NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {I} mmediately after Hamas launched its war on Israel, Elliott Abrams argued in these pages that the 10/7 assault would — and should — turn Israeli and American policy upside down. 10/7 would be to Joe Biden what 9/11 was to George W. Bush: a transformational attack that led to a fundamental and radical shift in U.S. policy. One would have assumed that the policies that had led to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust would be discarded for ones that sought to defeat, rather than tolerate, the perpetrators.

One month later, not one iota of U.S. policy has changed. Notwithstanding the deadliest terrorist attack against Americans since 9/11 and the deadliest Iran-sponsored attack on Americans since 1996, the administration remains just as committed to engaging with Iran and promoting policies that would turn the West Bank into a Gaza-like terrorist state as it was before. Biden has rightly endorsed the objective of Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza, but his team sees Hamas as a small, cancerous mole that requires removal; it refuses to conduct the necessary full-body diagnostic of its failed policies.

Let’s start with its overall Middle East strategy. Five days before the attacks, national-security adviser Jake Sullivan published a significant treatise on the administration’s outlook in Foreign Affairs, where he crowed about how the administration had turned a region that it felt was on the brink of regional war at the end of the Trump administration into one of quiet success. Although Foreign Affairs unprecedently allowed Sullivan to edit the already-published piece’s substance after the Hamas attack, Sullivan originally asserted that “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.” The Biden administration’s “disciplined approach,” he wrote, “frees up resources for other global priorities, reduces the risk of new Middle Eastern conflicts, and ensures that U.S. interests are protected on a far more sustainable basis.” While the Israeli–Palestinian situation remained tense, Sullivan argued, Biden had “de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.”

Hamas’s attack should have been such a shock to this view that it prompted a change in policy. But it didn’t.

With regards to Iran, the administration still seeks a de-escalation of military tensions and a return to the Iranian nuclear deal. The same day that the president touched down in Israel in a welcome solidarity visit, he allowed the U.N. missile and drone embargo on Iran to expire, steadfastly refusing to initiate a snapback of U.N. sanctions even as Iran remained in gross violation of the deal. In the initial days after 10/7, the administration defended its recent $6 billion hostage-ransom payment to Iran, calling it unrelated to Hamas’s attack before promising to “review” it, as Democrats sought to distance themselves from it. Meanwhile, the administration is going to great lengths to deny and downplay any Iranian involvement in the attack itself, even as report after report suggests that Iran was likely involved in actual operational planning. And as Iranian proxies have now mounted several dozen attacks against U.S. forces in the region in the last month alone, the administration has mustered only a delayed and measly response, hitting two empty Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warehouses with what it called “precision self-defense strikes” meant to “defend U.S. personnel.” As if to spell out how Biden is seeking to insulate the rest of its regional approach from the Hamas question, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declared that the strikes “are separate and distinct from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and do not constitute a shift in our approach to the Israel–Hamas conflict.” In other words: Iran can attack U.S. forces at will and the U.S. will continue to seek a nuclear and regional accommodation.

Similarly, Biden’s policy towards the Palestinians hasn’t been changed by Hamas’s attacks. Despite mind-boggling evidence that American aid into Gaza has been exploited by the terror group, Washington is seeking to double down, pledging $100 million in aid to the “Palestinian people” and asking Congress for up to several billion more. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reiterated his support for a Palestinian state, asserting that further Israeli territorial withdrawals — and not Israel’s military — are the “only guarantor” of a “secure, Jewish, and democratic Israel.” To prove the point, as he met and shook hands with Blinken, PA president Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the supposedly “moderate” PLO, wore a key as a lapel pin, a symbol used by Palestinian rejectionists to indicate that they intend to “return” to the homes in Israel that they claim Israelis pushed them out of in 1948. To repeat, if the largest pogrom since the Holocaust was a consequence of the complete Israeli civilian and military withdrawal from Gaza and the creation of a Hamas-run enclave along Israel’s southern border, American policy is to . . . call for a near-identical Israeli civilian and military withdrawal from the West Bank, a much larger, more strategically significant, and far more dangerous territory that could become enemy-controlled.

This “business as usual” approach extends to the rest of U.S. policy. Both Egypt and Jordan, major recipients of U.S. aid and arms who have long also been threatened by Hamas’s parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, have slandered Israel and condemned it for defending itself. Both have refused to take in any Palestinian refugees — Egypt’s prime minister has said, “We are prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to ensure that no one encroaches upon our territory” — or even to meet with President Biden during his trip to the region, and yet again there has been no change in U.S. policy. Furthermore, Qatar, host to a significant U.S. air base, remains Hamas’s home away from home as well as a major U.S. partner.

Finally, in the face of a cascade of military assaults on U.S. allies and partners from Afghanistan to Ukraine to now Israel, the administration obstinately refuses to seriously strengthen U.S. military power. The president’s proposed emergency supplemental funding to help support Ukraine and Israel defeat U.S. adversaries is welcome, but these measures alone are not enough to significantly enhance U.S. military capabilities. U.S. defense-spending levels as a percentage of the GDP and as a percentage of the federal budget are at near 80-year lows. In a period where the United States may soon confront challenges on three fronts from three different adversaries — as China threatens not only Taiwan, but the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally — the Biden administration continues to advocate for cutting the defense budget and for a Navy as small as it was in the 1930s.

10/7 should have marked a paradigm shift for the Biden administration. The attacks should have been the prima facie evidence that its Middle East policy was in tatters and required a radical reassessment. Instead, it is treating Hamas’s assault as a problem to be managed before returning to regularly scheduled programming. It is no wonder that Washington is now at odds with every single one of its allies in the region, including Jerusalem.