President Joe Biden belatedly responded last week to Houthi attacks on international shipping. But weakly limited military strikes by the United States and the United Kingdom unsurprisingly failed to deter these Iranian-backed terrorists.
They can see that Biden is terrified of escalation and lacks the stomach to confront the threat they pose seriously. As the Washington Examiner first reported on Dec. 19, Britain was ready to conduct the strikes a month before Washington gave the go-ahead. A timid White House dithered because it feared provoking Iran, as though that tyranny and global menace would be quiescent unless goaded.
Timidity has defined the Biden administration’s approach to Iran and its proxies since the start of the current Middle East crisis. Instead of a robust response to Iranian-led escalations, Biden has broadcast his hesitation for all to see. Iran is governed by pathological anti-Americans who view weakness as an invitation for aggression, so our president’s mostly impotent hand-wringing has done nothing but encourage Tehran’s escalation. It is astonishing, for example, that it took until Jan. 17 for the White House to relist the Houthis as terrorists. The Trump administration did so, but Biden had removed them early in his presidency in the hope of sucking up to Iran and reviving the squalid and useless nuclear weapon deal then-President Barack Obama struck in 2015.
Biden must wrench the Houthis’ strategic calculus back toward seeing America as a superpower willing to use its immense power or risk seeing this nation’s enemies gaining ground.
