Few figures have done more damage to American credibility and to an ally than Jake Sullivan. On The Bulwark Podcast this week, the former National Security Advisor admitted that while he resisted calls to restrict arms to Israel in 2024, “the case for withholding weapons from Israel today is much stronger than it was one year ago.” That was not sober analysis. It was a confession that the Biden administration’s policy was never about helping Israel win. It was about restraining Israel and keeping it politically weakened.
From the earliest days after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Sullivan framed America’s role not as supporting Israel’s victory but as preventing it. He oversaw delays in weapons deliveries, slow-walked approvals for critical munitions, and paired every pledge of support with public warnings about “proportionality.” These were not mistakes. They were deliberate choices designed to slow Israel down, to deny it decisive victory, and to shape its internal politics from Washington.
This was not foreign policy. It was manipulation. Israel was fighting for survival against a terror army bent on genocide. Yet its closest ally was working to keep it from winning too much. That is an extraordinary abuse of power.
Strategically, the results were predictable. In geopolitics, hesitation is weakness and weakness invites attack. Sullivan’s approach signaled doubt. Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis read it instantly. They understood that Washington was more determined to clip Israel’s wings than to defeat them. They escalated, convinced that America would pressure Israel to hold back. The war dragged on, the cost in lives rose, and the region remained volatile, in part due to Washington’s misplaced priorities.
Morally, the failure was worse. Sullivan’s doctrine of proportionality twisted justice into cowardice. Israel’s obligation was clear: protect its citizens by destroying Hamas so it could never strike again. Proportionality in that context means overwhelming force until the threat is gone. To demand restraint from Israel while ignoring the savagery of its enemy was not morality. It was complicity.
History underscores the lesson. When America cut off aid to South Vietnam in 1975, the result was not peace but collapse. Allies learned they could not rely on Washington. Enemies learned they could outlast it. Sullivan’s policy echoed the same mistake. American commitments became conditional. Support turned into interference.
Sullivan’s corruption of the National Security Council added to the damage. The NSC was meant to provide presidents with strategic clarity, not partisan schemes. Under his leadership it became an instrument of domestic politics, used to micromanage the government of a sovereign ally. That betrayal eroded trust not only in American policy but in American institutions.
The consequences were immediate. Allies hesitated, unsure if U.S. backing would last. Enemies tested boundaries, betting that Washington would blink. Israel, forced to fight with one hand tied behind its back, paid in blood. Sullivan’s guiding principle was never to strengthen a friend. It was to weaken one.
The American people saw through it. In November 2024, voters elected Donald Trump, rejecting the weakness and equivocation of the Biden years. His return to office signaled a decisive break from Sullivan’s approach. With it came a return to unapologetic support for allies and clarity about who the enemy is. Trump’s victory was not just a partisan change. It was a repudiation of the Sullivan doctrine.
Yet the damage Sullivan inflicted will not vanish quickly. Allies remain wary. Enemies remain emboldened. And the credibility of America’s word will take time to rebuild. His legacy is now set: a policy of deliberate restraint and calculated weakening that endangered a democracy at war, prolonged conflict, and undermined America’s standing.
The lesson should be clear. America cannot lead if its advisors view allies as problems to be managed rather than partners to be strengthened. It cannot deter enemies if hesitation is its defining trait. And it cannot claim moral clarity if it pressures democracies while excusing terrorists. Jake Sullivan’s record is a warning. If America ever again allows such thinking to guide its policy, it will not only betray its allies. It will betray itself.
Biden, Obama, Sullivan and Blinken all hail from the same pro-Iranian school of thought, which rests on a simple thesis: the enemy of Saudi-Arabia must be my friend. They are obsessed with what they see as hurting Saudi-Arabia for some reason. Or maybe for no good reason at all.
It's helpful to remember the following episode:
Since forever it was tradition for a newly elected President of the United States to place the first phone call to America's staunchest ally, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Barack Hussein Obama not only broke with this tradition, but hist first phone call from the Oval Office in 2009 went to none other than Mahmoud Abbas.
In the following 8 years Obama normalized ideological attacks against Israel, and in 2021 the Biden regime continued exactly where they left it in 2016.
In that sense, Mamdani is not an unfortunate aberration but a continuation.
Much could be predicted from some of the senior people in the Biden administration:
Maher Bitar Senior Director of Intelligence at the NSC and previously at Students for Justice in Palestine
Robert Malley, Middle East coordinator and mixed in radical Arab politics since youth
Amr Hady, Israel Palestinian negotiations who praised suicide bombers, in writing, during the Second Intifadah
Phillip Gordon, foreign policy advisor to the VP and part of the "Iran Experts Initiative" setup by Iran's Foreign Ministry
That said, their policy backfired spectacularly: a quick, decisive action in Gaza would have left Hezbollah and Iran intact. Instead hostilities with those two continued at low intensity until the takedown of Hezbollah last fall, leading to the collapse of Assad in December and the 12 Day War against Iran in June. Israel's strategic position in the Middle East is vastly improved because of the changes in Lebanon, Syria and Iran from the prolonged conflict.
Biden had projected an image of strong Israel advocate during his long Senate career. I think he kept that in the first, terrible week after Oct 7, when he visited Israel and sent two carrier task forces off the Lebanese coast to deter Hezbollah. A simultaneous attack by them in those days would have been very serious. That Biden changed over the course of the war may be to the continued influence of the terrible people he put in his administration, Jake Sullivan among them.
https://www.semafor.com/article/09/25/2023/inside-irans-influence-operation