Playing Politics with the Gaza Terror Attack

Screen capture courtesy of NBC’s Meet the Press

There once was an unspoken tradition in U.S. politics that, in the face of an attack by an enemy, either upon U.S. citizens or those of an ally, the parties would put aside politics for the moment and unite behind the President. It was important, once upon a better time, to present a united rather than a divided front, because otherwise the enemy could exploit our divisions and gain an advantage. There was no precedent for immediately blaming the White House, instead of the terrorists, for an attack like we saw out of Gaza on Saturday.

And yet, we remain in unprecedented times, so attack Joe Biden they did. 

A principal line of attack by the GOP concerns Iran. Recently, the Biden Administration granted further access by Iran to $6 billion in oil revenues that had been frozen and held overseas. That move was part of a diplomatic effort to obtain the release of prisoners held by Iran, within the larger context of wanting to restart the nuclear agreements that ex-president Trump had pulled the U.S. out of. But to hear the Republicans put it, Iran took that unfrozen $6 billion and promptly funded Hamas with it, leading directly to the deadliest attack in 50 years on Israel. (This is untrue, for reasons I’ll explain below.)

With U.S. citizens reportedly among those killed or taken hostage, public anger and angst are likely to grow, and we should also expect Republicans to capitalize upon a perceived failure in foreign policy. After all, this is the party that brought us some 10 hearings on Benghazi, and that tragedy was peanuts compared to this. But who bears primary responsibility for a failure to head off the attack?

Finally, and adding to the mix, the U.S. is currently politically weakened by the lack of a Speaker in the House to push through more funding and aid, by the lack of a confirmed U.S. ambassador to Israel, and by a backlog of military promotions caused by Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Tuberville has maintained that nothing about the crisis in Gaza will move him off his holds. Our military readiness is directly affected by his political brinksmanship.

Yes, this is a mess. 

So let’s untangle a bit of it today to try and render a clearer picture, starting with the Iran deal and Republicans’ worst and best arguments about that. Then we’ll look at the failure to interdict the terrorists and what critics are likely to charge. Finally, we’ll examine the dysfunction in Congress and how that might impact our options on aid.

Before I proceed, I want to note that the Palestinian Question and the terror attack out of Gaza are deeply intertwined, but today’s piece is not about either the roots of that question, any solutions to the state of siege in Gaza, the inhumanity of the terror attack, or the inevitable retaliation by Israel and likely long war to follow. Those topics are admittedly far beyond my pay grade and expertise.

My piece in The Big Picture, out tomorrow, touches generally upon these issues, but it will focus primarily on how the attack has reshuffled our geopolitics, which is something I can speak to more authoritatively. Be sure you’re subscribed to The Big Picture so that my piece goes straight to your inbox tomorrow!

Now, on to the subject at hand: playing politics with the terror attack.

Did Iran use the $6 billion to fund the Hamas attack?

Shortly after news hit of the terrorism out of Gaza, Republicans went on the offensive. Donald Trump charged that the attack was due to the fact that we in the U.S. have a “really weak leader.” And his rival Gov. Ron DeSantis argued that the Iranians are funding Hamas “through money they got through the Biden Administration’s weak policies.”

Republican politicians also took to social media to blame the Biden Administration for the terror attack. Wrote Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), a presidential candidate running in the GOP primaries, on the X Platform:

Biden’s weakness invited the attack.

Biden’s negotiation funded the attack.

Biden admin wanted Israel to stand down after the attack.

At this point, Biden is complicit.

That last line, wow. (For the record, Biden stated in unequivocal terms that Israel has the right to defend itself, full stop.)

Sen. Scott was not alone in turning immediate blame upon the White House instead of fully upon Hamas where it belongs. Wrote his fellow senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) on X,

As we watch this horrible situation in Israel unfold, Americans must face a stark truth: our tax dollars funded this. 

Money is fungible, and many of the dollars we sent to Iran are being used to now kill innocent people. 

This must stop. 

Israel has every right to defend itself. I wish our friends well, but most of all I wish they weren’t fighting against weapons bought with our money.

This statement is riddled with falsehoods intended to mislead and inflame his supporters, including the demonstrably untrue statement that U.S. tax dollars funded weapons used in the attack. 

But do these critics have a valid, bigger point? Didn’t Biden release $6 billion to Iran as part of the prisoner swap deal?

As The Hill reported, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was clear in dispelling this as well. “The facts are these — no U.S. taxpayer dollars were involved,” Blinken said, speaking to CNN’s State of the Union. “These were Iranian resources that Iran had accumulated from the sale of its oil that were stuck in a bank in South Korea. They have had from day one, under our law, under our sanctions, the right to use these monies for humanitarian purposes.”

“As of now, not a single dollar has been spent from that account.”

Those are the facts. No money has moved, and there is no connection between those funds and the attack on Saturday. Moreover, and importantly, the $6 billion unfrozen by the Biden Administration is to be used only for food, medicine and other humanitarian goods, and the U.S. Treasury has direct oversight on how that money will be spent.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who is also running for president, nevertheless took issue with Blinken’s denial. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Haley argued that Iran will “go and spread terrorism every time they get a dollar” and that “Secretary Blinken is just wrong to imply that this money is not being moved around as we speak.” 

When confronted with the fact that she actually has no evidence that Iran used U.S. released funds to finance the attack, and that it was irresponsible at this time to level that attack, Haley dissembled, saying that her evidence is to “look at what the Iranian people have done to freedom loving people around the world, look at what the Iranian people, the Iranian regime, has done to threaten Israel over the years.”

With respect to the argument that “money is fungible” and that if the Iranians know they have $6 billion to spend on humanitarian aid, they could then go ahead and spend money on terror, dollar for dollar, this doesn’t reflect reality. When it has had the chance to do so, Iran has not in fact spent money earmarked for humanitarian aid on its own people but rather continued to spend on funding terror, irrespective of how much its own people are suffering. 

The $6 billion, for example, was available to Iran from day one to be used for humanitarian purposes, albeit through more hoops under ex-president Trump. But it never actually drew upon those funds. As Blinken noted on Meet the Press,

Iran has, unfortunately, always used and focused its funds on supporting terrorism, on supporting groups like Hamas. And it’s done that when there have been sanctions. It’s done that when there haven’t been sanctions. And it’s always prioritized that. And, again, I come back to the proposition that these funds have always been, under the law, available to Iran to use for humanitarian purposes.

Who is to blame for this foreign policy fail?

When things go badly for U.S. foreign policy in any way, the GOP can be counted on lately to seize upon it. As GOP chair Ronna McDaniel noted, saying the quiet part out loud, the attack provides a “great opportunity” for Republican candidates to contrast how they have “stood with Israel time and time again.”

In the raw world of U.S. politics, it seems even a horrific terrorist attack can have a silver lining.

One line of criticism, especially given the number of Americans killed or taken hostage by Hamas militants, likely will be around how the White House was caught off guard by the attack. After all, the planning of this attack by its nature involved hundreds of individuals, thousands of rockets, and extensive coordination on timing and execution.

While this is a valid criticism, this is first and foremost a failure by Israeli intelligence, whose job it is to monitor activity among extremists and to infiltrate their ranks enough to gain access to plans for an attack, especially one as extensive as this. As the Washington Post noted, Israel has drones in the sky and sensors to detect tunnels. And the crammed Gaza Strip is under a brutal quarantine akin to an open-air prison. The U.S. had no reason to believe its closest partner in the region couldn’t handle the situation, as it has before.

In the past, Israel’s technological superiority was sufficient to disrupt militants’ plans and take out extremists in surgical strikes. But Hamas responded, apparently, by going back to low tech and person-to-person communications that evaded detection by Israeli (and U.S.) intelligence.

It isn’t clear yet how far Republicans might press the perceived failure to thwart the attack to try and lay the blame with the Biden White House instead of with the Netanyahu administration. Any call for hearings and inquiries would be blunted by the fact that, while president, Trump’s cavalier handling of sensitive intelligence likely led to less information sharing between Israel and the U.S. and a breakdown of trust. Moreover, in the eyes of his critics, Trump had been too cozy with the Russians, who support the Iranians, who in turn support Hamas. 

There are also rumblings that Israel’s political instability may have contributed to the lack of readiness. As the AP reported,

Israel has also been preoccupied and torn apart by Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan. Netanyahu had received repeated warnings by his defense chiefs, as well as several former leaders of the country’s intelligence agencies, that the divisive plan was chipping away at the cohesion of the country’s security services. 

Martin Indyk, who served as a special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during the Obama administration, said internal divisions over the legal changes was an aggravating factor that contributed to the Israelis being caught off guard.

Speaking of lack of readiness…

The crisis and now outright war in the Gaza Strip is shining a harsh light upon the lack of U.S. political stability as well. While the White House can approve some emergency funding for Israel, the kind of bigger aid package that will be needed requires congressional action, two words that are rather oxymoronic these days.

Without a Speaker elected in the House, no emergency funding bill can advance. And we won’t know until Wednesday whether the process of electing a new Speaker will be quick or protracted, as it was before. Moreover, many in Congress will want to tie aid to Israel with aid to Ukraine, since they are both fighting against the same axis of power and violence represented by Russia and Iran. Yet because Trump is adamant about no new money for Ukraine, the funding bills may stall out in the House.

Over in the Senate, which isn’t even back this week, they have yet to confirm Biden’s appointment for U.S. Ambassador to Israel, and they have hundreds of military positions and promotions remaining unfilled due to Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s hold. And while the Senate seems more ready and willing to provide aid packages to both Israel and Ukraine, it cannot force the House to pass any bills. 

To the extent that Israel’s political fracturing, as well as its own extremist politics, may have led to a lack of preparedness by its intelligence and military, the U.S. should take a hard look. There was very good reason in years past for calls of unity when it came to foreign policy. In times of crisis, our enemies are ready to exploit any internal division and strife and to weaken our resolve, especially through willing puppets like Trump and the pro-Putin wing of the GOP. 

Russia is likely looking on with satisfaction and interest as even a terrorist attack of this gruesome magnitude appears insufficient to lead the GOP into supporting the U.S. President rather than attacking him out the gate.