Biden said 'don't,' but Iran attacked anyway. How should Israel respond now?

TEL AVIV, Israel — We’re still here.

Overnight Saturday, Iran launched 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles at Israel. It also directed its proxies in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon to fire drones and missiles at the Jewish state.

Hours earlier, I was on the stage in Tel Aviv’s "Hostage Square,"  speaking before the assembled crowd. My message was simple: “We are not going to accept that any of this is normal or acceptable.”

Despite what the protesters on college campuses and in capitals around the world would have you believe, the Oct. 7 attacks were an abhorrent act of evil, not an act of “resistance.” The terrorists who invaded Israel that day overwhelmingly targeted civilians – families in their homes on a quiet Saturday morning – and perpetrated atrocities that we thought had been relegated to a different era.

Until now, the Iranian regime has preferred to dispatch its proxies in that war – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. This weekend, Iran attacked directly, an unprecedented and dangerous new development, as it used hundreds of drones and missiles to try to overwhelm Israel's air defenses.

Sadly, the one reported casualty was a 7-year-old Bedouin girl who was seriously injured by shrapnel and was rushed to surgery.

Nearly 99% of Iran’s aerial weapons were intercepted by Israel, the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Where Iran might have believed that Israel was diplomatically isolated after six months of an increasingly unpopular war against Hamas in Gaza, it was wrong.

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Biden wants diplomatic response to Iran attack

The question is, now what?

President Joe Biden has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States won’t support a counterattack on Iran, according to a White House official. In a statement released Saturday night, Biden said the United States seeks a “diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”

But what message does that send Iran?

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Understandably, nobody wants to spark a regional war or, given the tinderbox that is the Middle East, the next world war. For that reason, Israel has until now withheld from directly confronting Iran.

At the same time, a tepid response to this weekend’s large-scale assault reinforces the message that there are no real consequences for Iranian aggression. The regime already assessed as much when it decided to launch a direct attack.

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Iranian leaders have seen Israel’s allies repeatedly backtrack on their “unwavering” commitment to Israel.

The ayatollahs have watched in recent days as the United States allowed the United Nations to pass a cease-fire resolution that didn’t tie the end of hostilities to freeing hostages. They have seen the calls on Capitol Hill to halt military aid to Israel spread beyond the left-wing fringe.

And they’ve taken note that Canada and Sweden resumed funding the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees despite that group’s ties to terror.

On Friday, when Biden was asked about Iran’s plans to attack Israel, his response was: "Don’t.”

But Iran did.

The regime is dangerously emboldened, having already destabilized Iraq and Syria and empowered its terror proxies to exert power in Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza. Iran has learned there are no red lines. Not for financing and directing terror groups. Not for disrupting maritime trade in the Red Sea. Not even for killing three American soldiers in Jordan earlier this year.

How will Iran be reined in after latest aggression?

Where, then, is the red line?

Iran will continue to foment unrest and destabilize the Middle East unless there are consequential repercussions for its aggression.

Now is the time to finally show resolve and deliver a morally unambiguous lesson that the ceaseless war fomented by Iran and its radical Islamist proxies is neither normal nor acceptable.

Aviva Klompas is the former director of speechwriting at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations and co-founder of Boundless Israel, a nonprofit organization that partners with community leaders in the U.S. to support Israel education and combat hatred of Jews.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Israel's response to Iran attack will send clear message to terrorists