If anyone was wondering if the Biden administration’s decision to give Iran $6 billion was a bad idea, the Oct. 7 massacre of hundreds of Israeli civilians by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists controlled and funded by Iran is proof positive that it was. I wonder if Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, John Kerry or Robert Malley have yet connected the dots. Will there be a collective humbling of this group who now, for all intents and purposes, are up to their armpits in blood?
Hamas’ surprise assault on Israel was a well-planned and orchestrated attack. It had to have been many months in the making. While the planners were working away under Iran’s supervision and funding, the mullahs were assuring U.S. negotiators that the $6 billion previously frozen and out of their reach would be directed solely to schoolbooks and humus.
The U.S. negotiators ignored the cries of hundreds of thousands of Iranians who over the past year have bravely taken to the streets to protest the theocratic brutality of the mullahs. Iranian morality police hunted these protestors down, beating them to death without shame. They went so far as to barbarically poison 300 Iranian schoolgirls. This brazen repression was well-documented and globally reported, but left the Biden administration cold.
Instead, the administration chose to buttress the brutal rule of the mullahs by injecting their fast-emptying bank accounts with $6 billion. So, the mullahs will live another day. But if you are an Iranian protester, desperate for basic human rights and dignity, your aspirations are now snuffed out. If you are an Israeli civilian, depending on where this war goes, you stand a fair chance of losing a wife, husband, child or grandparent.
As we learned with the irrevocably failed 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Iranians are cunning and remorseless liars. The implosion of the deal was enough to tarnish the fading veneer of Western determination and reliability. The failure to hold Iran responsible for the accelerating export of violent extremism in the region demolishes it entirely.
I am despondent and disheartened to see this feckless and totally unnecessary appeasement of Iranian despotism and terror. Together with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, this barbarous attack on Israel shows that the jaws of autocracy are closing in. It is time for the Biden administration to wake up and begin the process of shattering them.