President Joe Biden has less than a month in office, but that might be enough time to leave a very big mess on President-elect Donald Trump’s desk. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan presented Biden with plans to bomb Iranian nuclear sites before the end of his term “in a meeting several weeks ago,” Axios reported on Thursday. A source told Axios that Biden’s inner circle believes that he has both “an imperative and an opportunity to strike” now.
The same day, former Biden administration official Richard Nephew published an essay in Foreign Affairs arguing that “the case against military action is not so neat” anymore and that the United States “may have little choice but to attack Iran—and soon.” Nephew had once been a harsh critic of Trump’s attempts to pressure and threaten Iran. Now, like many other Democrats, he seems to be shifting from a dove to a hawk.
The Biden camp is following a path trod by the first Trump administration. Throughout Trump’s last year in office, his own inner circle talked about “military action to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons if Trump were to lose the election,” The New Yorker reported. A week after he lost the election, Trump asked for military options, The New York Times confirmed. The final discussion happened exactly four years ago—on January 3, 2021—when Trump’s advisers agreed that it was “too late to hit them,” according to The New Yorker.
In other words, the president starting a war that close to the end of his term would be severely overstepping his mandate.
Hellbound and Down 