It’s said that old age isn’t for sissies, but nor is the Middle East. And we suspect Joe Biden has been learning both lessons the hard way of late.

What began with a series of at least 127 unanswered attacks on our troops in the region since October 17 by Iran-backed militias has spiraled out of control of late, causing Yemen-based Houthi terrorists to believe they could attack our commercial shipping interests in the Red Sea with impunity.

For the most part, they were right. As The Washington Free Beacon’s Matthew Continetti writes:

Since last November, Houthi terrorists operating from enclaves in northern Yemen have launched 27 attacks on commercial shipping lanes in the Red Sea. The Houthis have fired drone swarms, cruise missiles, and anti-ship missiles. The Houthis have pirated ships. They have endangered lives, disrupted international trade flows, and raised the cost of shipping a container from Asia to northern Europe by 173 percent. And until January 11, they paid no price.

Then, finally, late last week, his weakness having provoked the Iran-backed terror group for the umpteenth time, Biden finally, belatedly, insufficiently punched back.

The long-overdue response came in a series of joint-operation airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. Unfortunately, these strikes — which included support from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Bahrain — were leaked by the UK press two hours beforehand, which was no doubt the reason they yielded such a measly body count: 60 targets at 16 Houthi sites but killed just five bad guys.

As we noted on Friday: If you want to hit your enemy hard, don’t telegraph your punch.

The White House issued a joint statement on Thursday calling for “the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and crews,” but Biden himself called it a day before addressing the media or the American people. According to the Pentagon, he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who’s still hospitalized with prostate cancer, had spoken only twice in the previous two days.

We imagine all this has the Iranian mullahs, for whom the Houthis are a proxy, just quaking in their turbans. “The center of gravity for the aggression in the Middle East is Iran,” said Fox News’s General Jack Keane. “We have said this time and time and time again.” His point, which is the essential one, is that we won’t deter Iran without hitting Iran. This is the aggression that Biden’s weakness has provoked. Indeed, if we’re Communist China, with designs on the forceful “reunification” of Taiwan, we’re licking our chops.

During the week prior, after having received a series of sternly worded memos from Team Biden, the Houthis laughed and then launched their most complex attack on shipping vessels to date. This commercial component is no doubt what forced Biden’s hand because, as everyone knows, It’s the economy, stupid, and Biden, who hopes to win reelection in 10 months, is getting poor marks for his stewardship of the American economy.

As for his likely opponent, Donald Trump, he had rightly designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization shortly before leaving office, and Biden undid that designation almost immediately upon taking office. Again, weakness is provocative. Trump wasted no time in assailing his feckless successor on Truth Social:

So, let me get this straight. We’re dropping bombs all over the Middle East, AGAIN (where I defeated ISIS!), and our Secretary of Defense [sic], who just went missing for five days, is running the war from his laptop in a hospital room. Remember, this is the same gang that “surrendered” in Afghanistan, where no one was held accountable or FIRED. It was the most embarrassing “moment” in the history of the United States. Now we have wars in Ukraine, Israel, and Yemen, but no “war” on our Southern Border. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Crooked Joe Biden is the worst President in the history of the United States!

On Friday, Biden actually called the Houthis “terrorists,” but he refused to give them an official terror group designation, instead calling the difference “irrelevant” and weakly vowing, “We’ve pieced together a group of nations and we’re going to say if they continue to act and behave as they do, we’ll respond.”

This is, sadly, part of a pattern. As Continetti continues:

As happened in Ukraine, Biden’s attempt to avoid escalation has given the adversary the upper hand. Biden suffers from self-deterrence. He allowed the Houthis to take the initiative. They chose the time and location of their strikes. They crowed about their victories. Their evil achievements gave them a sense of élan. They felt the wind at their backs.

Not coincidentally to Biden’s lack of resolve, the cargo ship Galaxy Leader, which was seized by the Houthis in mid-November, is now being used as a tourist attraction — one in which visitors can board ship, take selfies, and stomp on U.S. and Israeli flags. This is the state of American power and prestige under Joe Biden.

Strange, but nothing like this ever happened during Donald Trump’s tour as commander-in-chief. One wonders: Do the American people miss the mean-tweeting Bad Orange Man yet? Does an engulfed Middle East miss him?

For that matter, does the rest of the civilized world miss him?