This is John Batchelor, conversation with Victor Davis Hansen, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution asking why it is that the Biden administration is reluctant to name Iran,

Tehran, the mullahs, as the driver of the Gaza conflict, as the driver of

the attacks on Israel by Hezbollah from the north, by Hamas in Gaza, by the Khaty Hezbollah, salve

as salvowing US and Kurdish personnel in Syria, Jordan,

and Iraq in retaliation, they the the huthies of Yemen in retaliation they say

all driven by Iran so why is the administration reluctant to say that it's Iran, not Israel, not Hamas, not Hezbollah, but Iran that is

the disruptor of peace in the Middle East and the challenge to comity across the planet Iran.

Victor explains why not Iran.

They don't want to do it because they came into power with a narrative that said

We need to do what Brock Obama tried to do and bring Iran back into the family of nations in the Middle East, even though moderate regimes

like the Kuwaitis, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians didn't trust them for good reasons.

But they tried that.

And so they got rid of the Huthies terrorist designation.

They let the Lebanese under the Hezbollah subtext negotiate gas rights with Israel to their advantage,

to Lebanon's advantage, they got, they tried to get back in the Iran deal, they lifted the sanctions on oil, they gave money to Hamas, and then it all blew up.

And for them then to go and retaliate at the source of all of this terrorism would be to admit,

as Jake Sullivan said, we had a very calm portfolio.

The subtext of that statement, John, when Jags Selvin said that, not that long before

October 7th, was Iran has not been stirring up trouble. And now we realize that if that Iran is and if they were to go and attack

Iran or warn Iran they're going to pay a heavy price and that would prove to everybody that their last three years

was an ungodly disaster and then second were an election year.

And if you go into Iran, you're going to have, they think, I'm not sure that's true, but they think they're going to have a wider Middle East war on their watch during an election.

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