Help Israel Fight Iran And Sufficiently Arm Ukraine

While the world is riveted on Israel’s heroic, necessary war against the evil Iranian regime, the U.S. must not undermine Ukraine.

The next few weeks will profoundly affect the future security of the U.S. and the Free World.

The immediate question is whether the Israelis with appropriate American support will fully finish off Iran’s nuclear program, including the elimination of the mullahs’ ballistic missiles and missile launchers and the regime’s capacity to manufacture drones.

Nothing less will do. Before the Israeli attacks, the Trump Administration was making unsettling noises that it might agree to let Iran continue with a supposedly peaceful program of uranium enrichment, while the ayatollahs pretended to wind down the country’s nuclear bomb efforts. Thankfully, that plan now looks to be out the window. The mullahs aren’t businessmen out to cut a good financial deal. They want the blood of those they consider unbelievers, including the annihilation of Israel.

Chatter now about negotiations should just be a distraction to the fundamental task at hand: obliterating Iran’s nuclear efforts once and for all.

Israel should also be unhindered in dealing decisively with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other Iranian proxies.

Xi Jinping as well as our own allies will be looking closely to see if the U.S. has the backbone and strategic wisdom to credibly counter China and our other adversaries.

This brings us to another crucial test: Ukraine. Too many policymakers and onlookers seem oblivious to the strategic importance of the war raging there.

Washington has a history of profoundly misjudging the character of Vladimir Putin. He can be charming and seem sincerely interested in working with other leaders, especially American presidents. Before President George W. Bush belatedly woke up to the true Putin, he declared,“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.… I was able to get a sense of his soul.” Bush’s successors haven’t been much better.

Despite his blunders—and with Russian casualties now approaching 1 million—Putin still believes he can win this war. He’s convinced that his meat-grinder offensives will wear down the Ukrainians as he gains more and more Ukrainian territory. These gains, Putin thinks, will lead Washington to taper off crucial weapons support from the U.S. and NATO. The U.S. will effectively wash its hands of Ukraine.

Such an abandonment would be a strategic catastrophe on the scale of the 1938 Munich agreement, when Britain and France threw Czechoslovakia over to Adolph Hitler.

President Trump’s persistent wooing of Putin fans these concerns. His remarking that the G7 should be the G8 with Russia brought back into this exclusive club—or even the G9, with China in as well—and other mollifying gestures stir deep anxieties.

The correct course is clear: Help Israel do what needs to be done with the ayatollahs and sufficiently arm Ukraine to thwart Putin’s imperial designs, and the world will be a safer, better place.