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Stop Punishing Our Allies while Rewarding Iran
(The Hill) Bianca Adair - Continued appeasement of Iran under the guise of preventing the spread of war has predictably entrenched Iran and its allies, while U.S. passivity creates a leadership void that Ayatollah Khamenei is only too eager to fill. President Biden should instead pursue a strategy of neutralizing Iran's military and financial capacity to threaten U.S. allies and interests in the Middle East, and then contain Iranian aggression. The U.S. should share detailed, actionable targeting information on all of Iran's weapons depots and training camps in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen with a coalition of allies, including the UK, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. Those targets must be destroyed to cripple Iran's ability to continue leveraging its terrorist proxies to fight on its behalf. At the same time, the U.S. must drop the pretext that Iran is a trusted player and can be induced with financial carrots to cooperate. Policies falling short of cutting off Iran's financial resources undermine any U.S. responses to the threats Iran poses. The writer, a former CIA operations officer with an expertise in Iran, is director of the Intelligence Studies Program at Catholic University.