Harris' Bizarre Hawkishness on Iran

For whatever reason, Harris has been determined to paint Trump as too soft on Iran.

Justin Logan criticizes Harris’ silly threat inflation regarding Iran:

The best defense that can be mounted of Vice President Harris in this context is that she seemed to be groping around for an answer with the least political downside and the least offense to the foreign policy Blob, and she probably found it. The problem is that she is wrong on the substance. Should her extemporaneous remark influence her policy, it could push the United States further down the road to ruin in the Middle East.

Harris’ answer on 60 Minutes was a bad one, and Logan is right that it is absurd for her to say that Iran is America’s “greatest adversary.” I discussed that in one of my columns last week. My concern is that it wasn’t just an extemporaneous remark or a politically safe pandering response. It was another example of the very hawkish position that she has been taking on Iran since she became the Democratic presidential nominee. For whatever reason, Harris has been determined to paint Trump as too soft on Iran. Given how reckless and confrontational Trump’s Iran policy was, this has alarming implications for what her Iran policy might look like.

She made a point of threatening Iran and its allies during her convention speech that was otherwise very light on foreign policy. She said, “I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.” She has repeated that line many times since then. She followed that up by bashing Trump being too passive in response to Iranian actions. The Democratic Party platform attacked Trump for “fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression,” and it specifically faulted him for not using force in response to the downing of a U.S. drone in 2019 and the attack on Saudi oil facilities. Harris picked up that message and ran with it.

Harris recently criticized him again for not responding to the missile barrage that Iran launched after Trump ordered Soleimani’s assassination: “When Donald Trump was president, he let Iran off the hook after Iran and its proxies attacked US bases and American troops.” Trump brought the U.S. and Iran closer to war than any other president in decades, but according to Harris’ campaign rhetoric she thinks he wasn’t hardline and aggressive enough. This is an exceptionally odd attack for Harris to make when she was one of the senators who voted for a resolution in 2020 opposing the use of force against Iran without Congressional authorization.

Rebranding herself as a zealous Iran hawk probably isn’t all that politically savvy, either. It certainly hasn’t helped her to close the gap with Trump on foreign policy. More polling from seven swing states shows that Trump has a significant edge over Harris when it comes to the question of handling the wars in Gaza and Ukraine:

Trump leads Harris among swing-state voters, 50% to 39%, on who is best able to handle Russia’s war in Ukraine and has a wider advantage, 48% to 33%, on who is better suited to handle the Israel-Hamas war.

Those findings are consistent with the Institute for Global Affairs survey I discussed last week. Harris may think that all this hawkish posturing is how she will gain voters’ trust, but so far it isn’t working and there is almost no time left. I suspect that she is digging herself into a deeper hole by running as a more aggressive copy of Biden. Biden’s approval rating on foreign policy has been abysmal for the last year, and Harris refuses to distance herself from any of it. One reason why Harris is polling so badly on these questions might be that the public has no confidence in the policies of the incumbent party, and Harris is essentially running as a candidate of the status quo. All that Harris succeeds in doing by making ridiculous claims about Iran as our “greatest adversary” is prove that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Trump had a terrible foreign policy record, but the Democrats have done a lousy job of reminding voters why it was so bad. Four years ago, the Democrats understood that the right way to use it against him was to call attention to his reckless and dangerous actions that brought the U.S. closer to war. This year, they have chosen to attack him for not killing more Iranians and for being willing to talk to adversaries. In short, they have been using the standard Republican attack lines about weakness and appeasement that are normally directed at them. When some voters are already inclined to believe the lie that Trump is antiwar, Harris’ hawkish messaging is a free gift to the Republican campaign.

If Harris manages to win in spite of her vulnerabilities on foreign policy, her hawkishness on Iran bodes ill for U.S. interests in the Middle East. The Trump-Biden Iran policy has been a failure, and Harris shows no interest in wanting to change it. Everything she has said during the campaign suggests that our bankrupt Iran policy will stay the same without any real chance of diplomatic engagement.