Noah Rothman: Joe Biden’s Emerging Folly in the Middle East
APolitico report published Monday revealed that Joe Biden’s administration wants to rid itself of the troublesome Middle East. In terms of global priorities, one Biden adviser confessed that the region “is not in the top three.” The new administration would prefer to focus on instability in the Western Hemisphere, containing threats and pursuing diplomatic initiatives in Europe, and, of course, finally pivoting to Asia. “They are just being extremely purposeful to not get dragged into the Middle East,” another adviser said. But the Middle East has a habit of dragging the United States back in, and a heedless effort to withdraw from the region is one of the easiest ways to stumble back into open-ended commitments.Biden squanders leverage Trump stockpiled on Iran in pursuit of a defective nuclear deal
The Biden administration encountered one of the first tests of its resolve to disengage from Middle Eastern affairs earlier this month following a deadly rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in which one civilian contractor was killed and nine others were wounded, including a U.S. service member. The Shia militia Saraya Awliya al-Dam, which maintains close links with Tehran, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Biden administration responded in a “measured” way, according to the New York Times. It does not want to see a nascent attempt to restart negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program derailed by this Iran-linked provocation. But that indefatigable commitment to the pursuit of “rapprochement” with Iran and its proxies has only invited more rocket attacks.
On Monday, locals observed as rockets were fired at the U.S. diplomatic presence in Baghdad within the so-called “Green Zone.” It’s the third attack on Western diplomatic stations in Iraq in a week. Iraq has responded by requesting a larger NATO military presence in the country, and NATO will oblige. In the coming weeks, the Atlantic Alliance will increase its deployments in Iraq from 500 to approximately 4,000, and the Pentagon is not ruling out additional deployments to supplement the Western presence there.
Iranian strategy may seem counterintuitive on its face; why would a rogue state desperate for the rewards associated with the resumption of diplomatic talks risk it all by testing the new administration so brazenly? But Iranians can read American news media, too. If Tehran believes that the Biden administration wants out of the region so badly that it will not absorb the costs associated with sticking around, why not test that proposition? Iran’s long-term objective isn’t just relief from economic sanctions, after all—its regional dominance, with the U.S. all but out of the picture.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen this movie before. As the Obama administration courted Tehran for nuclear talks from 2012 to 2015, it restricted its counterterrorism and counternarcotics policies toward the regime’s proxies like Hezbollah. As Politico exposed in 2017, U.S. efforts against Hezbollah lessened as the importance of getting a nuclear deal with Iran grew.Joe Biden Must Respond to Attacks By Iran’s Iraqi Proxies
The desire to achieve and maintain the Iran nuclear deal also had other negative regional effects. Some of those in the Obama administration arguing for a more robust Syria policy in support of protestors and against the atrocities of President Bashar al-Assad — Tehran’s man in Damascus — were overridden since targeting his regime would have necessarily aggravated the Islamic Republic.
Absent any reciprocity, the Biden administration reversed the Trump administration’s restoration of U.N. penalties on Iran’s military-related procurement and proliferation.
The Biden administration’s eagerness for diplomacy will likely be read by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as a vulnerability to exploit. And in response, Tehran will do what it has done for decades: intensify its aggression and only back down if presented with no other alternative.
Iran is watching Washington begin to dismantle maximum pressure in favor of “maximum diplomacy.” Absent a willingness to add to or even maintain existing sanctions, as well lacking broader efforts to tackle the clerical regime’s regional threat network, such an approach is indeed possible to prejudge: It will end in failure.
In addition to holding the Iranian regime to account for last week’s attack—something which Secretary Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab both promised to do to the perpetrators—a renewed effort to bring Iranian compliance for nuclear non-proliferation should undoubtedly include robust measures put in place to curb Iran’s ballistic missile development.Netanyahu: Iran Will Fail like Haman Did 2,500 Years Ago
While the break-out time for developing a nuclear weapon once Iran reaches 20 percent uranium enrichment (which they have assured under the guise of national sovereign law to implement from February 23 unless U.S. sanctions be lifted) is only a mere three and a half months, Iran will still require the delivery capability which will truly enable the regime to be a nuclear military power.
Only three weeks ago Iran tested a new rocket with improved technology which could be used in its missile program. The new Zuljanah rocket, developed to send satellites 310 miles into orbit, is easily transferable to Iran’s military missile program run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Any renegotiation of the JCPOA by the United States must factor in the requirement to limit Iran’s ballistic missile program, and Britain will be instrumental in helping shape this policy with fellow JCPOA signatories. Curbing Iranian uranium enrichment is only one side of the nuclear coin; the other lies in restricting the ballistic missile program needed to operationalize a nuclear warhead.
Due to the consistent pressure which Iran is applying on the new administration, time is running out for President Biden to show a stronger hand needed to deal with this repeated Iranian aggression. This includes publically acknowledging the role in which Tehran has over sponsoring and controlling the Shia Iraqi militias which continually cause the biggest source of U.S. and British casualties in Iraq. With the recently announced significant uplift of NATO troops to Iraq, this is not the time for appeasing an aggressive Iranian regime.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the story of Purim and the downfall of Haman the wicked who sought the Jewish nation’s destruction to warn Iran against threatening Israel with nuclear weapons.
Speaking on Tuesday at the state memorial ceremony for Yosef Trumpeldor and his comrades who fell in defense of Tel Hai in the north, Netanyahu declared that “on the eve of Purim, I say to those who seek of our souls, Iran and its proxies in the Middle East: 2,500 years ago another Persian tyrant tried to destroy the Jewish people and just as he failed then – you will fail today.”
Purim, celebrated this year on Thursday through Sunday, marks the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, an Achaemenid Persian Empire official who plan to annihilate all the Jews and failed, as recounted in the Book of Esther.
“We will not allow your extremist and aggressive regime to acquire nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told Iran. “We did not make the journey of generations through thousands of years back to the Land of Israel, to allow the hallucinatory regime of the ayatollahs to end the story of the resurrection of the Jewish people.”
Rejecting a renewed agreement with Iran, Netanyahu underscored that Israel “does not rely on any agreement with an extremist regime like yours. We have already seen the nature of agreements with extremist regimes like yours, in the past century and also in this century, with the North Korean government. With an agreement and without an agreement – we will do everything so that you do not arm yourself with nuclear weapons.”
Netanyahu’s cautionary remarks came just hours after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran will continue its 20% enrichment of uranium, and will increase enrichment up to 60% “based on the country’s needs.”


















