President Joe Biden's decision to pay a $6 billion ransom to Iran in exchange for five American hostages is just another example of his administration's consistent record of alienating America's friends and rewarding America's enemies. At $1.2 billion per hostage, Biden will be paying Iran's mullahs the biggest ransom in nearly five centuries. The last time such a large ransom was paid was in 1532, when Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro freed Atahualpa, the last emperor of the Inca, in exchange for the equivalent of $1.5 billion in today's money.
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This ransom deal will no doubt send a message to America's enemies that the US is prepared to pay very handsomely to anyone who takes Americans hostage. The deal also puts billions of dollars into the coffers of the Islamic Republic – money that the mullahs will surely use to fund more terrorism, not to mention its rapidly advancing nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
But Biden's deal with Iran is certainly not the first time the appeasement-loving president has given a major funding boost to terrorists. In fact, his administration has been dolling out big bucks to terrorists since he took office.
Shortly after Biden assumed the US presidency, he resumed funding to the Palestinians, which had been suspended by the previous Trump administration. He has since given the Palestinians more than $1 billion, even though they refuse to end their pay-for-slay policy of paying terrorists and their families generous monthly salaries for killing Israelis.
According to a study by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), there is a strong correlation between aid to the Palestinians and the incidence of terrorism against Israelis. The study found that whenever aid to the Palestinians decreased, attacks on Israelis also decreased. Conversely, when American aid increased, terrorist attacks against Israelis increased.
In fact, the Biden administration was well-aware that its aid to the Palestinians might end up helping terrorists. In May 2021, for instance, the State Department wrote, "We assess there is a high risk Hamas could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from US assistance to Gaza," which Hamas currently controls. Hence, Biden knew he could be funding Israel's enemy, but did so anyway, while at the same time castigating the Jewish state for building homes for Israelis in Judea and Samaria – the core of the Jewish people's ancestral homeland.
Biden has also ruined relations with US ally Saudi Arabia – first, by trying to restore the Iran nuclear deal, which the Saudis, not to mention other US allies in the region, including Israel, strongly oppose – and second, by threatening to make the Saudi kingdom a pariah state because of its human rights record. After all, advocating for human rights was supposed to be a cornerstone of the Biden administration.
Yet, human rights didn't stop Biden from withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan and leaving the country's population at the mercy of the Taliban. Indeed, if human rights are so important to Biden, then why did his administration do nothing to support the masses of Iranians protesting against their country's brutal regime after the murder of Mahsa Amini? The President had a golden opportunity to severely cripple, or even depose, Iran's Islamist dictatorship. But instead, he sat on his hands and did nothing. It's pretty hypocritical for the President to be lecturing the Saudis or anyone else on human rights while at the same time abandoning the people of Afghanistan and Iran to regimes that have no respect for such rights.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that the Biden administration abandoned US support for the Saudi-led war on the Houthis, Iran's proxy terrorist militia in Yemen, which has managed to take over more than half the country, including the capital Sanaa, while also launching terrorist attacks against the Saudis on many occasions. In fact, Biden even removed the Houthis from the State Department's list of designated terrorist organizations.
Feeling alienated by the Biden administration, Saudi Arabia and other US allies in the Middle East have sought new alliances. Enter the People's Republic of China, which is more than happy to fill the void left by the US Indeed, it was not too long ago that the Chinese managed to broker the restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
China has even been courting Israel. In June, the emerging superpower extended an invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a state visit – as Netanyahu was still waiting for an invite to the US by President Biden. Highly unusual since the Israeli prime minister is customarily invited to the White House whenever a new president takes office.
If Biden believes that his administration can continue to alienate US allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, while rewarding the likes of Iran and its terrorist proxies without causing permanent damage to American interests in the region, he and his administration are in for a rude awakening.
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