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Iran Pays No Price for Bad Behavior
(Wall Street Journal) Yaakov Katz - While the world's attention is focused on Gaza, Hizbullah is firing antitank missiles and rockets into Israel every day. President Biden should give Iran a sharp and simple message: Pull Hizbullah away from the Israeli border, stop enriching uranium, order Yemen's Houthis to give back the cargo ship they seized in the Red Sea this weekend, and tell Hamas to release the 240 hostages it kidnapped from Israel on Oct. 7. Iran has learned a dangerous lesson in the past six weeks. It has seen that there is no price to pay for arming its terrorist proxies and encouraging them to attack Israel. Iran's actions - including attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militias - are met not with reprisals but gifts, like the Biden administration's decision to issue a sanctions waiver and grant Iran access to $10 billion. This money will be used to fund even more terrorism. Iran's leaders see no reason to stop funding Hizbullah, Hamas or the Houthis. No one is threatening to stop the ayatollahs in Tehran or warning them that they will pay a price. What is to keep Iran from creating new terrorist proxies, training them and giving them weapons to attack Israel, the U.S. or Europe? Letting Iran's bad behavior go unchallenged will ultimately extract a higher price. Iran won't stop supporting terrorist groups until it is made to. The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute.