John Ratcliffe, who served as Director of National Intelligence under former President Trump, appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” to detail the many ways President Biden’s appeasement of Iran emboldened the Islamic Republic to attack Israel Saturday.
Just saying “don’t” isn’t much of a deterrent, the former DNI argued:
The word people keep using to describe this attack is unprecedented, and it is. But that’s why it’s ironic that we find ourselves in the all too familiar position of talking about a long list of deterrence failures by the Biden administration. Of course, the failure to deter Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine and then, after the attack on Israel on October the 7th, the failure of the Biden administration with hollow talking points.
A single word “Don’t.”
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Saying “don’t” did nothing to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin, and it certainly didn’t deter Iranian aggression:
And the response to that, as you know, was more than 170 attacks on U.S. Forces. And the deaths of three Americans, dozens of traumatic brain injuries, so clearly not working. Which is why I was surprised that those very same hollow words and threats from the Biden administration, ‘Don’t,’ were used last week, after Israel took out IRGC general, Mohammad Zahedi, who was the architect of those October 7th attacks.
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Although Ratcliffe praised our allies and the Israelis for taking down most of the drones and missiles fired at Israel, he pointed out that “reaction isn’t as good as prevention”:
And again, it didn’t work. An unprecedented attack, 300 drones, missiles, rockets – including cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. So, you mentioned the fact that there’s been credit given for the good work of the Israelis and the Brits and the Jordanians and the United States in reacting to this and shooting down most of those threats, and minimizing the damage. But, reaction isn’t as good as prevention. And Donald Trump is right when he said he would have prevented this, and the Israelis believed that this would have been prevented.
But where the president really failed, the former DNI believes, is in not being a strong ally of the Jewish state as they wage war with Hamas and try to deal with the Iran threat:
They were understandably surprised and upset, as was I, that the seeds for this failure in deterrence took place in Joe Biden’s reaction to that hit in Damascus, on Zahedi, where instead of just remaining silent, the Biden administration quickly came out and said the U.S. was not involved in this.
And that sent a message to Iran and to the rest of the world that the U.S. was not with Israel, that the U.S. was reluctant to support Israel on this and that really shows how fractured this relationship has become between the United States and Israel moving forward.
And I think that emboldened Iran. And as one of the former intelligence officials in Iran said to me last night, with friends like Joe Biden, Israel doesn’t need more enemies.
Asked if he thought a response was forthcoming from Israel, Ratcliffe replied, “Absolutely.”
And I think there should be—there must be.
Look, Joe Biden doesn’t have any red lines. They get crossed. “Don’t” doesn’t mean anything, but the Israelis do have red lines, and a kinetic attack by Iran into Israel was a red line that must be answered.
Ratcliffe is right; Biden has been consistently weak on the international stage and has shown a strange unwillingness to treat Iran as what it is: an aggressive, terrorist-sponsoring threat to the world. Attacks like Saturday’s will keep happening as long as this president (and his incompetent team) is in charge.
Watch the full interview (Ratcliffe appears at the 40-second mark):
