It may be Christmas Eve, but there is no rest for the wicked and no shortage of national security issues vexing President Joe Biden's administration. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined "Fox News Sunday's" Shannon Bream Sunday morning to discuss a host of topics, including escalating tensions in the Red Sea and the crisis at the U.S. Southern Border.
WATCH: @SenatorHagerty reacts after U.S. Central Command says a U.S. destroyer shot down Houthi drones in the Red Sea amid high tensions in the Middle East. pic.twitter.com/H3rnhHWBe5
— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) December 24, 2023
Hagerty, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was highly critical of the administration's response — or lack thereof — to these growing concerns. Bream started out by asking about multiple attacks on vessels traversing the Red Sea and Iran's apparent involvement in them.
BREAM: I want to start with some overnight news from CENTCOM about more attacks in the Red Sea. They say...Saturday, they took down four incoming drones to a U.S. destroyer. That destroyer was then asked to come to the aid of two different commercial vessels that said they came under attack or attempted attack. Iran seems to be behind much of this...Do you think the Biden administration is taking the appropriate response — action — with regard to Iran's involvement in all of these things?
HAGERTY: They're not taking a consistent response, so of course it's not appropriate. That's why Iran feels emboldened. What we've seen is — put two aircraft carrier strike groups in the region. That's a massive show of military force. But we've been highly inconsistent in terms of the way we deal with Iran — from an economic standpoint and from a diplomatic standpoint.
From an economic standpoint, Shannon, you remember, under President Trump, we put in place the maximum pressure campaign. I worked on that in his administration. We brought down Iran's foreign currency reserves to below $8 billion. As soon as Joe Biden came into office, they stopped enforcing the sanctions, billions of dollars began to flow — according to our estimates, they've enriched themselves by over $100 billion in terms of illicit oil sales — and it continues, just because the Biden administration wants to appease the Iranian regime.
As Hagerty points out, the Biden administration's strange impulse to bend over backward for the Iranian regime extends beyond the economic realm. He continued:
From a diplomatic standpoint, we've been sending mixed messages to Israel. You know, we talk about cease-fires, we talk about sending humanitarian aid into Gaza, we talk about putting conditions on aid. These mixed messages and the fact that we've allowed Iran to enrich itself and repopulate Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis with the weapons that they need have created this situation.
We need to come back and snap back economic sanctions immediately on Iran. We need to send a clear diplomatic message. That's what we need to see to get the situation to calm down. We have to maintain freedom of navigation operations in the seas. We cannot cede that to Iran.
As to whether we might expect a consistent, appropriate response from this administration anytime soon, holding your breath is ill-advised. As RedState's Streiff has detailed, U.S. efforts at building a security coalition in the Red Sea have run aground:
Now, when the chips are down, we see that our "allies and partners" have figured out what the rest of us have. The US is an erratic, unstable, and unreliable ally. It will abandon you at the drop of a hat. It will do profoundly stupid stuff without a second thought. American military leadership is so weak and feeble that you need to think twice about placing your men and ships under American command.
On the whole, I think we can safely say that Joe Biden has fully implemented Barack Obama's "lead from behind" strategy. Our military is so physically weak that it can't do some missions alone and is perceived as so incompetent that no one cares to follow us.
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Biden's Plan to Safeguard Red Sea Trade From Houthis May Match Afghanistan in Incompetence
The good news is, the economy is going swimmingly.
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