Under the Obama–Biden foreign policy doctrine, an Iran so emboldened that it feels free to wage offensive war against Israel in such brazen fashion is not a bug — it’s a feature.
The terrorist Iranian regime’s unprecedented recent attack on Israel, which included 185 drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles, is an unambiguous casus belli — an act of war — under international law.
Of course, Iranian proxies spread across the Middle East, such as Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Yemen-based Houthis, have committed countless previous acts of war against Israel. But last weekend was something different entirely: For the very first time since fanatical Islamists overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and took power in 1979, Iran launched such attacks directly from its own soil.
The regime’s attack against the Jewish state, a tactical failure in which 99 percent of Iran’s varying projectiles were successfully intercepted by the Israel Defense Forces and a U.S.-led multinational coalition, is highly revealing. No longer can anyone deny the Iranian regime’s role as “head of the snake” of Middle East chaos; nor can anyone now deny the regime’s genocidal intentions. It turns out that when they chant “Death to Israel” in the streets of Tehran, they really mean it. (They also chant “Death to America,” incidentally.)
The obvious question: How? How did we reach the point where Iran feels so emboldened, and so unafraid of any repercussions, that it lobs hundreds of offensive weapons from its own territory toward another sovereign nation — especially one so closely allied with the U.S. and interconnected with the broader Western order?
The answer is just as clear as it is troubling: The Middle East “realignment” so doggedly pursued by President Joe Biden, and by former President Barack Obama before him, got us here.
