President Biden, by turning his back on America’s most reliable Mideast friend as it is fending off multi-front attacks, Israel, is undermining alliances in the region and beyond, sending the wrong signals all around the globe. 

Some old and new allies in a brewing Cold War II are yet to realize the significance of Mr. Biden’s publicly stated denial of arms to Israel, while others have already experienced similar types of betrayal from Washington. Crucially, America’s adversaries at Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang are taking note.

Washington is withholding arms to Israel in an attempt to deter it from entering Rafah. Even as the Jewish state is combating Iran-backed enemies set on its destruction on seven fronts, Mr. Biden is also threatening to send only defensive weapons, and deny offensive ones.

What does such treatment of America’s closest and, for decades, most reliable democratic ally in the Mideast teach leaders in pro-America Gulf countries, East Asia, Europe, or the Indian subcontinent?

“President Biden and Biden officials are confirming for the whole world that the United States is a catastrophically bad ally,” Senator Cruz, a Republican of Texas, tells the Sun. “Their foreign policy is completely backwards, rewarding our enemies and punishing our allies.”

That view is also seen in other parts of the globe. “Nobody in the rest of the world trusts the United States anymore,” an India-based academic specializing in counterterrorism, Mdhav Das Nalapat, tells the Sun. “What Biden is doing is a signal to terrorists everywhere that at a certain point the U.S. will tire of the fight.” 

In South Asia, Mr. Nalapat adds, that realization had already dawned back when Mr. Biden, as one of his first acts as president, performed the disastrous Kabul withdrawal and betrayed America’s anti-Taliban allies. “Biden’s error in Afghanistan has motivated terrorists around the world,” he says. 

At the same time, in 2021, the front page of the Kyiv Post looked almost exactly like that of Thursday’s New York Post: “Betrayal,” it screamed in reference to Mr. Biden’s deal to allow the completion of a Russian pipeline to Europe, Nordstream 2, and cut off democratic Ukraine.

Following Russia’s consequent invasion, Mr. Biden pronounced full support for Ukraine, but constantly slow-walked arms deliveries that Kyiv said it needed. Concerns about Russian retaliation — Mr. Biden’s career-long fear of enemy escalation — has impeded Ukraine’s war efforts. Kyiv is getting just enough arms to defend areas it already holds, but not what it needs to push Russia out of all Ukrainian territory.      

In the Mideast, Mr. Biden is constantly touting Saudi-Israeli peace, yet to formalize the clandestine relations it already has with Israel, Riyadh is seeking a mutual defense treaty with Washington. Such a treaty, though, may look less attractive after the president broke his “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s defense.

Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman is familiar with the pattern. Soon after entering the White House, Mr. Biden stopped arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia, citing MbS’s personal role in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder and the large number of civilian deaths in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. 

At that time, Riyadh was fighting the Tehran-backed Houthis, which are now involved in the war on Israel — blocking shipping in the Red Sea, where nearly 20 percent of world commerce sails. Fearing further escalation, Mr. Biden is yet to assume America’s traditional role as global guarantor of navigational freedom on the high seas.       

Allies in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines are looking up to America to deter Communist China’s ever-growing aggression in the region. Yet, the self-declared top global military power is more concerned about stopping Israel at Rafah than about deterring the Houthis, a ragtag terrorist group based in the world’s poorest country. How could America, then, be trusted to face down Beijing?

“It’s not clear to me that these allies fully appreciate the significance” of Mr. Biden’s latest moves, a former senior White House official in President Trump’s administration, Richard Goldberg, tells the Sun. “What’s important is what Xi, Putin, and the Ayatollah see: the man who ran to office as the ally you can rely on turned out to be the least reliable ally.”

Micromanaging Israel’s war and vowing to deny offensive arms while promising only defensive ones is worrisome, Mr. Goldberg, now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says. “What does defense only mean? Our allies must pretend they’re turtles?” 

The message to Hezbollah, other Mideast terrorists, and their Iranian backers — as well as to Russian hawks seeking control of large chunks of Europe, and, mostly, to President Xi’s hopes of annexing Taiwan and controlling east Asia — is clear: If America is your arms supplier and backer, you must be “ready to fight with your fingernails,” as Prime Minister Netanyahu told Mr. Biden Thursday.