For decades, writes Tony Badran, U.S. policy in Lebanon has focused on strengthening the country’s institutions—both civilian and military—so that they can serve as a bulwark against Hizballah and other terrorist groups. The rare exception was when Barack Obama was in the White House, as he recognized the truth that Lebanon lay squarely in Iran’s sphere of influence, albeit with a troubling willingness to accept that state of affairs. Badran writes:

Lebanon is not a U.S. ally. It is, rather, an Iranian satrapy under the control of Hizballah, the local arm of [Iran’s] Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Hizballah uses the country as a base for worldwide military and terrorist operations and for training other Iran-backed militias, not to mention as a center for money laundering and illicit finance. Contrary to the traditional conception, Hizballah is not exploiting a safe haven or ungoverned spaces. Instead, it has established itself as the dominant political actor in the country. Hizballah is the state.

Recognizing Iran’s position in Lebanon, the Trump administration resolved to treat the country as an arena of competition with Iran. While the impulse was laudable, the concept was flawed. The idea of competing with Iran disregards Beirut’s reality and treats it as a “winnable” prize—provided America makes the right investment in the Lebanese political order. As a result, “competition with Iran” drags us into increased investment, financial and political, in “state institutions,” which Americans then convince themselves will, sometime in the indeterminate future, counterbalance Hizballah.

This approach misses the most elementary fact of Lebanese politics. What we refer to as “state institutions” are merely the extension of sectarian power dynamics between the leaders of the country’s main sects.

The policy of “competing” with Iran in Lebanon turns the United States into a player in the local political game that is rigged against it. Instead, the United States should treat Lebanon as a theater in which to target Iranian interests. Punitive measures should be designed to do just that: to punish Hizballah and its allies. They should not be regarded as one part of some larger effort at political engineering in Lebanon.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”