The leader of the free world is flexing his impotence on the world stage. Before the Israeli incursion into Lebanon Monday, a reporter asked Biden if he was aware of Israel’s plan, and if he was comfortable with it. “I’m more aware than you might know,” Biden responded, “and I’m comfortable with them stopping. We should have a ceasefire now.”

Israel then ignored the president’s gripe, crossed the border, and destroyed terrorist outposts anyways. Hours later, Iran directly attacked Israel, launching nearly 200 ballistic missiles from its own territory — step aside, proxies, it’s varsity time — and promises more of the same if Israel counterattacks. The ceasefire ship has long since sailed.

“The Biden administration is once again trying to tie the hands of Israel,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said, aghast, on Monday’s “Washington Watch.” “This is when Israel has Hezbollah on the run. Why would we tell them to stop now?”

“I’m not even surprised anymore,” responded Real Life Network news director Daniel Cohen. “I’m not surprised because the United States has been hampering Israel’s efforts to defeat Hamas and to eradicate the radical Islamic terrorists that are hell-bent on destroying the Jewish state. Remember ‘don’t go into Rafah’? … They went into Rafah. What happens? Israel finds there are hostages there.”

“That’s the problem,” responded Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.). “We never let Israel finish the job. They have conducted a series of brilliant, masterful, bold, covert and overt actions that has one of the world’s worst terrorist organizations on the run. … This is a moment to not only eliminate this threat off of Israel’s northern border, but to also completely reset things for Lebanon. … This is a moment to reset the calculus in the Middle East.”

Waltz made his remarks on Monday, before Iran launched its missile barrage. Apparently, Iran read the situation the same way as Waltz (but from the opposite perspective) and sought to disrupt Israel’s momentum in Lebanon.

Past efforts to push Israel into a ceasefire with weakened terrorist enemies have yielded bitter fruit. “In the wake of the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, the U.N. mandated a demilitarized zone in southern Lebanon that would allow Israelis to live in peace,” Waltz described. Resolution 1701 mandated Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and created a joint U.N.-Lebanese force to hold the territory south of the Litani River.

The only problem was, “Israel abided by it, and Hezbollah did not,” Waltz continued. Hezbollah soon re-occupied the demilitarized zone, from which they have intermittently shelled Israel for nearly two decades, without facing consequences from the U.N. “The U.N. actually has a force there [in southern Lebanon] that is completely feckless, if not complicit” in Hezbollah’s actions, he added.

This time, Israel seems determined to “finish the job,” with or without America’s blessing — although there’s no good reason for us to withhold it. “Compare … 12 months [and they’re] still fighting in Gaza to the two weeks [in which] they basically have executed these … brilliant operations in Lebanon,” said Perkins.

“Something has changed in the last two weeks,” Cohen agreed. “I think Israel realizes … that the people that are on Israel’s side are on Israel’s side. … That’s evangelicals. But the people who aren’t — that Israel just has to do what it has to do.”

For many of its recent airstrikes against terrorist leaders, Israeli officials did not alert their U.S. counterparts ahead of time, as they would if the two teams were working toward the same ends. “These are tactical victories on behalf of Israel that has clearly made a decision: we’re going it alone. Biden’s people just try to talk [them] out of it. So they didn’t even tell us,” Waltz remarked.

Israel’s decision not to share information with the U.S. was seemingly justified on Monday, when a U.S. official leaked word of Israel’s imminent incursion into Lebanon to the American press — hence why Biden was asked about it above.

“If only Israel had a partner in the White House that would put appropriate pressure on Iran,” Waltz exclaimed. “America has to step in and shift policy on Iran. Go back to maximum pressure as President Trump had in place.” The strikes against Hezbollah terrorists “are tactical victories. They’re important ones. [But] the strategic one is in Tehran.”

There are reasons to doubt Biden’s declaration that he is “more aware than you might know” about the situation on the ground in the Middle East. Biden was also asked Monday whether he had “any comment on the strikes in Yemen,” referring to an Israeli strike against Houthi targets. Biden responded as if he had been asked about a labor dispute with which he was intimately involved. “I’ve spoken to both sides,” he said. “They gotta settle the strike. I’m supporting the collective-bargaining effort. I think they’ll settle the strike.” This sounds more like Biden from the 1990s than the president. The senator from the 1990s is pursuing the same foreign policy that didn’t work in the 1990s.

Roughly eight years ago, a similar flubbed answer about conflict in the Middle East derailed libertarian Gary Johnson’s outsider run for president when he responded to a question about how he would handle the Syrian Civil War in Aleppo by saying, “What’s Aleppo?”

Amid this dark outlook for American foreign policy, two points shine out like Iranian rockets in the Israeli night sky. First, the Biden-Harris administration at least had the sense to alert the Israelis about the impending Iranian missile barrage and help them defend against it. Second, Iran’s escalation of the conflict should tamp down any talk of a ceasefire for now. Is that a bright spot? Time will tell.