Why is it that President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and the National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, day in and day out continue the fiction that Iran had no direct involvement with the terrorists in Hamas — or for that matter Islamic Jihad, or for that matter Hezbollah — before the barbaric invasion of Israel on October 7? Why does our government maintain this lie?  

On the front page of the Wall Street Journal today is an exclusive news story headlined: “Hamas fighters trained in Iran before October 7 attacks.” The subhead: “Roughly 500 Palestinian militants got specialized combat instruction at Iranian facilities as recently as September.” 

It’s a long, carefully constructed news article, and about a third of the way in is this quote: “Before the war, Iran directly assisted Hamas with money, training, and weapons and technological know-how,” the military’s chief spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said.  Then, he added, “even now, Iran is helping Hamas with intelligence.” 

Just after the October 7 catastrophe, the Journal ran an article with the headline: “Iran helped plot attack on Israel over several weeks.” By the way, the Washington Post corroborated that reporting the next day.  

To be fair, this morning’s Journal article quotes an Air Force general who maintains the fiction that there was no direct connection between the Hamas attacks and Iran. Yet looking at this and other news reports — news reports, mind you, not editorials — I think the U.S. government is making a big mistake denying Iran’s direct involvement.  

This has a Vietnam feel to it, when Democratic and Republican administrations lied to the American public about U.S. involvement in the Vietnamese war. Oddly, from a political standpoint, Americans by huge majorities support the Israeli cause. And they have an enormous distrust of Iran. So I don’t understand the political judgment, much less the highly flawed military judgment.  

Now, as we know, for nearly three years, President Biden has tried to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. He inherited this stupidity from President Obama. Mr. Obama’s deal would’ve never passed the Senate, so his administration did it through the United Nation instead, and they attached U.N. Security Council sanctions on that misbegotten deal.  

When the UN sanctions expired last week, though, they were not snapped back. So, now, even those unenforced sanctions have essentially expired.  

The Biden administration has also chosen not to enforce the economic sanctions that were put in place by the Trump administration. Those economic and energy sanctions, which were strictly implemented by President Trump, basically bankrupted Iran. So when Mr. Trump took out Iran’s top military man, Soleimani, the Iranians didn’t do anything — because they were broke.  

Today, as we all know and as the facts show, Iran is flush with energy and foreign exchange reserves that it has used to finance Hamas and the other terrorist groups. Indeed, before the October 7 blow-up, Mr. Biden was trying to give Iran even more cash.  

Essentially, the key point, I suppose, is to acknowledge Iran’s direct role in training and financing the terrorist attacks against Israel and the U.S. That would require an acknowledgment from Mr. Biden that his Iranian policy of appeasement was wrong — from the very beginning.  

Apparently, he doesn’t want to make that acknowledgment. So he and his representatives have come up with this fiction, which at best is semantic and at worst is an outright lie, that Iran had no direct involvement in the Israeli and American massacres. Iran is unappeasable. Without deterrence, it will continue as the largest state sponsor of terrorism.  

The Bidens must understand this hard fact. Iran will never change its ways. Nor will its terrorist puppets. If Mr. Biden wants to show Americans and the rest of the world that he has figured this out, then he must — at a bare minimum — reinstate the economic and energy sanctions.  

The quickest way I can think of to do that would be to interdict or impound an Iranian ship on the high seas that is carrying oil, or weapons, or anything else forbidden under the sanctions imposed legislatively by the U.S. Congress and enforced by the Trump administration. I call it “stop a ship and send a message.” Go back to the Trump model.  

A change of Mr. Biden’s policies toward Iran that is an honest and transparent reappraisal of the failure of those policies is the best thing the president can do to protect Israel and the United States. And quit lying to us.

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.