After only a month in power, President Biden has used lethal military force in reaction to Iranian-sponsored attacks on Americans in Iraq.

The strike, said to be by F-15 jets, apparently attacked buildings owned by Iraqi Shiite militia groups along the Iraqi-Syrian border. It’s worth pausing to note that those Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite groups and not the government of Iraq control that part of the border. In other words, Iran and its proxies control a route from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon, where the largest Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, is situated. The borders have been erased.

The Biden strike is a message to Iran, a warning shot against continuing attacks by the militias Tehran backs. According to press reports, Biden was presented with a range of options and chose one of the softest — a limited strike inside Syria rather than Iraq.

There is a logic to this choice. First, U.S. attacks inside Iraq would likely complicate life for Prime Minister Kadhimi, whom we are generally supporting, and spur the forces hostile to any U.S. presence — not least the Iranian-allied militias — to demand that all U.S. forces be expelled. Second, should further Iranian-sponsored attacks require Biden to hit Iranian-backed forces again, this limited strike allows him to say he tried patience and restraint and they failed.

But the strike inside Syria and at Iranian proxies may also send messages Biden does not intend: that the United States will never hit Tehran’s proxies inside Iraq and that it will never hit Iran. If that’s what the Iranian regime infers, they will have the militias strike again and again; they will not be deterred because they will see the attacks as nearly cost-free.

The law of averages suggests that sooner or later these continued attacks will kill Americans. That’s when the president will face the need to punish Iran and truly establish deterrence; merely attacking its proxies will be inadequate. One of the key functions of the Shiite militias in Iraq is to allow Iran to attack U.S. forces while, by absorbing any penalty, keeping Iran safe. If there are a series of attacks, harming Americans and eventually killing one or more, the kind of limited response from the United States that we saw this past week will not be enough. That does not mean World War III and it does not mean American bombers over Tehran, but it does mean that Biden must contemplate striking Iranian assets rather than expendable proxy groups.

Meanwhile, there was zero progress on the nuclear-negotiations front this past week. On the contrary, Iran did not agree to attend the EU-sponsored talks that the United States has agreed to attend, it limited International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors’ access to Iran, and it threatened to enrich uranium to 60 percent. Nuclear power requires enrichment to no more than 5 percent; the only use for uranium enriched to 60 percent is in preparing a nuclear weapon.

The very least that can be said about President Biden’s second month in power is that we are seeing any dreams of a quick return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also known as the JCPOA, and a quick resolution to U.S.-Iranian confrontations dissolve before our eyes. The president’s refusal, thus far, to lift any sanctions and his willingness to use force against Iranian proxies suggest a more realistic assessment of Iran than many feared. No doubt there will be many deep discussions, even debates, within the administration over what the next move should be. The administration’s willingness to return to the JCPOA if Iran went back into compliance with it has not moved the Islamic Republic an inch. Similarly, the administration’s reversal of the designation of the Houthis in Yemen as a terrorist group, and its decision to halt the sale of “offensive” weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen, were met with zero flexibility by the Houthis — who have carried out additional terrorist attacks since the policy changes.

Down the road the administration faces an even greater challenge than what to do about attacks on Americans in Iraq. President Biden has already decided that they will be met with force, and one must assume that if the attacks continue and escalate, the counter-attacks will as well. But what about Iran’s expulsion of nuclear inspectors, which violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the “Additional Protocol” to the JCPOA (that allowed snap inspections)? What about enrichment to 60 percent, if that indeed occurs? How far down the road toward building a nuclear weapon will the administration be willing to let Iran go?

That’s a hypothetical question today, but if Iran keeps going it will soon be keeping U.S. officials up at night. Biden is the fifth American president in a row, by my count, to say Iran would never be permitted to build a nuclear weapon. Unless Iran changes course he could be the first to have to prove it.


Elliott Abrams
Fri, February 26, 2021, 6:23 PM·4 min read

https://news.yahoo.com/biden-fires-warning-shot-iran-232341816.html

"Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" --you know

Biden is going to fuck up the world.

Bomb Iran-an-an ..... Bomb Bomb Iran-an-an!

Yeah; prolly ...

You have to understand, we can carpet bomb, drop cluster bombs and send cruise missiles at will. What can these countries that we attack do?... either justified or fabricated bullshit, what can they do?

Talk about a terrorist manufacturing global policy. War on terror? Stupid is as stupid does...

Terrorism is only a response to the US agenda. Because it's the only response possible!  (except for killing whatever US cannon fodder is thrown at them when the chance arises)

You can't fucking blame them!

Bin Laden was a US CIA operative and personal friend of the bush family. 
Orwell didn't see that coming.

Talk about made up and staged bullshit, the jesus loving Americans are so fucking stupid they believe whatever they are told and "god bless america, kill em all".

Right, and Reagan called Saddam "... a world leader we can all work with" ...

He was! Until they decided it was time to use him.
Iraq had the best school system and health care in the middle east, at one time.
And remember bush was vice, and was a temporary head of the CIA. Just long enough to help deal with the Nixon situation, since Nixon was groomed into office by Prescott Bush and there is more to the story. It was actual manipulation of politics way back then. And obviously it worked, but I have to wonder what the REAL century long agenda is in the end.

To rule the whole world ...
What else?

Realistically it was fascism all the way down. A lot of people, including Prescott, would’ve been pretty happy with an Axis victory. People get hung up on the holocaust and think that was the end of things or get hung up on the word “socialist” in national socialism. But they ignore what fascism/corporatism really was in Germany and Italy and how many wealth Americans were backing it. They also ignore things like Dulles protecting favored companies in Germany from bombing, for example. And it’s no accident that fascists like Steve Bannon and other alt-right figures throw around quotes from people like Julius Evola.