There are three possibilities: (1) Joe Biden’s handlers are bought and paid for by the Iranians. (2) They’re incredibly stupid (3) They hate America. On second thought, there are four: all of the above.

Benjamin Weingarten explains:       

Given the Biden administration’s treacherous agenda to date, ask yourself: Is the president more likely to legitimately punish Iran or take half-hearted cosmetic actions against its proxies while throwing the Jewish state to the wolves?

Also ask yourself this: How do any of the Biden administration’s actions serve America’s interest — let alone do justice to those who lost their lives at the hands of Iran in Israel, Jordan and across the world over the 45 years the mullocracy has reigned?

Graphic: Twitter (X) screenshot

Fact: Iran declared war on America in 1979 and has been prosecuting it since, killing thousands of Americans and taking many hostage.

At PJ Media, Matt Margolis provides background and a horrifying, but hardly surprising, development:

Last week, three American troops were killed in an Iranian-backed drone strike in Jordan. It was a damning indictment of Joe Biden’s record of appeasing Iran, which dates back to his time as vice president.

Biden has been talking tough with Iran for many, many weeks, and Iran has repeatedly proven that it is not deterred by his words. But the moment troops were killed, Biden was suddenly under pressure to respond with more than just idle threats. And he did promise a response.

And then promptly broadcast those plans to Iran.

How could an American president do anything to protect one of our most vicious, determined enemies?

Sources within the administration leaked the details of potential moves by the administration to Politico. 

"Within the administration, top aides are trying to thread a needle,” Jonathan Lemire and Alexander Ward of Politico reported Monday night. "Biden is ordering his advisers to present a range of U.S. response options that would forcefully deter other attacks while also not further inflaming a smoldering region, according to two officials granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about private deliberations."

How could any sane person imagine they could deter crazed Islamists without arousing their ire or provoking an armed response? They couldn’t, but the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration (MMPA) isn’t about deterrence. They’re about retaining political power during an election year. They’re about appearance over reality.

According to the report, "Among the options on the table for the Pentagon: striking Iranian personnel in Syria or Iraq or Iranian naval assets in the Persian Gulf, according to the officials. The Iranian government, for its part, has suggested that a strike on Iran itself would be a red line. The officials suggested that, once the president gave the go-ahead, the retaliation would likely begin in the next couple of days and come in waves against a range of targets."

No, America certainly can’t strike at Iran, the director and sponsor of the deaths of Americans. So, to keep from angering the death cult lunatics that have been killing Americans since 1979, the MMPA acted boldly in the only way they know how to act:

The administration subsequently leaked which targets had been approved.

The only thing Biden didn't do was ask the Iranian mullahs for permission to drop a few bombs—though perhaps they did and were wise enough to keep that under wraps. 

The horror of it is that an American president—actually, his handlers—would do that isn’t at all hard to believe. It would only be a logical extension of the status quo, their standard operating procedure.

It was clear that despite Biden's public front about retaliation, his administration was never serious about retaliating or creating an effective deterrence—otherwise, they wouldn't have broadcast to the world what the potential targets were. [skip]

According to Fox News' chief national security correspondent at the Pentagon, Jennifer Griffin, IRGC commanders in the target areas have left and gone into hiding.

In other words, when the token bombs fell on token targets, the Iranians and their terrorist proxies, forewarned, weren’t around. At Powerline, Scott Johnson notes:

Graphic: screenshot

The White House posted a statement in the name of President Biden. The statement is posted here. It vowed further strikes “at times and places of our choosing.” They let us know all week that it was coming. 

We can infer that the Biden administration believes in telegraphing its punches. Marc Thiessen poses a rhetorical question: “How stupid do you have to be to announce you will strike two days in advance and where[?]” It’s smart if you want to minimize the damage done (or to be done).

How stupid, or how compromised? Unnecessarily putting our troops in harm’s way and refusing to protect them, or allow them to protect themselves, just might have something to do with our current military recruiting crisis. At least some of our diminishing number of pilots are getting some extra flight time.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.