Former president Donald Trump blasted the Biden-Harris administration's declaration that it would not support an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites as payback for Tehran's massive ballistic missile attack on the Jewish state.
Asked Wednesday whether he would support such a strike, President Joe Biden said, "The answer is no." Trump, speaking Thursday at a campaign rally in Michigan, said Biden's position shows that "we have incompetent people running our country."
"I said, 'Did he say that?'" Trump said of Biden. "Isn't it supposed to be the opposite? 'As long as you do destroy the nuclear weapons,' right?"
"He's the worst foreign policy president in history, and everybody knew that from the beginning," Trump went on. "He said, 'As long as they don't destroy the nuclear.' And I'm still trying to figure that one out. Nobody can figure it out. He can't figure it out either, come to think."
Biden's fresh red line, experts and former U.S. officials told the Washington Free Beacon, was meant to handicap Israeli war planners as they plot a retaliatory strike on Iran that is expected to unfold in the coming days.
"We'll be discussing with the Israelis what they're going to do," Biden said, adding that Israel has "a right to respond, but they should respond in proportion." Israeli officials have nonetheless teased a "harsh response" to Iran's second missile strike in less than a year.
"We see indications that Israel will likely not be deterred from an appropriate response this time around," a U.S. official told the Free Beacon on Wednesday. "The Biden-Harris administration foolishly held Israel back after Iran's missile attack in April, and now we see the result."
Israel is believed to be assessing potential targets across Iran, including its military sites, oil infrastructure, missile depots, air defense systems, and contested nuclear facilities. Other sites on Israel's radar include the weapons factories that made the ballistic missiles used in Tuesday's attack.