Perhaps the most critical question for deciding what the American response should be to the barbarian attack on Israel (“terrorist attack” is too generous) is whether Iran orchestrated it. You will not be surprised to learn that there are two opposite versions being given, one by the Biden State Department/New York Times, and one by journalists at the Wall Street Journal who looked into it.

This is the Times’ account:

The United States has collected multiple pieces of intelligence that show that key Iranian leaders were surprised by the Hamas attack in Israel, information that has fueled U.S. doubts that Iran played a direct role in planning the assault, according to several American officials.

The United States, Israel and key regional allies have not found evidence that Iran directly helped plan the attack, according to the U.S. officials, an Israeli official and another official in the Middle East.

While the U.S. officials would not identify the Iranian officials who expressed surprise at the weekend’s events, they said the Iranian officials were people who typically would be aware of operations involving the Quds Force, Iran’s paramilitary arm that supports and works with proxy forces.

U.S. officials said the intelligence investigation was continuing and could turn up evidence that Iran or other states were directly involved in the Hamas operation. Senior officials said they were keeping an open mind, reviewing old intelligence reports and looking for new information.

This is the one given by the WSJ:

Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.

Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions—the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—those people said.

Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said.

U.S. officials say they haven’t seen evidence of Tehran’s involvement. In an interview with CNN that aired Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “We have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there is certainly a long relationship.”

“We don’t have any information at this time to corroborate this account,” said a U.S. official of the meetings.

A European official and an adviser to the Syrian government, however, gave the same account of Iran’s involvement in the lead-up to the attack as the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members.

I doubt Ringside readers will have a hard time figuring out which account is the truth, but it’s worth spelling out anyway.

Ever since Jimmy Carter decided not to impose any price on Iran for its first hostage taking, Democratic administrations (with for the most part an insufficiently different approach by Republican ones) have been, to put it generously, passive. Essentially no price has been exacted. (Loudly announced but largely unenforced oil embargoes don’t count, nor do “sanctions” that accomplish next to nothing or absolutely nothing). Initially I thought this was just because of Carter’s weakness and cowardice, but forty-three years of more-or-less the same supine stance has convinced me there’s something different going on.

Much of the difference was tipped off years ago in the Obama administration, when it came out that our foreign policy leaders had decided to accept if not indeed support Iran as a “regional power,” even while, for PR purposes, occasionally pretending to oppose its sponsorship of worldwide terrorism. This was followed up by the infamous nuclear agreement, in which Iran was allowed to continue to develop The Bomb, only (supposedly) at a slower rate in future years, in exchange for an immediate cash payment of a few billion dollars. (Of course the major pretense was not that we allegedly got a postponed schedule for Iran to become a nuclear power, but that Iran could be trusted to keep any agreement to do anything).

Obama’s understudy, the feckless Joe Biden, isn’t resolute in much anymore, what with creeping senility, but he is resolute in wanting to re-instate this agreement, which fortunately Donald Trump repudiated (much to the Democrats’ anguish). Biden’s minions at the State Department are also resolute in wanting to derail the rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia (and perhaps other Gulf States wisely fearful of Iran). If Iran is found to be behind the barbarian attack — the one that, besides butchering hundreds of Israeli civilians, murdered about two dozen Americans, took others hostage, and beheaded infants, among its other “accomplishments” — Biden’s plans will be harder for him to implement. Sucking up to mere hostage takers is bad enough PR, as Carter found out when he lost in a landslide to “cowboy” Ronald Reagan (a defeat of which Biden and his crew are painfully aware). Sucking up to those who have actually murdered Americans (while desirable to the Left because of its value in debasing America) is that much more problematic on the PR front. Even Jack Smith will probably be unable to bail Biden out of that one, and there aren’t enough deadbeat college students to bail him out either (notwithstanding how much he’s willing to bail them out (with your money)).

What to do?

Easy. The solution is tried and true on the Left: Lie about it. Claim that Iran had nothing to do with it! The mullahs were taken aback, I tell you!!

Now since it’s been known for years that Hamas is little more than the irregular version of Iran’s armed forces, this is going to be a tough one to bring off. Making excuses for Iran has its own cost, standing alone. Making eye-rolling excuses that no sensible person is going to believe will cost that much more. But necessity (the necessity, that is, of cooperating in the humiliation of America while running a presidential campaign) is the mother of invention — not that the Left’s lying about the mullahs could really be called “invention” at this point, as Paul has explained.

So I must confess error. Yes, it looked like the miserable happenstance of Carter’s weakness and cowardice was the initial cause of decades of being humiliated and outplayed by Iran. But that wasn’t really it. Our failure wasn’t due to personality flaws. It was, and it is (and I’m all but certain will continue to be) a choice.

Conservatives have known for a long time that decline is a choice, and in particular the choice the Left has made to bring an evil Amerika its overdue reckoning. The coming humiliation and paralysis in responding to Iran’s guiding role in the abuse and murder of our citizens is simply the most recent exemplar.

As long a Joe Biden is President, get used to it.