The attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut on Tuesday night by Iran-backed Hezbollah protesters was another sign of adversaries testing America's resolve because of the perceived weakness of President Joe Biden and his administration, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., told Newsmax on Wednesday.
Reportedly, hundreds of angry protesters surrounded the U.S. embassy in Lebanon after a Gaza hospital was hit by rocket fire, with the attack initially blamed on Israel by Iran-backed Hamas officials. U.S. and Israeli officials say evidence points to the incident being caused by a misfired rocket from within Gaza intended for Israel by the Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Still, the protesters hurled rocks at the embassy and a portion of it was lit on fire.
"The resolve of America is being tested right now," Mullin, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told "American Agenda." "There's an alliance between China and North Korea, Iran, and Russia; and they think we are weak.
"They think that the president is weak because of the disastrous withdrawal out Afghanistan. They're trying to test our resolve here to see if we're going to actually respond in the accurate way."
Mullin said that in response, Biden has "said the right things," but that "the proof is in the pudding."
"Is he willing to actually go through with it?" Mullin asked. "We should be beefing up all of our embassies and our state department buildings that we have in hostile areas, and we need to be taking Iran very seriously and let them know that if they provoke this in any way — which they are because they are completely funding Hezbollah and Hamas; Hezbollah and Hamas don't make a single move without Iran's blessing — but we need to let them know that there are going to be consequences to pay.
"Unfortunately, you have seen the Biden administration extremely soft on Iran so far."
Mullin said that in the wake of Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and Hezbollah's attack on the embassy, there are several means the U.S. can take to pressure Iran to stop using proxies against Israel and the U.S.
"We should be having direct, hard conversations with Iran," Mullin said. "The first thing we should do is start putting in sanctions again on their oil production.
"We also need to immediately end the talks for allowing them to become a nuclear power. We should start really looking to start squeezing them if they continue down this road. But there's several triggers that we can pull here. The first one needs to be the sanctions for oil."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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