A woman waves Iranian flags as newly-elected president Masoud Pezeshkian visits the shrine of the Islamic Republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on July 6, 2024. Credit: Atta Kenare / AFP via Getty Images.
A President Biden or President Trump must focus on the head of the snake: Iran.
During President Joe Biden’s recent Q&A with reporters, he said Hamas’s popularity in Judea and Samaria is decreasing. Unfortunately, Hamas’s popularity is growing in Judea and Samaria and is still strong in Gaza, where Palestinians overwhelmingly support the Oct. 7 massacre, according to Palestinian polls.
Haaretz stated: “A new poll of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank shows that eight months of bloodshed and destruction have done little to undercut support for Hamas and its October 7 attacks.”
Factual errors need to be corrected before they receive four Pinocchios from the Washington Post fact checker. Perhaps I am naive, but presidential leadership requires dealing with facts in context and retraction of apparent mistakes in a timely fashion to keep the public’s trust.
My travels in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, Oman, etc. continue to reveal the negative consequences of one of America’s most consequential actions: The withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the repercussions of which are still reverberating from Tehran to Taipei to Riyadh to Kabul to Moscow and beyond. American national security decisions today do not happen in a vacuum; their success or failure is directly related to our past actions, for good or ill.
According to Long War Journal, Al-Qaeda is on the rise again, operating terrorist camps in 12 provinces in Afghanistan, plotting mayhem and terror for a possible attack on the United States at home or abroad. That remains a long-stated goal of the perpetrators of 9/11, forgotten by recent administrators who think 9/11 is ancient history. The resurgence of Al-Qaeda is a direct and tangible result of our choice to withdraw from one of our “forever wars,” which may be good in the short term, kicking the can down the road, but will likely bring much worse challenges for our security interests in the Middle East in the future.
The withdrawal undermined American national security interests because our allies in the region perceived America as an unreliable partner, explaining why Saudi Arabia began a rapprochement with its nemesis Iran. Add to that President Donald Trump’s decision not to respond to the Iranian attack on Saudi oil fields in 2019.
It is not only the Middle East that viewed the Afghan withdrawal as America lacking the stomach to be the leader of the free world. Allies as far away as Taiwan were worried about where the U.S. would be if China came knocking on Taiwanese shores.
Against this backdrop, forgotten by Americans but very much alive to the people and governments of the Middle East, especially the “axis of resistance” composed of Iran, Russia, North Korea and China, what should Biden’s or Trump’s Middle East foreign policy be in a second term?
Ignoring the region is not an option, as the Middle East never stops calling Washington and challenging our security interests.
If an American president wants to make a significant change for the better and stabilize the region, there needs to be a focus on Iran as the head of the snake. Otherwise, American national security interests will continue to be undermined and out of our control, and the sought-after stability for the region will go down the drain.
That means understanding Iran as the primary obstacle to our and our allies’ interests. Expecting reciprocity for appeasement is a fool’s game. The lack of sanctions enforcement during the Biden administration—allowing tens of billions of dollars to flow into the coffers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps—only accelerates Iran’s nuclear program and support of its proxies, one of which has shut down much international shipping in the Red Sea.
A high-ranking source close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told me that Israel is concerned Iran is weaponizing a nuclear bomb at this time. Iran can already enrich weapons-grade uranium and has ballistic missiles capable of striking anywhere in the region, including Europe.
Weaponization, which Iran has supposedly not achieved, involves developing computer modeling and compartmentalizing uranium gas into uranium metal spheres placed in a nuclear warhead. Iran will probably also have to test such a weapon. Weaponization can take place with a minimal footprint, so it would be easy to hide in a nation as immense as Iran.
CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Mark Dubowitz has stated: “I have been led to believe that Iran’s weaponization activities have begun. … Iran is now taking preliminary steps that will help build a warhead. That is headline news.”
Would a President Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance, who have isolationist tendencies, or Biden or Harris, whose administration again gave Iran $10 billion in sanctions waivers this month, act or be believed as a credible military threat to stop Iranian nuclear weaponization?
Suppose a Biden or Trump wants to improve the region in his second term. In that case, he should begin with a significant foreign policy statement saying America is pro-Iranian, meaning pro-Iranian people who want to throw off the shackles of their authoritarian state, which tortures, intimidates, maims and kills anyone who challenges the revolutionary regime.
This does not mean American boots on the ground. It means sending a clear message that we are still a values-based nation that stands with people who legitimately seek freedom from tyranny.
A second-term president needs to enforce the sanctions already on the legislative books against Iran’s oil sales to China with secondary sanctions that are not meaningless. The American people are unaware of the fact that we are not enforcing sanctions, thereby enabling Iran to remain a financial force impeding the stability that we seek.
Pro-Hamas protesters in the U.S. should not cow Biden and Trump should not be intimidated by isolationists in his party, as both sow discord and will bring terror to our shores sooner or later. Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, has said Iran is materially involved in the pro-Hamas movement on American campuses and social media.
If Iran crosses the Rubicon to a nuclear weapon, a nuclear arms race will begin throughout the Middle East, with the chance that a nuclear bomb falls into the hands of radical Sunni or Shiite terrorists significantly increased. How is that good for the region or the world?
To stabilize the Middle East, protect the American homeland, advance our interests and cement the second-term legacy of either Trump or Biden is to focus on the source of all these problems: Iran.
This article originally appeared in The Jewish News Syndicate on July 21, 2024.
Dr. Eric R. Mandel is the director of MEPIN, the Middle East Political Information Network, senior security editor of The Jerusalem Report and a contributor to The Hill and The Jerusalem Post. He regularly briefs member of Congress and their foreign policy advisers about the Middle East.