After Israel and a U.S.-led coalition neutralized hundreds of Iranian rockets in mid-April, President Joe Biden advised Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “take the win.”
Now, following another Iranian barrage targeting America’s ally, rather than trying to handcuff Israel, it’s time for America to lead.
Biden should tell Netanyahu what he should have said last spring: “We’ve got this.” Instead of relying on Israel to retaliate, America should punish Iran directly.
Biden should go out with a bang — by bombing Iran thoughtfully, strategically and, yes, punitively. For years, Iran has been taunting America, defying its warnings against going nuclear, demonizing America and, most recently, fomenting violence against America, its soldiers and its allies.
Since Oct. 7, President Biden has kept warning Israel about “escalating” without realizing that American passivity fuels the conflict. Had America chastened Iran in April, it probably would have deterred the follow-up attack.
Certainly now, by acting decisively against this weak dictatorship hated by so many Iranians, America’s messaging against autocratic bullies will send a valuable, overdue message worldwide. It will warn China to respect Taiwan’s sovereignty while showing Iran, its terrorist proxies and other enemies: you mess with our allies, you mess with us.
Bombing the military centers advancing Iran’s nuclear program — imposing maximum damage — then just enough oil fields so that Iranians feel the economic pain America can inflict, and drone factories helping Russians slaughter Ukrainians, Biden could do more for world peace in one night than he has done in three years.
America has dodged this necessary confrontation with Iran’s theocracy for too long. Iran’s dictators have spent decades threatening “Big Satan,” America, not “just” Israel, “Little Satan.” By backing Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran has destabilized the world this year more than most of America’s enemies.
Meanwhile, Iranian proxies bombed over 170 American bases, wounded dozens of Americans and killed three American soldiers. Remember their names, since too many American politicians don’t: Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, Specialist Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, and Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23.
Recently, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken acknowledged that the U.S. has “been tracking very intensely for a long time — an ongoing threat by Iran against a number of senior [American] officials.”
Saying “it’s something we take very, very seriously,” is not serious. How many red lines must Iran cross before America takes serious action?
Surgical bombing would expose Iran as the paper tiger, not the United States. And it’s the perfect opportunity to advance the American policy goal of limiting nuclear proliferation — preventing this very bad actor from being very emboldened.
Although Israelis greatly appreciate American munitions and missile shielding, Biden should reinforce America’s partisan tradition of protecting allies proactively. In 1961, John F. Kennedy told Congress: “We cannot merely state our opposition to totalitarian advance without paying the price of helping those now under the greatest pressure.”
Kennedy applied insights learned painfully during two World Wars, that democracies must fight for one another when totalitarianism looms — the earlier the better.
In 1949, signing the North Atlantic Treaty, Harry Truman called such interconnectedness “a neighborly act.”
“We are like a group of householders, living in the same locality, who decide to express their community of interests by entering into a formal association for their mutual self-protection,” said Truman.
Like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and other great presidents, Truman understood that war-makers become peace-makers by making war early enough to make true peace.
As Truman explained, creating “a shield against aggression …. will permit us to get on with the real business of government and society, the business of achieving a fuller and happier life for all our citizens.”
In fact, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter guarantees “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense.”
The vice presidential debate hours after the Iranian barrage showed how both presidential campaigns have sidelined Joe Biden. Donald Trump merited 130 mentions, Kamala Harris 75 and Biden, merely eight mentions — as Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) targeted the suddenly-renamed “Harris-Biden administration.”
But Biden remains president. And now he should feel free to do what’s best for America.
Bombing Iranian infrastructure, maximizing the warning message to the Mullahs while minimizing the casualties, would stabilize the world. It would improve Biden’s bid to be viewed as the historic game-changing president he always wanted to be.
And good policy makes good politics: Bold action would boost the Democrats too — as assertive leaders ready to confront the world’s enemies, rather than wimps whose aversion to flexing America’s muscles proved too encouraging to too many enemies.
Gil Troy is a professor of history at McGill University and the author of nine books about the American presidency. His latest book is: “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream” (Wicked Son publishing).