We’re still waiting for a US response to the Iran-backed attack that killed three American soldiers in Jordan on Sunday — and doubt a meaningful one is even in the works.
Much of the media seem satisfied with President Biden’s empty “yes” to a press question Tuesday on whether he’s decided on a response — an answer he gave on the fly, with a follow-up about not wanting a wider war.
Later in the week came word that the feds have ID’d the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) as responsible, suggesting the prez might order that umbrella group of Iran-proxy militias hit hard.
But that’s not remotely good enough.
Iran’s proxies have launched 150-plus attacks on US forces these last few months, with no letup despite Biden’s pinprick-strike responses and supposed private messages (and empty public “Don’t”) to Iran.
Sooner or later, one of them was going to get through — why didn’t the White House have a response planned in advance?
Or did it have a plan — namely, to do as little as possible?
In other words: Speak loudly for domestic consumption, but carry a tiny stick.
That’s been Biden’s approach for weeks, when the correct response was to treat every attack as if it had killed US service members: Every one of them tried to do that, after all.
And every unanswered attack (and no, lobbing a missile at an unoccupied terrorist warehouse or whatever doesn’t count as a serious answer) only invites more.
You don’t get a free slap at the US Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines, let alone 160.
And no response is real unless it’s big, public and loud, to make sure the message is heard not just in Tehran, but everywhere.
By all its proxies, and by anyone else looking to attack Americans.
Oh, and part of the Bidenites’ damage control here has been to “explain” this attack’s deadly success as an “oopsie.”
Supposedly, someone running air defense at the base got briefly confused as the drone approached because a US drone was scheduled to return just then.
If that’s even true, don’t blame the soldier getting scapegoated. Blame the superiors who put a single individual in that position — all the superiors, all the way up to the commander-in-chief.
As for our president’s oft-expressed fear of escalation: As we’ve said before, Iran is escalating anyway, and will keep at it at least until we give it real reason to worry how we’ll escalate.
Tehran won’t care how many of its proxies we kill, by the way. It’s happy as long as its own forces are safe.
Whereas it does fear having those forces pulled in: As it finishes its dash to nuclear weapons capability and negotiates the transition to a new “supreme leader” (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 84), the last thing it wants is any chance of instability at home.
As Adm. (ret.) Mark Montgomery noted in The Post, the minimum response now is “sustained strikes on every Iranian proxy target we can locate in Syria, Iraq and Yemen” and “on hundreds of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.”
Oh, and “sink any IRGC warship supplying targeting information to the Houthis in Yemen.”
For months, Biden has done calibrated strikes to warn the enemy what we could do to them. Unless he starts showing them that we will respond massively, he’s guaranteeing the deaths of more men and women sworn to defend our nation.