Joe Biden has spent years, both as Vice President and now President, on his knees begging Iran to be nice to us. 

It's been humiliating and counterproductive. 

The more we suck up to the Islamic Republic, the worse they are to us and our allies. The goal, they said, was to sweet talk Iran into dropping its nuclear ambitions, which has been about as effective as a 90-pound weakling giving his lunch money to the school bully in the hope that he gives up and becomes a good friend. Not gonna happen. 

Now that Iran is in a position to build a nuclear bomb whenever it wants, the Biden administration is now saber-rattling, threatening war with the Ayatollahs. 

NSC Spokesman John Kirby: “We will not allow Iran to achieve nuclear weapons capability. We prefer to do that through diplomacy — that hasn’t worked, and frankly, that’s really not on the table right now. We haven’t been talking to Iran for quite some time in terms of diplomacy.… pic.twitter.com/KXIQeyHmSl

— Conservative War Machine (@WarMachineRR) August 2, 2024

Nice. Just what we need. Another war in the Middle East, and this time with a power that may or may not already have nukes. 

Iran likely doesn't have a miniaturized nuclear weapon, although that is just a guess. The technology for building nukes is really not that difficult, but making one small and reliable enough to load on a ballistic missile is an order of magnitude harder, although Iran surely has access to the expertise of Pakistan and North Korea, so perhaps I am too optimistic.

 It was mildly surprising to hear Kirby speak openly about possible military plans to prevent Iran from deploying nuclear weapons--I doubt whether he or anybody else can be certain that the regime is still without nuclear capability. More likely they have an assessment with some level of confidence that the weapon hasn't been assembled, but there has to be some level of guesswork. 

They surely have the capability--even the administration has said that they are at the point of breakout. Last month, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken assessed that Iran was "one to two weeks" away from having all the enriched uranium they needed, and that point has come and gone. 

So here we are. As Joe Biden is chastising Israel for protecting itself, Biden's administration is considering sending troops to the Middle East to potentially fight the same enemy that Israel is--because, make no mistake, it is Iran that is behind all these messes. 

One of the most frustrating things about the Biden administration is its poor understanding of diplomacy and deterrence. Diplomacy is much more useful with allies and neutrals with whom you can make agreements based on mutual interests. 

With adversaries, you need more sticks than carrots. Obviously, you want to talk with your enemies to ensure clarity, but it is a fantasy to think that you will get far with diplomacy alone. 

Trump understood this and used American power to great effect with our adversaries. Biden tries to surrender first, and only then starts using threats. It is a sure path to conflict. 

A war with Iran is not something to look forward to. They probably would like to avoid war with us, keeping the conflict in the gray zone. But they have a lot more tools in the toolbox than Iran or Afghanistan and they could cause us more pain than we want to endure if we can avoid it.