A friend of mine who was once conservative and then broke under Trump Derangement Syndrome told me that it was Trump’s fault that Israel was attacked on October 7. Thinking about it, he’s right. In a funny way, Trump’s policies did lead to this, but Biden pulled the trigger. An interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Turkish CNN helps clarify everything. I should say, too, that I think that what’s happening now is awesome, and that’s due to the Harris-Biden administration (not that either Harris or Biden wanted this outcome).

So, please bear with me as I unpack this.

The 1967 War wasn’t just an Israeli triumph. It was also an important triumph in the Cold War. That’s because, before the 1967 War, the Soviet Union had been reasonably friendly to Israel, which had been founded as a secular-socialist nation. By 1967, though, the Soviet Union had turned against Israel, which, since then, has been completely allied with America.

Image: X screen grab.

For decades now, as part of this allegiance, Israel has allowed America to tell her whether it’s okay to wage a war and when to pull back from that war. In essence, America had the primary seat in Israel’s war cabinet. The reason Israel gave this authority to another country was because of an unspoken premise: America, the most powerful nation in the world, would protect Israel from the annihilation her regional enemies threatened.

Moreover, Israel and America had a common enemy: Iran.

Democrats ignore that Iran’s chants have been “Death to America! Death to Israel!” They also ignore that, to Iran, while Israel is the “Little Satan,” it is America that is the “Great Satan.” The thousands of American civilian lives lost to Iranian-funded terrorism, whether civilians in hijackings or bombings or troops killed in the Marine barracks bombing or through Iranian support in Iraq, attest to the fact that Iran has long been in a hot war against America

Things began to shift under Obama, who thought that the solution to the Middle East conflict was to make nice with Iran. I won’t get into his motives, but the one thing we can know is that they were not intended to support America’s long-time ally, Israel. Empowering Iran could only put Israel at risk. What Obama, himself a bully, seemed not to grasp is that when you grovel before a bully, he doesn’t respect you; he only abuses you more.

Nevertheless, political dynamics change slowly. So, even though Obama decidedly tilted American politics away from Israel, Israel still acted as if it owed America fealty. It still shared its intelligence with America, discussed its plans with America, and heeded America when America yanked on the leash.

Trump marked a sea change in American politics. First, he was affirmatively pro-Israel, as evidenced by his moving the American embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli control over the Golan Heights.

Second, he stopped rewarding the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza for their intransigence. In the past, when they walked away from a negotiation, America wooed them back to the table with increased promises. Trump did the opposite. Every time they walked away, he took things off the table. Refusing to negotiate was no longer a winning tactic.

Lastly, Trump sidelined the Iranians. One of the reasons there were no major terrorist attacks on his watch was that he was breaking them economically. Then, he killed the IRGC’s terrorist chief, who was conveniently in Iraq. Had the repercussions of that strike been allowed to play out, Iran’s mullahs might have gone under.

Trump also sidelined the West Bankians and Gazans when he negotiated the Abraham Accords. Basically, he said to the Sunni Arab nations, You need to work with Israel. Not only will this counter the Shia threat Iran poses to all of you, but it will also bring you new kinds of prosperity, especially as your oil wells are slowing. During his talk at the UN, PM Netanyahu had a visual showing the two choices Trump offered the Sunni nations:

Had Trump remained president, it’s a certainty that the region would have shifted to Israel because America’s might, protection, and moral heft, as well as Iran’s economic decline, would have been behind the shift. However, because election shenanigans threw the 2020 election to Biden, everything changed.

Once Biden was in the White House, he brought wealth back to the mullahs; the Sunni nations got nervous without Trump as their protector; and, when Trump got back in the election game, Iran realized it had a limited window of time within which to undermine the Abraham Accords. That’s why it weaponized its proxies in October. So yes, in a way, my friend was right: Trump set the table for the attack because Iran had to destroy the Abraham Accords.

But, to switch metaphors, it was Biden who pulled the trigger. You see, Israel always had the ability to destroy Hezbollah and the mullahs. The pager attack was in the works for 15 years. Israel had long ago infiltrated Hezbollah. After all, when you have a regime built upon sadism, people will do what they can to help out the regime’s opponents.

Israel also had a fair amount of control within Iran. We know that because of an amazing interview the former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave on Turkish CNN:

The only thing stopping Israel was America. When Biden turned on Israel—when he slow-walked weapons to the point of an effective boycott, when he kept leaking Israel’s plans, when he tried to save Hamas through ceasefires as Israel was prevailing against an existential enemy, and when he built a pier that effectively resupplied Hamas—Israel finally broke the leash. America no longer guaranteed protection, so its magical control over Israel ended.

That’s what triggered Israel’s sudden willingness to destroy every Iranian proxy—Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Had Biden backed Israel, none of this would have happened—not October 7; not Hamas’s or Hezbollah’s destruction; and not the mullah’s panic that the house of cards in which they live, one built upon greed, the lust for power, and sadism, would collapse around them.

So, both Trump and (yes) Biden deserve credit for what’s happening now—and it’s a glorious thing.