When will Jake Sullivan get mugged by reality?

The Biden administration’s reaction to the Iran-sponsored killings of American troops last month has been underwhelming at best. Despite a select few airstrikes on Iranian proxies, they’ve decided thus far to refrain from hitting targets inside Iran itself. President Joe Biden is clearly more terrified of “escalation” than of sending a signal of weakness.

Biden and his staff are paralyzed by their fear of war and a naive belief in their own brilliant diplomacy. Rather than reckon with the hard realities of geopolitics, this administration acts like a flock of ostriches collectively burying their heads in the sand. They first refused to take our adversaries’ threats seriously, and now they act like they can talk their way out of this world crisis. 

Perhaps no one embodies this hubris more fully than national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Mere days before Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, Sullivan was crowing that the Biden administration had finally brought peace to the Middle East. In a now-justly famous Foreign Affairs essay published on Oct. 2, he declared that “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.” He insisted that the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan somehow strengthened America’s position in the region and even had the gall to suggest that the administration “de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.” 

Read more at the Washington Examiner.