Earlier this week, three American troops were killed and dozens were injured Sunday in a drone strike in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said. Biden blamed Iran-backed militias for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes by the groups against American forces across the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war.
- JINSA has tracked more than 90 attacks by Iran and proxies against American soldiers in Iraq and Syria under Biden — and the United States has retaliated only four times.
- Since the White House is clearly averse to a military confrontation with Iran, the best would be Biden supplying Israel weapons it needs to conduct, if necessary, a military campaign to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.
- 10/7 should prompt a reorientation of US policy in the Middle East — especially away from accommodating Iran, which heavily funds Hamas and helped plot the onslaught.
- It’s debatable whether Biden’s recent unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian assets, in return for five Americans hostages, helped fund the Hamas attack, as some Republicans claim. The attack took time to plan and the money may not have been spent yet, but Tehran could budget based on it.Yet the administration’s extremely lax enforcement of existing sanctions has undeniably enabled Iran to reap tens of billions of dollars.
- In 2020, under President Donald Trump’s maximum-pressure policy, Iranian oil-export revenue was an estimated $8 billion. Under Biden, it was as much as $37 billion in 2021 and $54 billion in 2022 and is expected to be $46 billion in 2023.
- In three years, Iran arguably will have earned some $30 billion more than if the Trump enforcement had continued. Its accessible foreign-exchange reserves have soared accordingly, from around $6 billion at the end of 2020 to a projected $43 billion in 2023. This economic windfall might have enabled Tehran before 10/7 to boost its funding of Hamas as well as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, all of which have ratcheted up their attacks on Israel this year.
- If Iran was able to funnel $100 million to Hamas in 2020, in 2023, when its oil revenue has increased manyfold, that sum could be far higher.
- Further, the Biden administration has emboldened Iranian aggression by avoiding confrontation. The administration needs to reverse course from this extreme accommodation of Iran and initiate a far more confrontational approach.
- Most important in the near term, Biden should sternly and unequivocally convey to Iranian leaders it holds them responsible for the confirmed death of 14 Americans in Israel and 100-plus hostages, reportedly including Americans, its proxy has taken. We could further deter Iran by concluding a mutual-defense pact with Israel, as JINSA recently discussed.
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