Wed, 01/10/2024 - 9:55am
Democracy, Good and Hard: The Red Sea Crisis Follows from Multiple Fateful Decisions
By Tom Ordeman, Jr.
In the opening days of 2024, events in the Red Sea provide an object lesson in the consequences of what many would characterize as a weak or ill-advised foreign policy.
On October 7th, 2023, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), two terrorist organizations based in the Gaza Strip, breached a fortified border and attacked Israeli civilians. More than a thousand Israelis were killed, and several hundred were taken back to Gaza as hostages. Both Hamas and PIJ receive the bulk of their financial and operational support from the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is widely recognized as the leading sponsor of international terrorism.
Of course, blame for the October 7th attack, and subsequent efforts by Hamas and PIJ to exact a toll on Israel, falls entirely upon those groups and their sponsors. However, since Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Biden Administration's critics have suggested that America's failed campaign in, and botched withdrawal from, Afghanistan, and President Biden's own long-term foreign policy record, emboldened American enemies around the world. By October, domestic political pressure against a "blank check for Ukraine" was also ongoing, caused in no small part by Biden's failure to build bi-partisan consensus for his foreign policy.
In September, mere weeks before the October 7th attack, the Biden Administration arranged to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian assets held in South Korean banks as part of a controversial prisoner swap. The Biden Administration claims that negotiations involved safeguards to ensure that the money could only be used for humanitarian purposes, but at very best, this merely frees up additional funds from Iran's budget for Tehran's sustained support to terrorist groups in Gaza and elsewhere. This has been evidenced by flare-ups on Israel's northern border, where Lebanese Hezbollah - itself a subsidiary of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' infamous Quds Force - has launched multiple rocket attacks. This has triggered Israeli concerns that Hezbollah could attempt to cross the border and attempt a repeat of the Hamas/PIJ incursion. At the end of November, in a rare instance of bi-partisan cooperation, Democrats and Republicans in Congress passed a measure to freeze the $6 billion in Qatari banks, days after the Biden Administration released another $10 billion to Iran.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/democracy-good-and-hard-red-sea-crisis-follows-multiple-fateful-decisions
