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Iran appears to have declared open season on U.S. citizens that it doesnt like. The Aug. 12stabbingof the author, Salman Rushdie, in Upstate New York was just the latest in a string of recent attempts targeting Americans known to be on Irans kill list. Yet, President Biden has no evident plan, or even intention, to hold the Tehran regime accountable. To deter future attempts, demonstrate resolve and establish U.S. credibility, he needs to retaliate kinetically.

Starting in 2021, and accelerating in recent weeks, Iran has been implicated in plots tokidnap and (a year later) killthe Iranian-American rights activist Masih Alinejad,assassinateformer U.S. national security advisor John Bolton and murder Rushdie all on American soil.Tehran has denied its involvement in all three incidents.

The Biden administrations response to Irans state-sanctioned policy of working to murder Americans has been to express outrage, go after individual perpetrators and double down on its efforts to bribe Iran back into the 2015 nuclear deal. After the Department of Justice revealed the plot against Bolton, bothnational security advisorJake Sullivan andsecretary of stateAntony Blinken warned that Iran would face severe consequences but only in the event that an attack actually succeeded. The clear implication was that anything short of that was a matter to be handled by law enforcement, not national security policy.

Accordingly, both an armed man caught last month surveilling Alinejads home and Rushdies assailant are in custody, while five Iranian security officials involved in the various plots have been indicted in absentia, unlikely ever to be brought to justice. But as for the Iranian regime itself, responsible for encouraging or directing these attacks against American citizens as a matter of state policy, theres been no accountability whatsoever.

Basic common sense suggests this approach is deeply flawed and incentivizes the Tehran regime to keep trying to harm Americans. And such displays of U.S. timidity only undermine U.S. leverage in the nuclear talks, increasing the risk that any deal that emerges will be even worse for U.S. interests than the 2015 agreement.

Instead of inviting Iranian contempt, the U.S. should demonstrate a modicum of resolve. For starters, the Biden administration needs to immediately deny Irans president, Ebrahim Raisi, a visa to attend next months meeting in New York of the United Nations General Assembly. Allowing Raisi to set foot in the United States at the very moment his regime is actively scheming to terrorize Americans in their homeland would be an act of supreme national cravenness that would only heighten the threat not just from Iran, but from other U.S. adversaries as well.

More significantly, Biden could at long last walk away from the nuclear negotiations and make clear that any sanctions relief for Irans battered economy is off the table until it ceases all efforts to harm Americans anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, the United States should work with its partners to intensify diplomatic, economic and military pressure against the full range of Irans malign activities.

Further, Biden can seek to deter Iran not just by denying its regime benefits but by inflicting significant punishment on it in the only currency of power that its leaders understand military strength. To deter murders, societies severely punish attempted murder, and to deter attacks by a hostile foreign power, countries need to be willing to impose a high price for attempted attacks as well.

If Irans leaders were certain that every time they attempted to harm an American they would suffer a response, whether covertly or overtly, of greater lethality and higher cost, their enthusiasm for targeting the United States would quickly temper. Thats certainly been Israels experience to the point where the Iranian regime now feels safer attacking U.S. citizens and U.S. targets than Israeli ones. Thats hardly the position the worlds most powerful nation wants to find itself in.

No one should forget that Al Qaedas catastrophic attacks of 9/11 were preceded by a decades worth of smaller attacks against U.S. targets that went inadequately answered. In contrast, President Trumpskillingof Iranian leader major general Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 kept Tehran on its heels for the rest of his term.

After the armed man was arrested outside her home last month, Jake SullivantoldMasih Alinejad that the U.S. will use all tools at its disposal to disrupt and deter threats from Iran. President Biden needs to enforce that commitment, in order to deter future attacks against Americans on U.S. soil and to help restore Americas global position and deterrence.

Michael Makovsky, a former Pentagon official, is President and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). John Hannah, a former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, is the Randi and Charles Wax Senior Fellow at JINSA.

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Its time to make Iran think twice about harming US citizens - The Hill