The Iranian Cancer - Dr. Mackubin Owens

The Iranian Cancer - Dr. Mackubin Owens

Iran is a cancer. Domestically, a vast majority of the Iranian people see the government as an oppressive criminal enterprise. Abroad, the Islamic Republic has sowed chaos, waging war against not only Israel and their Sunni Arab neighbors but also the United States. Iran facilitated last October’s Hamas atrocity against Israel and the constant bombardment of northern Israel by Hezbollah. It has enabled the Houthis to attack shipping in the Red Sea, waging war on global maritime commerce.

Most recently, Iran has directly attacked Israel, first in April and again in September. During the September attack, Tehran launched a barrage of 180 ballistic missiles against Israel, its largest escalation to date. The Biden-Harris administration issued a pro forma denunciation of the missile attack but the fact is that its own foreign policy has enabled the actions of Iran and its proxies.

The Biden-Harris foreign policy is based on two fundamental errors. The first is that diplomacy can succeed without the underpinnings of military force. Thus, this administration, like that of Barack Obama before it, treats diplomacy and force as either-or. But diplomacy and military force are two sides of the same coin. Carl von Clausewitz, the German “philosopher of war,” wrote that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Or, as Frederick the Great observed, “diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.”

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The second error is the belief, traceable to the Obama presidency, that Iran is the key to stability in the Middle East. Accordingly, he pursued engagement with the Islamic Republic at the expense of America’s traditional allies, notably Saudi Arabia and Israel. Nowhere was this delusional policy more apparent than with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the so-called Iran nuclear agreement, which removed US leverage. Critics of the JCPOA argued that a stronger, broader agreement would have been possible if Obama had maximized pressure on Tehran, including the credible threat of military force. So committed was Obama to engagement with the Islamic Republic that he chose to appease the regime at the expense of the Iranian people, turning his back on the Green Revolution of 2009.

In 2018, President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and adopted a policy of “maximum pressure” on the Islamic Republic, which included the imposition of crushing sanctions that seriously damaged Tehran’s finances as well as the killing of Qassem Soleimani. Reversing Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran, the Biden-Harris administration has returned to the egregious JCPOA, subsidized Tehran with billions of dollars in US sanctions relief, made strategic accommodations that benefitted the mullahs, and encouraged them by constant pressure on Israel.

Regarding Iran’s nuclear program, the Biden-Harris administration acquiesced in Iran’s production of highly-enriched uranium, pressured European allies to refrain from censure resolutions at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and rescinded the Congress’s “snapback” provision of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, designed to re-impose multilateral sanctions on Iran in the event that the regime exceeded a weapons-grade threshold.

Perhaps the Biden-Harris administration’s greatest policy failure has been its relentless pressure on Israel to limit its responses to Iran and its proxies. Israel did so following the first Iranian missile attack on 14 April. After successfully defeating the Iranian barrage, Israel launched a limited attack on the Iranian air defense system, signaling to Tehran that it could do much more if it so desired.

Israel’s response this time is unlikely to be “symbolic” as it was in April. For Israel to do so would be interpreted by Tehran as weakness, that such massive Iranian missile attacks are acceptable as part of the new norm: if Israel takes out an Iranian proxy leader, e.g. the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh or the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, or makes a move against an Iranian official, Jerusalem can expect this Iranian response as a matter of course.   

It can be expected that the Biden-Harris administration will pressure Israel to refrain from an appropriate response. The administration will warn of the dangers of “escalation.” But such advice is based on a fundamental misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of deterrence. True deterrence—convincing an adversary not to use force—depends on “escalation dominance.” An enemy is deterred from attacking because he knows that his adversary is in fact able to escalate the conflict to the point that the enemy will lose.

Presently, Israel possesses escalation dominance vis-a-vis Iran, and the mullahs know it. Iran’s main military capability, its missile force, has been twice defeated by Israeli and allied defenses. Militarily, Israel is capable of inflicting a great deal of damage on Iran. In addition, the regime is actually quite weak internally. Indeed, regime change is a possibility. The mullahs’ only hope is that the United States will rein in its ally.

But it appears that Israel is having none of it. The Jewish state appears to have grown weary of months of US and European pressure designed to hamstring Israel’s ability to effectively defend itself in a war against an enemy intent on its destruction. Israel now seems united in its intention to turn the tables on Iran and its proxies and destroy their ability to wage war across the Middle East. Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris administration lacks moral clarity and persists in making the situation as challenging as possible for Israel. As a friend of mine recently remarked, anyone who doesn’t recognize that the Iranian regime and its proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—represent the ultimate in evil in today’s world, is a moral cretin.