The moral clarity with which President Joe Biden approached the Hamas attack on Israel six months ago is no more. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan began backtracking almost as soon as Biden delivered his speech.
Hamas might be a designated terrorist group, but moral equivalence, personal animosity toward Israel’s elected leader, and election-year politics infuses Blinken and Sullivan’sblood. While Hamas could end Israeli operations on Gaza immediately by releasing hostages it has no legal or moral right to hold, Biden’s team rewards the Hamas decision to take hostages by allowing the designated terrorist group to leverage them for concessions. That decision neither brings peace nor does it represent sophisticated diplomacy; rather, it legitimizes terrorism.
Alas, Biden’s willingness to ignore or even reward hostage seizures has become the rule rather than the exception. Azerbaijan continues to hold 55 Armenian prisoners. Some Azerbaijan calls prisoners of war, though this is a misnomer as many are civilians seized from cars at illegal checkpoints or farmers lured or ordered by Azerbaijani soldiers at gunpoint across a demarcated border. Just as Hamas does with Jews, Azerbaijan does not acknowledge many Christians it holds in order to wage psychological terror and to prevent Red Cross visitation.
Like Hamas, Azerbaijan leverages its hostages for diplomatic gain. The White House and State Department, for example, pressured Armenia to drop its bid to host next year’s COP29 environment conference in favor of Azerbaijan as part of a deal to get Azerbaijan to release some Armenian hostages. Biden thereby not only allowed his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev to escape accountability for seizing hostages, but he also gifted him a reward worth hundreds of millions of dollars and the prestige of the international spotlight. Blinken and Sullivan might argue as they did to Armenian officials that allowing Aliyev to get what he wants could advance peace talks, but history shows the opposite to be true: when Aliyev feels empowered and immune, war and ethnic cleansing quickly follow. Blood will flow when the COP29 spotlight fades.
Biden also allows Iran to profit from kidnapping. Hostage-taking is in Iran’s DNA. The 1981 Algiers Accords that presaged Iran’s release of 52 American hostages is a monument not only to rewarding terrorism but also Exhibit A in how succumbing to blackmail guarantees more hostage-taking. Biden’s willingness both to reward Iran with billions of dollars while leaving hostages like Jamshid “Jimmy” Sharmahd behind suggests a disturbing combination of cravenness and the prioritization of short-term ease over long-term consequences. That the hostages Biden ransoms were mostly businessmen who ran afoul of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while trying to profit from a terrorism sponsor while Iranian security forces kidnapped Sharmahd from outside Iran only adds insult to injury. So, too, does the release of Iranians involved in illicit technology as it establishes false equivalence, betrays the investigators who dedicate their lives to keeping Americans safe, and shows Washington to be unserious about stopping Iran’s nuclear breakout. Indeed, Sullivan’s more than decadelong effort to bring Tehran in from the cold has worsened security, encouraged hostage-taking in Iran and kidnapping of dissidents abroad, and enabled Iran to become a threshold nuclear state.
The pattern repeats with Russia. Not only did Biden reward Russian President Vladimir Putin by trading “merchant of death” Viktor Bout for WNBA star Brittney Griner while leaving a former U.S. Marine to rot, but also, while Biden pays lip service to imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, he ignores Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist with U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Silence is never the answer when tyrants and terrorists hold innocent Americans or residents of the United States, like Vladimir Kara-Murza or Princeton University student Elizabeth Tsurkov. Biden’s team may relish the photo-op that comes with a hostage’s return, but the price of blackmail is not worth it. Nor is it necessary. Pastor Andrew Brunson and student Xiyue Wang went free without a single dollar changing hands.
Instead of treating hostages as an irritant to bigger diplomacy, Biden must draw a line: There can be no business as usual so long as innocent Americans remain imprisoned, nor should the United States force democratic allies like Israel or Armenia to reward terrorism. Biden must stop being a tyrants’ dream and start becoming their nightmare.
