America Isn’t at War, but Iran Is
As the Israel Defense Forces prepare to move into Gaza to destroy Hamas, one truth cuts through the fog: The greatest obstacle to peace in the Middle East is the Islamic Republic of Iran. When I worked for President George W. Bush, he would remind us that al Qaeda was at war with America long before we were at war with them.
The same holds for Iran. So far 30 Americans have died in this latest conflict with Hamas. But Iran has been killing Americans for decades.
Iran gets away with it because it relies on proxies to do the dirty work when it operates outside its borders. In December 2019, for example, Nawres Hamid, a U.S. citizen and military contractor, was killed in a rocket attack in Iraq launched by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shiite terror group.
The Pentagon has said that Iran was responsible for the deaths of 603 American soldiers during the war in Iraq. Iran also arms and supports those who have attacked U.S. troops in Syria dozens of times.
And even when the Biden administration unfroze $6 billion in oil revenues in exchange for the release of five American hostages, Iran still didn’t come clean with the full story on FBI agent Robert Levinson. He was 58 in 2007 when he was abducted in Iran while on assignment for the CIA. His body has never been recovered.
Notwithstanding American casualties and hostages taken in the Hamas assault, the sense is that this is an Israeli war in which the Americans are unlucky bystanders. But this conflict will quickly become an American war if Hamas executes any American hostages or uses them as human shields. So while the immediate focus of both President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on Gaza, Iran remains the greater unresolved threat.
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