The Iranian government is flexing its military power via a series of recent announcements as questions continue to grow as to whether the United States is doing enough to push back against the regime’s increased attacks on American interests in the aftermath of the Hamas terror attack in Israel on Oct. 7.

On Monday, Iran unveiled a new sophisticated warship for its Caspian Sea fleet that it says will be ‘a ‘sea of peace and friendship’ and said Iran’s naval power there will serve ‘peace, security of commercial fleets, confronting terrorists and probable incidents in the future.’ The announcement comes shortly after the country claimed to have developed a new hypersonic ballistic missile, allegedly expanding one of the most dangerous military capabilities at their disposal.

‘Iran is continuing to try to signal that its military industries are impervious to and cannot be set back by sanctions, hence the pomp and circumstance here,’ Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital about the new Iranian warship. ‘Of note, the new vessel is to be deployed in the Caspian Sea, a sign of the regime’s increased securitization of the world’s largest lake and a major conduit for the drone trade with Russia.’

As Iran announces military advancements, Iranian-backed proxies have carried out dozens of attacks on American bases and interests in the Middle East since the Iran-backed Hamas terror organization attacked Israel, including in international waters where Yemen’s Houthi rebels have fired upon and hijacked ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

‘Iran’s evolving anti-access, area-denial capabilities are likely to continue to trickle to proxies like the Houthis in Yemen, which already boast anti-ship cruise and anti-ship ballistic missiles,’ Taleblu said.

The increased attacks, along with what many have said is a lack of proportionate response by the United States, have caused increased criticism from top Republicans in Congress.

‘Since Joe Biden took office, Iran has attacked American positions in the Middle East over 150 times, with over 70 of those attacks in the last month,’ Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas told Fox News Digital on Monday. ‘Iran and its proxies know they can get away with this because the Biden administration rarely hits back. And when it does respond, the strikes only target empty warehouses or inconsequential proxy forces in Iraq or Syria.’

‘President Biden seems to be going out of his way to avoid targeting Iranians or the resources Iran holds dear. This weakness only invites more aggression from Iran and will continue unless the administration sends a clear message these attacks are unacceptable.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and National Security Council for comment but did not receive a response.

‘You’ve seen some saying there should perhaps be a more robust response to these ongoing attacks, whether it’s from Iranian-backed militias in Syria or Iraq, whether it’s the Houthis,’ a reporter asked National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby at a Monday press briefing. ‘Is there any thought of changing up how that’s done?’

‘I don’t think we’re going to get into [the] business to telegraphing our punches,’ Kirby replied. ‘We’ve responded forcefully against the threats to our forces in Iraq and Syria and now our forces in the Gulf region, the Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Aden. We’ll continue to do that as appropriate.’

Taleblu told Fox News Digital that ‘while some may be tempted to write off any Iranian military changes as bluster,’ the ‘administration cannot afford to ignore the overall trajectory of Iran’s military programs.’

‘Greater capability will generate greater risk tolerance and testing of red lines by Tehran. That is something no U.S. president [can] afford to ignore.’

Fox News Digital’s Peter Aitken contributed to this report.

JERUSALEM — For most of the past two decades, Hamas, a terrorist group with an extreme jihadist ideology, has governed the Gaza Strip and posed a serious security threat to Israel next door and a broader dilemma for moderate Arab states in the region that might be willing to normalize ties with Israel. It has also destabilized the Palestinian Authority, which rules the other Palestinian enclave in the West Bank, making peace with Israel even more elusive.

Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which more than 1,200 people were killed and a further 240 taken hostage, Israel’s political and military leadership, with support from the majority of the population – and the backing of the U.S. administration – have made clear that the set-up that once existed in the 25-mile-long coastal strip is no longer viable: Hamas must go.

But if Israel is successful in its endeavor, who would fill the void?

In a Nov. 18 opinion piece published in the Washington Post, President Biden also talked about how ‘the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own and a future free from Hamas.’ He mentioned that the goal should not simply be to stop the war for today, but it should be to end war forever and break the cycle of ‘unceasing violence.’ The president also pointed to the aim of reuniting Gaza with the West Bank and ‘revitalizing’ the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has pushed back on such an idea and emphasized on several recent occasions that transplanting the PA into a post-war Gaza is not an option. 

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that a possible solution could be for the Abraham Accords countries – the Gulf States of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, who signed normalization agreements with Israel in 2020, and even Saudi Arabia – could definitely play a role in Gaza’s future. 

‘We have seen the UAE step up and build a field hospital while offering to build, rebuild three desalination plants,’ he said. ‘Because Hamas has been governing the Strip since 2007, and its Islamist ideology is not the UAE’s taste, Abu Dhabi has not invested much money in the Strip. Now, it is able to invest in Gaza without having to go through Hamas.’ 

‘This should be looked at as a pilot project, and if it works out, the UAE will be more involved in the Strip and its reconstruction,’ Abdul-Hussain continued, adding that it would not only be reconstructing the infrastructure but also rebuilding a Hamas-free government that is competent and sincere in its quest for peace with Israel.

He also said that such a direction would also help to ‘displace the Qataris,’ who are seen by some critics as sponsors of radical Islamist groups such as Hamas and could be a model emulated in the West Bank – which has also seen a rise in Islamic radicalism and support for Hamas continues to be high there, surpassing the PA, according to recent polls.

Abdul-Hussain said that in contrast to the U.S. administration’s goals of allowing some kind of revitalized PA to control Gaza, a new type of authority in the Strip, with the backing of the Abraham Accords states, could then ‘be expanded to the West Bank.’

An Abraham Accords-type initiative, he concluded, ‘wherein Palestinians themselves welcome peace and strive for it,’ is the only way that ‘Israel will consider letting down its guard and help the Palestinians establish a state.’

‘We would like to see a peaceful Gaza, but there is no magic formula,’ Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States and a former cabinet member of Netanyahu’s previous government, told Fox News Digital.

‘A vast majority of Israelis will not want the PA there,’ said Oren, who is also a historian and author. ‘The PA is corrupt, it is weak and the majority of the population in the West Bank, some 83%, actually prefers Hamas.’

In addition, the former diplomat said, ‘[PA President Mahmoud] Abbas is an antisemite and a Holocaust denier; PA textbooks and videos are every bit as bad as Hamas’, so that is a non-starter.’

Among Gazans – and even the broader Palestinian public – the idea of installing the PA into the Strip is also not wildly popular, Ahed al-Hindi, a senior fellow at the Center for Peace Communications, told Fox News Digital.

‘While the PA may offer a symbolic framework that accrues international recognition, many young Gazans want to see new players, principally drawn from Gaza itself,’ said Al-Hindi, adding that ‘a viable plan to rebuild Gaza requires local buy-in and new blood.’

As images of the widespread destruction of Gaza after more than 50 days of fighting – and as Israeli political and military leaders say their task is far from over – it seems clear that the task of rebuilding is far beyond the capability of any single individual or body.

And the process could take years.

Yitzhak Gal, a research fellow who specializes in Middle East economics and business at the Mitvim Institute in Israel, told Fox that the reconstruction of Gaza would have to be carried out in two stages, with the political and physical rebuilding having to be done in tandem.

Right now, he said, Hamas as a governing body appears to have totally collapsed, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is the main body dealing with the current humanitarian crisis – and is highly linked to Hamas – will also most likely crumble as Israel progresses with its military goals.

‘Humanitarian catastrophe will become even more acute and the only way to handle this situation in the short-term is with a political solution, agreed upon between Israel and the international community,’ Gal said.

‘We can’t start any reconstruction in Gaza while the war is waging, but still, the people there need to eat and drink, there are babies and there are children, and if you don’t take care of them, then they will suffer,’ he said.

In the long term, Gal estimated that the destruction in Gaza, which is likely four or five times what it was following the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, could cost more than $15 billion to rebuild. He added that it’s important for the reconstruction process to look beyond just replacing what was lost and to rebuild Gaza as a ‘viable and stable society’ and prevent it from ‘deteriorating into the same extremism of recent years.’

‘The reconstruction must be carried out in the framework of a more holistic plan,’ said Gal, adding, ‘There is no benefit in reconstruction or doing anything on the economic sphere if there is no political stability.’

‘It is hard for me to believe that the Americans, Europeans or the Gulf countries will put money into Gaza unless there’s a way to ensure there is a stable, non-Hamas stable government that will make good use of all this money,’ he said.

So, with a possible power vacuum and no single person or entity able to fill it, which global players could play a role?

Nir Arieli, an associate professor of international history at the University of Leeds in the U.K., shared with Fox News Digital a policy paper that puts forward the concept of a multinational force.

Co-authored with Jacob Stoil of the Modern War Institute and Mary Elizabeth Walters, Arieli argues firmly against any Israeli re-occupation of Gaza (Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Strip in 2005) as well as against implanting the PA into the vacuum.

‘If we want to send a message to everyone that we are turning a new page and that we are not going back to the status quo and that we do not want Hamas back in control, then, we argue, a multinational force must be put there to take on three tasks: to provide security, governance and oversee reconstruction,’ he said.

Arieli added, ‘If aid is going to be pouring into Gaza, then having a multinational force in place is in everyone’s interest. It would be a temporary solution because we can’t see that any single actor will be able to step in and take care of such a gigantic task.’ 

That force – as well as the aid, which has already been entering Gaza during the current crisis – would most likely come from the West, chiefly the U.S. and Europe, as well as the regional countries that signed the 2020 Abraham Accords, such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain as well as Saudi Arabia, which some experts believe is still eyeing the possibility of normalizing ties with Israel.

Amid a spate of polls suggesting President Biden trails former President Donald Trump in a likely 2024 election rematch, the Biden campaign and Democratic allies point back nearly a dozen years.

That’s when former President Barack Obama – with Biden as his running mate – won re-election to a second term in the White House in 2012 despite polls a year earlier predicting a ballot box defeat for the incumbent.

‘Predictions more than a year out tend to look a little different a year later,’ Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said earlier this month.

‘Don’t take our word for it: Gallup predicted an eight point loss for President Obama only for him to win handedly a year later,’ Munoz added. 

And Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriquez wrote in a recent fundraising email that ‘the year is 2011. It’s one-year out from Election Day, and the New York Times has just put out polling showing President Obama trailing significantly in battleground states.’

But a trip down memory lane reminds us that while Obama was saddled in late 2011 with unfavorable polling a year before his re-election, his standing was not as troublesome as the deficits Biden currently faces.

Obama mostly maintained a slight polling advantage over eventual 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney. A Fox News poll from early December 2011 indicated the incumbent with a 44%-42% edge over Romney, after trailing the then-former Massachusetts governor by two points in a November survey.

And Obama topped another top contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination – former House Speaker Newt Gingrich – by five and six points in the November and December 2011 Fox News polls.

Fast-forward a dozen years and Biden trails Trump – the commanding front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination as he makes his third straight White House bid – by four points.

The same Fox News national poll, conducted Nov. 10-13, suggests the president down by five points to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and trailing by 12 points to former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, in hypothetical 2024 general election showdowns.

The president’s approval rating is also deeper underwater than Obama’s was a dozen years ago.

Biden’s approval rating, which has been in negative territory for over two years, stood at 40%-59% in the latest Fox News poll.

Obama stood at 42%-48% in the Fox News November 2011 poll, and at 44%-51% in the survey a month later.

The new Fox News poll, and surveys from other organizations, also point to high disapproval ratings for Biden among key groups that traditionally support Democrats.

Veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse noted that polls ‘aren’t necessarily predictive a year out.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you ignore these polls and they [Biden’s campaign] do so at their own risk,’ he emphasized.

Newhouse, the lead pollster on Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, argued that ‘Joe Biden is not the campaigner and communicator that Barack Obama was. The Obama folks had the full resources of a strong candidate at their disposal and I don’t think the Biden campaign does.’

Obama’s polling woes in 2011 came the year after Democrats were trounced in the 2010 midterm elections. 

The Biden campaign notes that twelve years later, the current Democratic president and his party are coming off  ballot box successes in the 2022 midterms, as well as this month’s off-year elections.

Democrats are in trouble.

Influential Democrats – and the majority of voters — do not want Joe Biden to run for reelection. But history tells us that if the president decides to step aside, he needs to do so by year-end, and he has given no indication he is ready to do so. If he exits mid-way through the primary season, he will open his party up to massive infighting, a raucous convention and pave the way for the reelection of Donald Trump. 

How do we know? Because the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who decided not to run for reelection, offers hints of what may lie ahead. 

The similarities between the presidencies of LBJ and Joe Biden are profound, oddly including the intrusions of wars, random Minnesotans and related Kennedys. Both were long-time powerful Democrat senators and both served as vice president before ascending to the Oval Office. They shared grand ambitions of being ‘another FDR’; as president, both passed significant legislation. But they both saw their party riven and their own fortunes sunk by conflicts overseas.

Like Biden, Johnson started his presidency with high public approval ratings, only to see his popularity nosedive because of the escalating Vietnam War. The United States sent hundreds of thousands of GIs to support the government of South Vietnam, which was fighting against Communists in the North. Young people across the U.S. were furious; a nationwide draft was extremely unpopular, as was the government that enforced it.

Americans soured on the war after the Viet Cong mounted the Tet offensive on January 30, 1968; that effort to topple the Saigon government failed, but punctured what one account describes as the ‘illusion of progress that the Johnson administration had been holding before the American public.’ In only a few weeks, support for the war cratered, from 50% believing the U.S. was moving towards its goals to only 33%. Some 49% of Americans thought we should never have intervened in the first place.  

Declining backing for the war sank Johnson’s approval ratings. By March only 36% of the nation approved of the job the president was doing; 52% did not. 

Today, hostility towards Biden’s support for Israel, according to a recent NBC survey, has driven his already-poor standing to the lowest point in his presidency. A stunning 70% of voters ages 18 to 34 disapprove of his handling of the war. 

On March 12, 1968, a little-known senator from Minnesota, Eugene McCarthy, stunned the nation by winning 42 percent of the vote in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation Democrat primary; LBJ got 48 percent.  The shockingly close results encouraged Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the slain president John F. Kennedy, to jump into the race, further challenging LBJ’s path forward.

Coincidentally, another little-known Minnesotan has thrown his hat in today’s Democrat primary race; Congressman Dean Phillips is hoping to accomplish just such an upset in New Hampshire next January. Because of party infighting over the sequencing of its primary contests, Joe Biden will not be on the ballot in the Granite State, giving Phillips an unusual opening. If Phillips garners a large share of the primary vote, signaling Biden weakness, other Democrats are almost sure to declare their candidacy.

Weeks after the surprise near-upset in New Hampshire, President Johnson announced in a televised Oval Office address that he was offering to halt the U.S. bombing of Vietnam, in hopes of spurring peace talks with the Communists.  

The president also dropped a bomb of a different sort – declaring he would not seek his party’s nomination for president — citing ‘division in the American house.’ 

In the wake of LBJ’s shocking announcement, two camps of Democrats scrambled for their party’s nomination.  McCarthy and Kennedy ran against the war. Kennedy was assassinated in June; another anti-war candidate, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, joined the race. Hubert Humphrey, LBJ’s vice president, represented the establishment wing of the party. 

Also complicating the political scene for LBJ’s party was the emergence of a third-party candidate, Alabama Governor George Wallace, who appealed to southern Democrats and blue-collar workers, and siphoned off 5 states and 46 Electoral College votes.

Today, Biden and his colleagues fear that Democrat Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has announced he will not run to keep his seat, could play a similar role if he decides to mount a third-party centrist campaign.

Biden also faces Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is already running as an Independent, and in some polls securing as much as 22% of the vote, much of that coming from the Democrat side. 

In August 1968, Democrats met in Chicago to pick their candidate. The gathering at the International Amphitheater was politically fractious, and also overwhelmed by anti-war rioting; delegates were met at the airport by National Guardsmen and the convention center itself was a virtual fortress. The day before the convention was marred by thousands of police attacking protesters with tear gas and clubs to remove them from Lincoln Park.  Over the next several days, more than 650 protesters were arrested, and over 100 were treated at area hospitals. Some 192 police officers were injured, with 49 requiring medical treatment.

Inside the amphitheater, the situation was almost as unruly. Many delegates supported a so-called ‘peace plank’ which was ultimately defeated. Some delegates split with their party to join an anti-war vigil hosted by demonstrators. Because McGovern and McCarthy divided the anti-war vote, the party ended up nominating Humphrey, who went on to lose the Electoral College vote to Richard Nixon, 191-301. 

The LBJ history tells us this: if Biden withdraws while the primary season is underway, those contests will reveal serious schisms, with progressives battling moderates and pro-Palestinian supporters fighting those who stand by Israel. At the least, Democrats will lose the enviable cohesion they have long enjoyed. The Chicago convention, meanwhile, will likely attract protests over Biden’s support for Israel.

History may not repeat, but it certainly does rhyme. 

The United States will accelerate its humanitarian assistance into Gaza, including food, fuel and medical supplies, with the first of three relief flights beginning this week, Fox News has learned.

The U.S. military will be sending a series of items, which also include supplies to help Palestinians survive the upcoming winter conditions, to North Sinai and Egypt on Tuesday, according to senior administration officials. Additional plane loads of supplies and aid will then be sent in the coming days, the officials said.

Additional talks are in the works with the Israeli government on how to allow even more assistance to the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom have been displaced from their homes and face unsustainable living conditions in south and central Gaza, where about 80% of the Gaza Strip population now lives.

These supplies and fuel are not linked to the release of hostages, the officials said. As of Tuesday, Hamas has released 58 hostages, 40 of them Israeli, while Israel has released roughly 150 Palestinian prisoners.

Another key point of further aid was urging caution in Israel’s continued operations in Gaza. The U.S. emphasized to Israel that when its military continues its ground operation into southern Gaza, after the current cease-fire ends, it should do so in a way so as not to produce further displacement of Palestinians, according to the senior administration officials.

Southern Gaza is now more densely packed than it was before the ground operation started as those residents of northern Gaza fled south. Should the same displacement that took place in the North be replicated in the south, then U.N. facilities and other humanitarian care facilities would become overwhelmed, exacerbating the crisis.

The aid represents a turn around in policy for the Israeli government who, just weeks ago, did not allow any aid into Gaza.

Since the allowance of aid, senior administration officials said the U.S. and the United Nations have sustained 240 trucks of aid per day. The assistance includes significant quantities of fuel, which is critical for maintaining infrastructure, water desalination plants, hospitals, pumping of water from wells, sewerage pumping, solid waste removal and other essential functions.

The negotiations include providing commercial goods to Gaza, and an increase in volume to about 300 or 400 trucks per day. Any proposal would need to include quicker inspection procedures, the officials said.

On Monday, Israel and Hamas agreed to a two-day extension to the current cease-fire, which was set to expire later that day.

President Biden thanked Middle Eastern leaders for facilitating the extension of the humanitarian pause, saying the pause enabled ‘a significant surge in additional humanitarian assistance to the innocent civilians who are suffering across the Gaza Strip.’

‘I have remained deeply engaged over the last few days to ensure that this deal — brokered and sustained through extensive U.S. mediation and diplomacy — can continue to deliver results,’ Biden said in a statement.

The president also noted that the U.S. has worked for years to be the ‘largest funder of humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people.’

‘We are taking full advantage of the pause in fighting to increase the amount of humanitarian aid moving into Gaza, and we will continue our efforts to build a future of peace and dignity for the Palestinian people,’ Biden continued.

‘Today, I want to again thank Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, Amir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar, and President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi of Egypt for their commitment to this process and in reaching the agreement for an extension over the next 48 hours,’ the statement added. ‘We will not stop until all of the hostages held by Hamas terrorists are released.’