Biden's final opportunity: A bold move on Iran and Israel to secure his legacy - opinion

A disturbing article in Politico published in the wake of US President-elect Donald Trump’s sweeping victory in this month’s election reported that outgoing president Joe Biden would use his remaining two months in office to “Trump-proof” the steps he took in the international arena.

Quoting “despondent Biden administration officials,” the report said they were mulling how to protect what they termed their national security priorities before Trump returns to the Oval Office in January. The moves being considered, according to the article, include “imposing new sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers” and “taking steps at the United Nations against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.”

Really? If these are the people who have been advising the president for four years, it is no wonder Biden’s administration has been such a failure.

If he listens to them, his entire legacy could be summarized in one word: hypocrisy.

The president who has called himself pro-Israel for decades, the orator who gave Golda Meir guru status, the gentile who spent more time at Temple Beth Shalom in Delaware than most Wilmington Jews would be remembered as the man who stuck it to the Jewish people, and their state on his way out.

Biden would follow in the footsteps of his former boss, Barack Obama, who childishly got his revenge against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his final days as president by ensuring that Israel would be condemned by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2334. It passed 14-0, with a cynical American abstention on a resolution the US delegation wrote and championed.

Obama’s fight against Jews's rights

The resolution demanded that Israel immediately and completely cease “all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” as if Jews expanding their homes in Ramot, Gilo, or Armon Hanatziv were the obstacle to peace in the Middle East and the international brotherhood of man.

Obama’s fight against the rights of the Jewish people to their eternal capital, Jerusalem, will remain a central part of his shameful legacy, casting a president who undeservedly won 70% of the Jewish vote among history’s worst antagonizers of the Jewish people.

Biden was supposed to be different. Pundits are calling him the Democratic Party’s last unabashedly Zionist president. He cried as he delivered a eulogy at Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s funeral and displayed his strong love for Israel and its people when he came after the October 7 massacre.

There is still a chance for him to craft a very different legacy than his meddling advisers are urging. He can also still avoid being remembered mainly as an ineffective one-term president chucked undemocratically by his own party due to his senility in favor of an unworthy subordinate who lost by a landslide.

Biden could surprise the world and become the hero of the United States, the Jewish state, and the Jewish people. He could even be remembered in history as the savior of Western civilization.

That would require one extremely urgent and courageous step: Biden must bomb Iran, prevent its nuclearization, destroy all its nuclear sites, and overthrow the evil regime of the ayatollahs forever.

Bombing Iran would ensure that Israel wins its seven-front war against the head of the octopus in Tehran and its tentacles: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, and the terror emanating from Judea and Samaria. It would finally bring the 101 Israeli hostages home, 10 of whom have American citizenship.

Such a move would prevent the Islamic Republic from continuing to spread its Shi’ite hegemony from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. It would stop the threat to international shipping caused by the Houthis, whose brazenness will finally be met with a long-awaited punishment.

It would reward and strengthen moderate Muslim regimes like the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Bahrain, which have impressively maintained normalization agreements with Israel, despite pressure from their Arab brothers during this long, bloody war. It would encourage more countries to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel, their natural friend, as the enemy of their true enemy.

It would be consistent with what Biden’s administration has done successfully in coordinating an international effort to stymie attacks on Israel on April 15 and October 1 and his repeated promises that he would not let Iran become a nuclear power. And it would prevent Iranian retaliation against Israel and America that the Islamic regime threatened to carry out immediately after the election, which could further erode Biden’s legacy of projecting weakness.

THERE IS still time to accomplish all these lofty goals in coordination with Israel, which can provide all the intelligence necessary to ensure the operation’s success. The key would be for Biden to work closely together with the man he has called his friend for decades, Netanyahu, rather than working against him like Obama made the mistake of doing. 

If Biden doesn’t take such necessary action, I have no doubt that these important moves will be made instead by Trump, whose legacy would become that of a historic international hero. As Mordechai told Esther, “Relief and rescue will arise for the Jews from elsewhere.”

I have been critical of Biden throughout his presidency, but I will be proud if another Mordechai quote to Esther could be said of Biden in retrospect: “Who knows whether you have attained your royal position for just this moment?”

The Biden advisers quoted by Politico said he might not take the steps they are urging because Trump would reverse them the moment he takes office. Why not instead take the historic steps Trump is expected to take and enjoy the glory?

Instead of “Trump-proofing” his presidency, Biden could use his last days in office to take his historic role as the man who made the world a better place.

The writer is chairman of the Religious Zionists of America, president of the Culture for Peace Institute, and a committee member of the Jewish Agency. He currently serves as a member of the US Holocaust Memorial Council, appointed by Donald Trump during the president-elect’s first term. The views expressed here are his own. You can reach him at Martinoliner@gmail.com.