bomb-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden Should Tell Israel: \u2018We\u2019ve Got This\u2019 and Bomb Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"President Biden has kept warning Israel about \u201cescalating\u201d without realizing that American passivity fuels the conflict.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Israel and a U.S.-led coalition neutralized hundreds of Iranian rockets in mid-April, President Joe Biden advised Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to \u201ctake the win.\u201d\u00a0Now, following another Iranian barrage targeting America\u2019s ally, rather than trying to handcuff Israel, it\u2019s time for America to lead.<\/p>\n

Biden should tell Netanyahu what he should have said last spring: \u201cWe\u2019ve got this.\u201d Instead of relying on Israel to retaliate, America should punish Iran directly.<\/p>\n

Biden should go out with a bang \u2014 by bombing Iran thoughtfully, strategically and, yes, punitively. For years, Iran has been taunting America, defying its warnings against going nuclear, demonizing America and, most recently, fomenting violence against America, its soldiers and its allies.<\/p>\n

Since Oct. 7, President Biden has kept warning Israel about \u201cescalating\u201d without realizing that American passivity fuels the conflict. Had America chastened Iran in April, it probably would have deterred the follow-up attack.<\/p>\n

Certainly now, by acting decisively against this weak dictatorship hated by so many Iranians, America\u2019s messaging against autocratic bullies will send a valuable, overdue message worldwide. It will warn China to respect Taiwan\u2019s sovereignty while showing Iran, its terrorist proxies and other enemies: you mess with our allies, you mess with us.<\/p>\n

Bombing the military centers advancing Iran\u2019s nuclear program \u2014 imposing maximum damage \u2014 then just enough oil fields so that Iranians feel the economic pain America can inflict, and drone factories helping Russians slaughter Ukrainians, Biden could do more for world peace in one night than he has done in three years.<\/p>\n

America has dodged this necessary confrontation with Iran\u2019s theocracy for too long. Iran\u2019s dictators have spent decades threatening \u201cBig Satan,\u201d America, not \u201cjust\u201d Israel, \u201cLittle Satan.\u201d By backing Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran has destabilized the world this year more than most of America\u2019s enemies.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Iranian proxies bombed over 170 American bases, wounded dozens of Americans and killed three American soldiers. Remember their names, since too many American politicians don\u2019t: Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, Specialist Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, and Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23.<\/p>\n

Recently, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken acknowledged that the U.S. has \u201cbeen tracking very intensely for a long time \u2014 an ongoing threat by Iran against a number of senior [American] officials.\u201d
\nSaying \u201cit\u2019s something we take very, very seriously,\u201d is not serious. How many red lines must Iran cross before America takes serious action?<\/p>\n

Surgical bombing would expose Iran as the paper tiger, not the United States. And it\u2019s the perfect opportunity to advance the American policy goal of limiting nuclear proliferation \u2014 preventing this very bad actor from being very emboldened.<\/p>\n

Although Israelis greatly appreciate American munitions and missile shielding, Biden should reinforce America\u2019s partisan tradition of protecting allies proactively. In 1961, John F. Kennedy told Congress: \u201cWe cannot merely state our opposition to totalitarian advance without paying the price of helping those now under the greatest pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy applied insights learned painfully during two World Wars, that democracies must fight for one another when totalitarianism looms \u2014 the earlier the better.<\/p>\n

In 1949, signing the North Atlantic Treaty, Harry Truman called such interconnectedness \u201ca neighborly act.\u201d
\n\u201cWe are like a group of householders, living in the same locality, who decide to express their community of interests by entering into a formal association for their mutual self-protection,\u201d said Truman.<\/p>\n

Like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and other great presidents, Truman understood that war-makers become peace-makers by making war early enough to make true peace.<\/p>\n

As Truman explained, creating \u201ca shield against aggression \u2026.\u00a0 will permit us to get on with the real business of government and society, the business of achieving a fuller and happier life for all our citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter guarantees \u201cthe inherent right of individual or collective self-defense.\u201d\u00a0The vice presidential debate hours after the Iranian barrage showed how both presidential campaigns have sidelined Joe Biden. Donald Trump merited 130 mentions, Kamala Harris 75 and Biden, merely eight mentions \u2014 as Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) targeted the suddenly-renamed \u201cHarris-Biden administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Biden remains president. And now he should feel free to do what\u2019s best for America.<\/p>\n

Bombing Iranian infrastructure, maximizing the warning message to the Mullahs while minimizing the casualties, would stabilize the world. It would improve Biden\u2019s bid to be viewed as the historic game-changing president he always wanted to be.<\/p>\n

And good policy makes good politics: Bold action would boost the Democrats too \u2014 as assertive leaders ready to confront the world\u2019s enemies, rather than wimps whose aversion to flexing America\u2019s muscles proved too encouraging to too many enemies.<\/p>\n

Originally published in The Hill<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Biden has kept warning Israel about \u201cescalating\u201d without realizing that American passivity fuels the conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topics-middle-east","library-op-ed","library-publications"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19819,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19332\/revisions\/19819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}