By: Andrew C. McCarthy – nationalreview.com – January 15, 2024

The Defense Department reports that U.S. forces on Sunday shot down an anti-ship cruise missile fired by Iranian proxies at our destroyer, the U.S.S. Laboon, in the Red Sea.

Last week, as Noah Rothman and NR’s editors have detailed, the Biden administration took meaningful — albeit belated and insufficient — action against the Houthis, Iran’s proxies in Yemen, for their inexplicably undeterred acts of war and piracy since the outbreak of war in Israel on October 7.

On Saturday, as he headed out for yet another weekend away from the White House as Cold War II threatens to become World War III, President Biden said not to worry because he had “privately” sent a stern message to Tehran about its support for the Houthis.

It appears that the president now has Iran’s answer.

The New York Times reports that the missile fired by Iran’s proxies was down by an American fighter jet near the coast of Hudaydah in Yemen. There were apparently no American casualties or damages.

Meantime, as our Luther Ray Abel relates, two US Navy SEALs are missing near Somalia, lost at sea in perilous operations conducted in pursuit of Iranian shipments of weapons that its proxies use against American and allied forces.

According to the Times report on the missile fired at our destroyer, information from our government is so far coming from the armed forces. There has been no statement from the president, who left Camp David this morning after his weekend R & R, and whos only scheduled public appearance today is a brief outing in Philadelphia to observe Martin Luther King Day. To borrow the wisdom of former Trump national-security adviser H. R. McMaster, the attacks on our forces and the danger of widening war will continue as long as Iran figures we don’t know – or that Biden will persist in pretending not to know – the return address on these provocations. It’s not Yemen. Biden is paralyzed by the fear of “escalation” during an election year. There is nothing quite as escalatory as American weakness, though that is the conscious choice Biden has made.

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Source: Iran Answers Biden’s Message: Its Houthi Proxies Fire at U.S. Navy Ship | National Review