Biden response strikes only a distraction unless they target, destroy top Iranian military leaders, capabilities

Iran-backed terrorist proxies recently killed three American soldiers and wounded more than 40.

After a week of publicly telegraphing their plans to strike back, the Biden administration over the weekend hit 85 targets in Iraq and Syria and 36 targets in Yemen.

It is too early to assess how effective these US strikes have been and whether we will see multiple strikes over the coming days and weeks.

We will hear about how many targets were struck, how many militia members were killed, and which military capabilities were destroyed.

Strike at Iran

But this is a distraction: We should assess the effectiveness of these strikes by how many senior officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are killed and how many of the military capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran are destroyed.

We should not be impressed by the administration’s assessment of how American bombs took out ammunition dumps, intelligence facilities, radars and command and control centers controlled by militias, and Iraqis, Syrians and Yemenis fighting for Tehran.

After all, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is happy to replenish his terror proxies with more weapons to fight the US and our allies to the last militia member.

What he really fears is direct American power against his regime.

We should learn from the Israelis. Israel has quietly killed 17 senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards since Dec. 25. The IRGC has now pulled their senior commanders out of Syria.

The Israelis don’t telegraph their punches, they don’t leak to reporters their plans, they don’t let their targets get out of Dodge. They strike the regime directly. They keep quiet.

Restore sanctions

The Biden administration also has to stop providing the mullahs who are killing Americans with billions of dollars in sanctions relief.

For three years, President Biden has stopped enforcing the oil sanctions that drove Iranian oil sales to 100,000 barrels per day during the Trump administration. Now they are more than 1.3 million barrels per day.

Iran’s foreign exchange reserves have spiked from $4 billion to more than $20 billion under Biden.

Is it any surprise that Iran’s economy grew faster under Biden than did the American economy?

Biden also gave Iran access to $16 billion in frozen oil funds for what he says will be humanitarian purchases.

But the regime knows that money is fungible and, as in the past, it will be using those billions to finance its war machine.

If Biden doesn’t want the violence to escalate into a major regional war, he needs to make Khamenei understand the direct costs for his regime from continued violence against ­Americans.

Mark Dubowitz is Chief Executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).