Last week, Iranian forces, together with allied Iraqi Shiite militias, began an offensive to take Fallujah from Islamic State (IS). The campaign’s success, writes Lee Smith, depends on American aerial support, but while the U.S. and the Islamic Republic do share a common enemy in IS, the administration’s policy of cooperation ignores the differences between their goals and is bound to end poorly:

The White House says it is fighting IS, but its Iranian and Iranian-backed partners say the war is about killing Sunnis. “There are no patriots, no real religious people in Fallujah,” said the leader of one Shiite militia. “It’s our chance to clear Iraq by eradicating the cancer of Fallujah.” That doesn’t sound like the kind of ally the United States should be embracing. That sounds like the United States taking sides in a sectarian war against the Sunni Arab regional majority.

There is no way to defeat IS unless the administration can get Sunni Arab leaders, especially tribal sheikhs, to join the fight. Only they have the local forces and knowledge to root out IS. But obviously no tribal leaders will enjoin their brothers to open up a Sunni civil war so that the Shiites and Iranians may profit from their spilling each other’s blood. To destroy IS, the United States will have to move against the Shiite groups that are terrorizing Sunnis. . . . But that hasn’t happened with this White House for the same reason that the administration never moved to topple Bashar al-Assad—President Obama doesn’t want to get their Iranian patrons mad. . . .

Barack Obama is not a bystander [in this conflict], an impartial observer who just decided to let American allies—or, in his words, “free riders”—twist in the wind while America turned to its domestic issues. He switched sides.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.