Biden must unleash Israel America has appeased Iran for too long

To persist in that fantasy, of course, they’re obliged to ignore what Iran did with all the oil money it gained after US sanctions were lifted: the great build-up of Hezbollah, the Houthis and the other Shi’a militias; the large-scale importation of missile components from North Korea and China; and the growth of the Revolutionary Guard.

It’s clear, then, that Iran’s rulers were never interested in making peace with Washington. Nor, indeed, could they do so without losing power to the secular opposition now bitterly hostile to the Ayatollah’s rule. Still, because of the persistence of the Obama delusion, Israel is forbidden from attacking the Natanz centrifuge complex, where Iran enriches its uranium to weapons-grade levels. The Isfahan uranium hexafluoride plant, whose destruction would release highly corrosive radioactive gases, is also out of bounds, as is the Fordow centrifuge hall — deep inside a mountain and safe from bombs, but which could nonetheless be wrecked by air-to-ground missiles.

If the nuclear installations cannot be attacked, there is still the Khark Island oil terminal that delivers most of Iran’s exported oil, and which provides the foreign currency that Iran uses to import missile parts and pay its Shi’a proxies. Hezbollah, which even under Israeli bombardment relies on Iranian paychecks, is the most obvious example. But there’s also the Iraqi Kataeb militia, as well as the Houthis in western Yemen. Quite apart from the threat they pose to Israel, that last group has successfully disrupted much of the Mediterranean’s trade with Asia, even as European navies have sat back and watched. 

Beyond immediately weakening the militias — if unpaid, their men must find work elsewhere — bombing the Khark terminal would also accelerate Iran’s catastrophic inflation. Right now, it takes 42,105 rials to buy one dollar, up from 70 rials when the Islamic Republic was founded in 1979. That, in turn, would further increase opposition to the regime. After all, millions of salaried employees in Tehran already cannot afford proper meals for two weeks of every month, as modest salary increases are immediately outpaced by bewildering jumps in prices.  

Yet whatever the tactical and strategic advantages of destroying the Khark terminal platform, Biden officials oppose that too. Why? In essence, because they’ve been spooked by Iran’s not-so-veiled threat to bomb Saudi Arabia’s gigantic terminal at Ras Tanura. Handling over 15% of the world’s total oil supply, any disruption here would disrupt the world economy at a stroke.

But Saudi Arabia is not Israel, nor is it Israel’s ally. There’s therefore no earthly justification for Iran’s threat, beyond an outrageous attempt at blackmail by a regime tripped up by its own boastful propaganda. Even now, Iranian radio and television channels claim that 90% of the ballistic and hypersonic missiles launched at the “Occupied Territories” (their dismissive term for Israel) successfully struck their targets. Among other things, the Revolutionary Guards claimed a direct hit on the Mossad headquarters just north of Tel Aviv, which they said were “completely destroyed”. That in itself shows the regime is rattled: its propaganda lies might be just about plausible to the people of Iran, but anyone who actually drove past Mossad’s building could see it’s perfectly intact.

Having sailed too close to the wind by attacking Israel with hundreds of missiles — notably the Fattah-1 variety, which reach hypersonic speeds and are devilishly hard to intercept — Iran’s rulers are now desperate to avoid the consequences of their actions. In so doing, they’re threatening their own Saudi neighbours, with whom they recently reconciled after years of tension. After years of indulgence, the Biden Administration must finally stand up for US and Western interests. It must make it perfectly plain that an Iranian attack on the Saudis, or indeed any other Arab oil terminal, will result in massive retaliation. Nor can this be an idle threat: each US Air Force’s B52, taking off from Diego Garcia, could drop some 70,000 pounds of bombs anywhere in Iran.

To issue such a threat would certainly be an abrupt reversal after years of appeasement, and would not be an easy pivot for an ageing president at the end of his term. But the alternative would be to surrender to Iran’s blackmail, a decision that would soon destroy American power across the Middle East. Israel, fighting for its basic security and under attack by Iranian proxies to its north, east and south, is bound to act decisively and will not be stopped. So it is Iran that must finally be deterred from further destabilising the region — and the global economy at large.         

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Professor Edward Luttwak is a strategist and historian known for his works on grand strategy, geoeconomics, military history, and international relations.

ELuttwak