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How To Blow Up the Middle East War in Five Easy Steps

When Joe Biden became president, the Middle East was calm. Now it is in the midst of a multifront war.

So quiet was the inheritance from the prior Trump administration that nearly three years later, on September 29, 2023—and just eight days before the October 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis—Biden’s national security advisor Jack Sullivan could still brag that “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

So, what exactly happened to the inherited calm that led to the current nonstop chaos of the present?

In a word, theocratic Iran—the nexus of almost all current Middle East terrorism and conflict—was unleashed by Team Biden after having been neutered by the Trump administration.

The Biden-Harris administration adopted a 5-step revisionist protocol that appeased and encouraged Iran and its terrorist surrogates Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

The result was a near guarantee that something akin to the October 7 massacres would inevitably follow—along with a subsequent year of violence that has now engulfed the Middle East.

First, on the 2020 campaign trail, Biden damned long-time American ally Saudi Arabia as a “pariah.”

He overturned the policies of both the previous Obama and Trump administrations by siding with the Iranian-supplied terrorist Houthis in their war on Saudi Arabia.

Biden accused the kingdom of war crimes, warning it would “be held accountable” for its actions in Yemen. Biden-Harris took the murderous Houthis off the U.S. terrorist list.

Almost immediately followed continuous Houthi attacks on international shipping, Israel, and U.S. warships—rendering the Red Sea, the entryway to the Suez Canal, de facto closed to international maritime transit.

Worse still, by the time of the 2022 midterms, when spiraling gas prices threatened Democratic congressional majorities, Biden opportunistically flipped and implored Saudi Arabia to pump more oil to lower world prices before the November election. Appearing obnoxious and then obsequious to an old Middle East ally is a prescription for regional chaos.

Second, Biden-Harris nihilistically killed off the Trump administration’s “Abraham Accords.” That diplomatic breakthrough had proven a successful blueprint for moderate Arab nations to seek détente with Israel, ending decades of hostilities to unite against the common Middle East threat of Iran.

Third, Biden begged Iran to reenter the appeasing, so-called Iran Deal that virtually had ensured that Iran would eventually get the bomb.

Worse yet, it dropped oil sanctions against the theocracy, allowing a near-destitute Iran to recoup $100 billion in profits. And it greenlighted $6 billion in hostage ransoms to Tehran.

An enriched Tehran immediately sent billions of dollars in support and weapons to the anti-Western terrorists of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis to attack Israel, Americans, and international shipping. Iran soon began partnering with China and Russia to form a new anti-American axis.

Biden-Harris also fled abruptly from Afghanistan, abandoning billions in weapons and American contractors. The humiliation thus virtually destroyed American deterrence in the Middle East, inciting enemies and endangering friends.

Fourth, Biden-Harris restored hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the West Bank and Gaza, but without any guarantees that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas would desist from their past serial terrorist acts.

In the case of Hamas, U.S. and Western “humanitarian aid” simply freed up more fungible dollars in Gaza to arm Hamas and to expand its subterranean tunnel complex essential to its October 7 massacres and hostage-taking.

Fifth, from the outset of the ensuing increased tensions, Biden-Harris began pressuring the Israelis to act “proportionally” in responding to the massacre of some 1,200 Israelis and nearly 20,000 missiles, rockets, and drones launched at their homeland from Iran, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

Such straitjacketing of our closest Middle East friend further signaled the Iranian-backed terrorists that there was now “daylight” between the U.S. and its closest regional ally. That opportunity provided still further incentives for Iran to test just how far it could safely go in attacking Israel.

But why did Biden-Harris so foolishly ignite the Middle East?

In part, the administration naively tried to resurrect the old, discredited Obama administration notion of ‘creative tension’—of empowering a rogue Iran and its terrorists to play off Israel and the moderate Arab regimes, as a new sort of balance of power in the region.

In part, Biden-Harris was caving to increased anti-Semitism at home and the rise of powerful, pro-Palestinian groups on U.S. campuses and in critical swing Electoral College states.

In part, Biden-Harris was naïve and gullible. The two bought into the anti-Americanism and anti-Israel boilerplate of our enemies. So, they thought to make amends by seeing Iran and its terrorists as the moral equivalent of democratic, pro-American Israel.

Their malignant legacy is the current Middle East disaster.

 

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About Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O'Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent  The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.

Photo: People walk past portraits of people taken captive or killed by Hamas militants during the October 7 attacks, during a visit at the site where the Supernova music festival took place near Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel, on January 14, 2024, after 100 days of war between Israel and the militant Hamas group in Gaza. (Photo by Menahem Kahana / AFP) (Photo by MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)

Notable Replies

  1. Good, concise analysis by Professor Hanson, but toward the end he uses the words “naivete” and “naively” to define the Biden-Harris motivations behind their insane and malevolent Middle-East policy.

    Whatever else may be driving this administration’s policies–both domestic and foreign–it most assuredly is not naivete or gullibility. In fact, the driving force behind everything the Biden-Harris junta does is the inverse to Hanlon’s Law which states; Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

  2. The Middle East chaos can be explained by the Grifter-in-Chief’s principal minders seeing a chance to further enrich the Biden collective by sowing chaos in that region, where the saner parties would be ‘incentivized’ to express their gratitude in the only way that lights up Biden’s face more than Adderall. His minders are only practicing a version of the standard Democrat Party operational formula of causing problems and then promising to fix them while allowing them to fester, with the standard valuable tender offered in the form of votes. But Biden told his minders that he wanted something else. Almost as soon as his play-for-play kicked off in the ME, it just as quickly went south on the regime. Biden’s Bagram bugout was so bizarre it could only have pleased China, which is a mere hundred miles away. This scenario might sound far-fetched to anyone oblivious to Democrat Party-style graft-ridden politics. But is it any different from the other ‘policies’ this unholy regime has authored for political and financial gain (votes from grateful illegal aliens and a green energy policy that only benefits China)? Biden didn’t need Adderall for his face to light up for Xi Jinping during their San Francisco summit. It was one of the few moments when the real Joe Biden publically came out of the closet. Almost daily, we’re given proof of how much Democrats fear all of this will play out in the hysterical tone of left-wing media. Their protectiveness of the Democrat brand would be unnecessary if they believed most voters were unaware of what lies at the core of the Biden regime.

  3. Excellent Maximus - especially your last sentence - re the truth being the inverse of …“attributing malice to stupidity” - perfect.

    There is nothing whatsoever “stupid” about the Machinations of the ever evil to his core - former President Obama, his sock puppet and placeholder - Biden and dimwit, ho who struck gold - Harris and,

    their treasonous allies in America and avid supporters around the world - especially the CCP.

    Nothing that is happening there is even slightly displeasing to them.

    All the more reason to re-instate - if it was removed as I think it was by the Democrats around 1999 - in anticipation of their planned, future actions and being held culpable for them -

    the penalty of death for treason.

  4. I think it’s time for Israel to develop - or deploy if they already have it - a small, tactical, neutron, bunker busting bomb and send the Iranians about 15 of them as invitations to return to the Stone Age of atomic weapons development.

    Take out ALL of their installations - with as little long term damage and residual radiation as possible; and instantly also

    “delete” all the pertinent personnel working in them while also destroying all their stockpiles of uranium and then - just for fun?

    Destroy totally and completely their ports making it impossible for about five years for any ship to anchor there and thus make it impossible for them to sell their oil. Setting off an EMT to nuke their communications and electrical systems would be a nice - cherry on top - the cake touch too, I think.

    Leave the oil fields intact so that when the good people of Iran - of whom I am sure there are many - decide to finally give their current despots a good offing - send off - in the style of the French Revolution type. So that, when they?

    Regain control and return sanity to power and depose the current insanity? They will have that resource to help build themselves and their nation back into a new and improved - 21st century iteration - version of Iran - suitable for modern audiences and life. An Iran, with a “good neighbor policy” - rather than the current, barbaric, throw back to the 5th century version that currently is Iran.

    Some people - frankly - once they cross a certain line - truly do give up their right to be allowed to live and?

    Need to have their - long ago bestowed - express tickets to hell to rejoin their master - for forever and a day - punched.

    Please note that I am not suggesting turning the entire country into a glass parking lot - just probably eliminating about 5 to 10 percent of the metastasized, cancerous portion of their population that is beyond hope of being “rehabilitated” into the human race - and deserve the rabid animal, “Old Yeller” type solution.

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