President Trump over the last four years got a lot of grief from the mainstream press about a lot of things. Some of it was legitimate – some of it not.
One area he deserved a lot more credit than he got – foreign affairs. I’ve been a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee for a quarter-of-a-century now, so I’ve had the opportunity to watch closely, and interact with, a number of administrations during that time, both Republican and Democrat. And especially in the Middle East, President Trump deserves recognition for making considerable progress.
Of particular note was the effort to bolster our allies in the region, and contain and undermine our enemies. Our strongest ally in the region, Israel, benefited tremendously through the success of the Abraham Accord, which resulted in a growing number of Arab countries normalizing relations with Israel. Further, moving our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something previous administrations promised, but never delivered, was also a tremendous shot-in-the-arm to our loyal ally.
At the top of our enemies-who-need-to-be-contained-and-undermined list in the region, is Iran. They’ve been a thorn-in-our-side since the Carter administration. Every administration since then had recognized the Iranian threat, until Obama/Biden. That administration decided to buddy-up to the Iranians and stiff-arm our traditional allies in the region, and it didn’t work. The Iran Deal, for example, lifted sanctions against Iran, and gave them a boatload of cash (well, actually a planeload, delivered on a wooden pallet) and they used their newfound wealth to spread terror and instability across the region. And it only put off Iran’s quest to obtain nuclear weapons for a few years – maybe.
President Trump reversed that flawed deal, which was the right thing to do. Now President Biden is going back to the suck-up-to-Iran and dis-our-traditional-allies-in- the-region strategy of the Obama/Biden years. I couldn’t be more opposed to this decision.
Further evidence that Biden intends to lessen our support for traditional allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, and favor Iran, was Biden‘s announcement last week that he is ending our support for the Saudis in their battle against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. The Houthis in Yemen are similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon – both are Iranian- backed terrorist groups who are targeting our allies – the Houthis against Saudi Arabia in Yemen; Hezbollah against Israel in Lebanon.
Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani
So rather than tough, decisive actions taken by President Trump against our enemies, (destroying ISIS in Iraq, and killing Iranian terrorist General Soleimani, for example), Biden is undermining our allies and strengthening our enemies. Unfortunately, the mainstream press is so knee-jerk pro-Biden that they are totally ignoring the story. They’d rather breathlessly cover a second bogus impeachment story, even though everyone knows the chances of conviction – are zero.
At least you can read about it here in my blog.