he U.S. is aware that Egypt has been facilitating weapons smuggling from its territory into Gaza over the past decade and a half. The U.S. is also aware that this smuggling deserves a fair measure of blame for the situation everyone’s in at the moment, since it allowed Hamas to rearm between wars. Lastly, the U.S. believes it can get Egypt to close the smuggling tunnels.

The first question that comes to mind when reading this is: Why hasn’t the U.S. effort to force Egypt to close the tunnels been ongoing since the moment American officials found out about them? The specificity of U.S. knowledge suggests that this revelation occurred to them prior to Oct. 7. What were they waiting for?

Even if they didn’t know until recently, of course, it makes absolutely no sense that this hasn’t been made a priority. What kind of maniac uses this as a bargaining chip?

We will stop Egypt from flooding Gaza with arms and ammunition if you promise to go easy on Hamas is the kind of thing a mafia goon would say if you put him in the foreign service.