When it comes to the Mideast, American weakness invites aggression

Oct. 13, 2024

By: Joseph Puder

The perception of the Carter administration as weak emboldened Iran to invade the U.S. embassy. A similar perception of the Biden-Harris administration led Hamas to invade Israel.

In November 1979, Iranian “students,” inspired or directed by Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. A weak American administration under President Jimmy Carter emboldened the attackers and resulted in 52 American diplomatic staffers being held as hostages for 444 days. The capture of the embassy amounted to a declaration of war on the United States. Yet the Carter administration betrayed the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, by warning him against a crackdown on the revolutionary demonstrators. Suffering from advanced cancer, the shah was indecisive in his response, enabling the revolutionaries to take the initiative.

Carter’s attempt to rescue the American hostages by launching a military operation that was too limited in scope was an unmitigated disaster.

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The ayatollah’s perception of newly elected President Ronald Reagan a year or so later was of a strong leader who would react forcefully against Iran. Just after Reagan was sworn in, the Islamic Republic released the hostages.

In a similar vein, the weakness of the Biden-Harris administration and its refusal to declare its willingness to use the “military option” against Iran and its proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, convinced the Hamas terrorists that the time was right to launch the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel. They massacred more than 1,200 people and took captive 251 men, women and children as hostages, scores of whom were American citizens. In the aftermath, there were no repercussions against any of the perpetrators.

Iran would not have given Hamas the green light to attack Israel if its leaders had feared a military reaction from the United States. The ayatollahs, eager to prevent any Israeli-Saudi rapprochement and realizing that they were safe from any retaliation or a possible defense alliance led by the United States, sent Hamas the go-ahead.

In both instances, history has shown that weak U.S. administrations worked to encourage attacks.

In the Islamic Mideast, where the cultures respect military strength and despise weakness, the Biden-Harris administration is disrespected. The defensive postures of the Carter administration, then, and the Biden-Harris administration now provide their adversaries with confidence that their actions will not result in an all-out war. They were correct with regard to the Americans, but they failed to gauge the Israeli resolve. 

Israel’s latest attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon have destroyed much of the missile arsenal and the launchers to fire them. The elimination of Hezbollah’s leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah, its supreme leader, and his second-in-command and successor Hashem Safieddine, has sent a clear message to Israel’s adversaries and re-established much of the deterrence it lost on Oct. 7. Simultaneously, the Israel Defense Forces have destroyed Hamas’s command-and-control systems and eradicated of 23 of its roughly 24 battalions in Gaza.  

The United States, being a superpower, should be feared, but Washington eschews winning wars and opts for quiet and a “business as usual” posture, which is eroding its deterrence and respectability.

It has been a year since Hamas took Israelis, Americans and others hostage and into the tunnel dungeons in the Gaza Strip. The Biden-Harris administration has followed Carter’s lackadaisical attitude of using words rather than actions. If Washington had put real pressure on Hamas by warning of direct military actions unless the hostages were released, the reality of today would been vastly different. If it had threatened the leadership of Qatar and Egypt with decisive action, they would have understood that actions have consequences. The United States could have removed its bases from Qatar and relocated them to the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain, which might have prompted the Qatari Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated regime to intervene and achieve real results, especially since Hamas depends on Doha for its monetary survival. Similarly, since Egypt is a major recipient of U.S. military and financial aid, the threat of losing that assistance might have forced Cairo to earnestly compel Hamas to release the hostages. Then again, when it comes to Jewish hostages, it seems that the Biden-Harris team has not been and is still not in a hurry to act.

The Biden-Harris administration has continually pressured Israel to agree to a ceasefire while demanding that Israel allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza—no such demand was made to compel Hamas to allow the International Red Cross to visit and to deliver medicine and food to the hostages. The lack of pressure assures Hamas’s terrorist leadership that the U.S. administration is impotent.

Instead of the Biden-Harris administration denouncing Hamas for using their civilians as human shields and holding them responsible for most of the Palestinian civilian deaths, it is Israel that is blamed for allegedly using excessive force. In fact, in stealing the humanitarian aid, Hamas was able to sell the much-needed goods at inflated rates and use the funds to recruit new fighters.

Appeasement of Iran has only bolstered Iranian aggression. Seeing the Biden-Harris team as weak and indecisive, Iran’s proxies in Iraq and Syria targeted American bases and personnel with impunity. The absence of American retaliation was an embarrassment on the world stage and only reinforced Iran’s perception that Biden-Harris’s America is a “paper tiger.” Any actions taken by Washington were defensive and further encouraged the Islamic Republic, the leading global sponsor of terrorism, to act without fear. They have even attempted to assassinate former president Donald Trump and others on American soil.

Just before Iran’s April 13 massive attack on Israel with 300 drones and missiles, U.S. President Joe Biden pointed a finger at Iran, saying, “Don’t, Don’t,” meaning don’t launch your attack. Its subsequent attack showed the level of disrespect and disregard that the Iranian Islamic Republic has for the Biden-Harris administration. On Oct. 1, Iran attacked Israel once again, this time with 180 ballistic missiles. In the interim, Iran has been accelerating its uranium-enrichment program, with some forecasting breakout within weeks, and Iran has hacked into Trump’s election campaign websites and leaked information to the election headquarters of Vice President Kamala Harris.

This current administration, much like the Carter administration, has failed to understand that “soft power” in the Middle East does not work. Their projection of weakness has invited Iran’s aggression.