Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Iran’s allies, attacked again over the weekend, launching drone and missile attacks against two Saudi oil facilities. It was the last sign that President Joe Biden’s efforts to get Tehran to control his pawns are not working.
In fact, this is the second attack by an Iran-trained militia since Biden launched air strikes against a group in Syria in late February – an action the government said aimed at stopping attacks, especially against US forces in Iraq. .
The Biden attack (one of the two planned, with the other canceled at the last minute because of possible civilian casualties) was a response to a February 15 rocket attack on a US military base in northern Iraq that killed a contractor and others injured.
Without being overwhelmed by Biden’s response, another of Tehran’s puppet militias on March 3 fired 10 rockets at Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq, which hosts some 2,000 American soldiers. There were no fatalities, but Washington has not yet responded.
And now the challenges are increasing, with Sunday’s attack on the Saudis, which Riyadh claimed to have caused no damage or casualties. But he targeted oil tanks at the port of Ras Tanura and a residential area in Aramco – the most recent in years of Houthi gunfire that included more than 500 drone strikes and more than 300 missile strikes.
Of course, Iran and its minions can imagine that Biden will accept attacks on the Saudis, as he obtained direct US military support for his anti-Houthi coalition in the bloody Yemen war.
In addition, Washington last month released an old intelligence report alleging that Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman explicitly approved the assassination of Saudi emigrant journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. Since the report had only circumstantial evidence, the world read it as another Team Biden sign that he is out with Riyadh.
Meanwhile, bidenists are practically begging Iran to start negotiations on the reopening of the Obama nuclear deal. Washington ignored the endless Iran-sponsored violence while it was originally negotiating the deal; Iran’s rulers undoubtedly hope to get the same leeway now, as Biden is already doing just that.
In short: a single indifferent attack on Iranian pawns will do nothing. Instead of playing with calibrated strength, Biden needs to use his imagination, as Team Trump did when he pulled out Tehran’s terror chief, General Qassem Soleimani, in January 2020.
Then again, Biden’s top advisers then warned that Trump’s attack could start a regional war, just as they insisted that actually moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would bring disaster.
They have proven to be totally wrong on both counts, but Biden’s lame approach to the Middle East conflict so far suggests that they have learned nothing.