“Don’t,” our octogenarian president frequently warns the enemies of freedom around the globe. Russia received the admonition. So did Iran. After Biden’s feeble attempts at deterrence, Russia rolled into Ukraine and Iran launched an unprecedented volley of missiles and kamikaze drones at Israel.
If that was the extent of Biden’s interactions and tolerance of bad acts by such enemies constituting this modern axis of evil, the state of things would be pathetically tragic. But it’s worse than that.
As Biden’s “deterrence” fails, he continues to be a boon for America’s enemies, not just because they can easily flaunt his warnings without significant consequence as he erodes and degrades United States influence on the world stage.
Iran has reaped billions of dollars from Biden’s inexplicable policy of unfreezing access to funds that allowed Tehran to offset other costs and double down on its sponsorship of terrorists around the world. In addition to unfreezing billions for Tehran, the Biden administration has failed to stop Iran from profiting from oil exports.
In just the first quarter of 2024, Iran managed to export some 140 million barrels of black gold despite its role supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups attacking Israel and U.S. forces in the region. In March, Iran’s daily oil exports reached the highest level since the Trump administration instituted its “maximum pressure” campaign that crushed Tehran’s illicit sales.
When Biden took office, he nixed the maximum pressure campaign and allowed multiple sanctions to expire. Since January 2021, it’s now estimated that Iran has made $40 billion more from illicit oil sales alone than it would have been able to under Trump’s policy. Additional U.S. laws target such illegal trade but are dependent on the Biden administration using and enforcing these tools to crack down.
China enjoys a closer relationship with Russia thanks to Biden’s completely botched attempt to use Beijing to convince Putin an invasion of Ukraine was a bad idea. For months, the Biden administration shared intel with Bejing as it urged China to dissuade Putin from invading. Instead of doing that, quite predictably, China told Russia what the U.S. had passed along, giving Putin a better idea of what was known to the free world about his military’s troop and weapon movements before the invasion.
In addition, China is a major trade partner of Iran, including the top importer of Iranian oil. Overall, it’s estimated that China imported more than $9.7 billion worth of Iranian goods in the first quarter of 2024 — more than 95 percent of which were sanctioned.
Russia and Iran, too, enjoy a flourishing relationship thanks to Biden’s failure to do anything to address the ever-closer relationship between the two totalitarian regimes. Iranian-made kamikaze drones were initially transferred to Russia and proved successful in the eyes of Russian commanders. So, Iran helped Russia build a factory to mass-produce them closer to the conflict.
North Korea, though less well-equipped to pitch in on major conflicts at the scale of China or Iran, has also been helping Russia and Iran. Years of cooperation have taken place between North Korea and Iran on missile technology as both rogue states seek to develop nuclear weapons. North Korea has also, for more than one year, been transferring munitions to Russia to aid its war on Ukraine.
Sure, NATO has become stronger in recent years in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Military cooperation among nations of the free world has increased as well. But such strengthening is a direct result of the increased cooperation and hostile acts of this menacing axis of evil consisting of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. The threat they pose grows more significant and existential to America and its allies, but all Biden has managed to do is push our foes closer together while watching on the sidelines.
