Biden Tries to Be the Hero of His Own Crisis

After years of appeasing Iran and empowering the regime to fund its terrorist proxies, including Hamas, Joe Biden traveled to Israel and delivered an Oval Office address this week in a shameless attempt to paint himself as the hero of a crisis he created.

Following a series of brutal attacks on Israeli civilians that began on October 7, Biden has sought to publicly portray himself as a staunch ally of Israel. Shortly after the attacks, Biden stated in an X post that his “support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.” In Tel Aviv on Wednesday, and again on Thursday evening from the White House, the president offered his support for Israel and said he “wanted the people of Israel – the people of the world – to know where the United States stands.”

But much like Biden’s public pronouncements in the wake of the Afghanistan disaster that permanently damaged his credibility, Biden’s statements fly in the face of his own actions and record.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Hamas’s assault on Israel was planned and coordinated with help from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – just the latest instance of Iran orchestrating an act of terror in the Middle East. Iran-backed militias killed one out of every six U.S. troops who died in Iraq. Iran also funds Hezbollah, a terrorist group in Lebanon that has openly backed Hamas, to the tune of $700 million per year.

Yet despite the Iran’s explicit efforts to abolish the state of Israel and kill American citizens, Biden has consistently offered colossal concessions to the regime in an increasingly desperate attempt to revive the Obama-era Iran Nuclear Deal – a deal Israel has pleaded with Biden to abandon.

Soon after taking office, Biden rescinded most of the Trump-era sanctions on Iranian oil, resulting in tens of billions of additional dollars every year for the regime to fund its terrorist proxies. Around the same time, Biden restarted U.S. aid money to the Palestinians, shipping $235 million taxpayer dollars to Hamas-controlled territory despite warnings from his own State Department that this money would be used to fund terror campaigns

Just one month before Hamas began its assault, Biden also released $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for five hostages. This glaring sign of weakness let Hamas and Iran’s other proxies know that the United States is willing to negotiate with terrorists and encouraged more hostage taking like what has occurred in Israel.

Biden’s State Department was also reportedly infiltrated by Iranian agents who obtained access to highly classified government documents and influenced Biden’s Iran policy.

Moreover, Jack Lew, Biden’s pick to become the next U.S. Ambassador to Israel, is a staunch proponent of Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal and has a record of actively helping Iran evade the sanctions that did remain in place under Obama, including during the time Lew served as Obama’s chief of staff.

Yet despite this record of stabbing Israel in the back and cozying up to Iran, Biden jetted off to Israel and billed himself as a great leader of the free world. After empowering Iran and leaving Israel in a disastrous position, Biden expected the praise and adulation from the people whose lives he endangered.

Then, Biden returned home and pretended on national television that he has been taking a hardline stance toward Iran all along.  

In doing so, Biden built on a long tradition of Democrats playing the hero of their own crises.

Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, memorably engaged in the same embarrassing charade when he spoke at a memorial service for fallen police officers in Dallas in 2016. Throughout his presidency, Obama constantly demonized police, ordered his DOJ to launch a sham investigation into the Ferguson Police Department, and propped up the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie that fueled the left’s war on police. Yet when that war led to a shooting that killed five officers and wounded nine others, Obama parachuted in and pretended to be the hero of the situation.

President Jimmy Carter tried the same strategy by promulgating a hardline stance toward the Soviet Union in his 1980 State of the Union Address following the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan – even though it was Carter’s own weakness that had emboldened Brezhnev to invade in the first place.

Biden’s efforts, however, are already proving even less convincing than Obama’s or Carter’s.

Even now as he tries to play the part of a great friend to Israel, Biden has refused to commit to reimposing Trump’s sanctions on Iran to deprive them of the resources to finance terror. Instead, during his remarks in Tel Aviv, and again in the Oval Office on Thursday, Biden lectured Israel to not “be consumed” by their “rage” – a comment that could be interpreted as a subtle warning that Biden’s support comes with stipulations about what tactics Israel can use to respond to the threat from Hamas.

Biden has also pledged $100 million in “humanitarian assistance” to Gaza and the West Bank – while offering no assurances that this “aid money” would not be intercepted and used by Hamas just like the other hundreds of millions of dollars Biden sent to the region. Meanwhile, in his speech Thursday night, Biden made clear that U.S. aid to Israel is being conditioned on Congress also approving tens of billions of dollars more in aid to Ukraine with no oversight for how that money is being spent.

With a dismal approval rating and a multitude of crises weighing down his re-election bid, Biden desperately needs to be the hero of this story. But the truth is, Joe Biden isn’t the hero of anything – and in this case, he’s closer to the villain.

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @ShaneHarris513.