Joe And Kamala Head To Sit Room

As of yesterday, the photo above appeared at the top of this story at The Hill, Biden, Harris head to Situation Room as Iran threatens attack on Israel, but by this morning, the photo has bern replaced with short video clips of other news, although the text of the story remains. I tend to believe it's authentic, because it's otherwise so phony.

It's clearly intended to show that Joe and Kamala are on top of things, and it's got to be recent, because I can only surmise that Kamala's handlers are telling her to pose for pictures where she isn't cackling. They're belatedly waking up to the fact that she utterly lacks gravitas. In fact, I did a web search for images of "Kamala not laughing", and all I could find was pictures of Kamala laughing. In the other hand, a web search for images of "Kamala serious" brought up mostly images of Kamala suppressing a cackle.

Joe in the photo above, on the other hand, is squinting with sort of a purposeful smirk in another of his ill-fitting suits that's grown too big for him. I question if he's fully aware of what's goimg on.

And what are they going to do when they go into the Sit Room? We've heard that that they seldom communicate, that the customary weekly lunches between the president and vice president have long since been discontinued, and Kamala disdains briefings. So I suspect this photo op is entirely pro forma.

In fact, the increasing conflict between Israel and Iran is almost certainly a result of Joe's evident incapacity, and that's because Netanyahu isn't taking Joe seriously and discounts Kamala's prospects in November. So regarding the assassination of Hamas terror group leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, this has been Netanyahu's time to act. Breitbart reports that the New York Times thinks Netanyahu has "gone rogue":

The New York Times published an analysis Friday in which it claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “gone rogue” by killing terrorists who had killed Israeli citizens, rather than acquiescing.

. . . Taking out Hezbollah’s second-in-command in a targeted strike was a way of forcing Hezbollah to pay a price, and reestablishing deterrence, rather than risking a major ground war and all the civilian casualties that would come with it.

Likewise with the apparent Israeli hit on Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, a billionaire who lived a life of luxury while ordering thousands of deaths, both Israeli and Palestinians. (President Joe Biden, who is trying to stop the war short of an Israeli victory, said the death of the arch-terrorist “has not helped.”)

. . . But it is an election year, and Biden prefers to look for ways to appease Iran and its terrorist proxies — which, critics say, is the very reason that the Middle East has reached the point of conflagration in the first place.

As I've been noting, Netanyahu is a US politician as much as an Israeli, and he's playing the odds based on what he sees of the current US administration -- Joe's condition appears to be deteriorating rapidly, while Kamala for now doesn't have access to the levers of power, and if she did, she wouldn't know what to do with them. Secretary Blinken doesn't take orders from Kamala, and I strongly suspect that if she tried to give him any, it wouldn't turn out well.

Meanwhile, Joe is apparently more and more detached, which leaves Netanyahu to his own devices. This in turn serves as a deterrence to Iran: through early summer, Iran and its proxies could rely on Joe to pressure Israel to hold back on its retaliation in Gaza, as well as its response to the initial Iranian drone attack on Israel. With Joe fading, Israel's respone is less predictable -- the problem for Iran is that a full-on retaliation from Israel would be devastating; its only hope is for Joe to lean on Netanyahu to limit its extent, but this is now less certain. Thus, Iran is holding back to reconsider its options.

Meanwhile, whatever may have been said in the Sit Room yesterday probably evaded both Joe and Kamala -- all it was was a brief photo op. What will happen between Iran and Israel is beyond Joe's control, which is all the worse for Iran.