An anonymous Turkish diplomat told Reuters this week that Turkey played the role of a back channel intermediary between the United States and Iran in the run-up to the Iranian missile strike in Israel. According to the source, Tehran informed Turkey of its plans for the strike in advance in an effort to limit the potential for further escalation. In response, the U.S. allegedly conveyed to Tehran through Ankara that any action would have to be “within certain limits.” The White House has denied the claim.
But if the report is accurate, and, in particular, if President Joe Biden greenlit a strike against a key American ally, he must be compelled to resign the presidency immediately. Such an act, even if taken with the apparent best long-term interests of the ally in mind, represents a stunning betrayal that has the potential to erode trust among allies around the globe. Given the swift rise of the authoritarian axis in the East in recent years, coupled with America’s waning global influence, a scandal of this magnitude must not be tolerated.
While the alleged approval for the strike is disorienting for a number of reasons, it fits within Biden’s overall stance toward Tehran, which is largely indistinguishable from that of former President Barack Obama. In the Obama-Biden view, Iran is not a rogue nation bent on the destruction of the West — the frequent “death to America” chants by lawmakers and citizens notwithstanding — but a rational international actor that can be reasoned with and bought off at the right price.
The Obama administration’s Iran Nuclear Deal, in which the U.S. lavished billions of taxpayer dollars upon the Iranian Mullahs in exchange for a toothless and temporary agreement, has effectively destabilized the region. The Trump administration wisely pulled out of the deal in 2018 due to numerous deficiencies, including poor inspection standards — for instance, the Iranians made their military sites “off limits” to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency — and sunset provisions that allowed Iran to expand uranium enrichment as early as 2030.
Biden has made every attempt to reenter the deal, but he has ultimately failed due to Tehran’s intransigence. This hasn’t stopped the president from courting Tehran in other ways, however. Last September, Biden offered Iran a bouquet of billions in frozen assets as part of a prisoner exchange. One month later, Iran unleashed the Oct. 7 terrorist assault on Israel through its proxy Hamas. It is beyond question that the funds from the prisoner swap freed up other funds for the attack, despite Team Biden’s lame defense of the debacle.
In the context of his overall stance toward Tehran, it makes sense that Biden would attempt to appease an Iranian regime under intense domestic pressure to hit back following Israel’s killing of Iranian Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi in early April. If the Reuters report bears out, Biden’s decision to play both sides of the fence by greenlighting an attack it presumed Israel would thwart with American and British help could be spun as a successful effort to provide an off-ramp for both sides.
But this would only hold if Israel was aware of the process as it unfolded. If not, the breach of trust would only cause Israel to become more aggressive in its own defense. The scale of Israel’s response to this weekend’s missile strike will be telling in this regard.
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The idiocy makes one wince, but there is an unmistakable consistency to Biden’s Iran approach. And it reveals the fact that he apparently values his relationship with the world’s foremost funder of terrorism as much as his relationship with the only democracy in the Middle East and one of America’s most important allies.
If he greenlit the strike, or if he had any prior knowledge and failed to share it with Israel, he will have done meaningful and lasting damage to American credibility among allies when America can afford it least. If done with Dearborn, Michigan, in mind, then it’s all the worse.
Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, and the National Catholic Register.