Robert Charles, former assistant secretary of state under George W. Bush, joins 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss the latest escalation by Iran in the Red Sea and the declaration by North Korea and China that 2024 is the 'year of friendship.'

Iran is already at war with America and threatens to destabilize the world. U.S. forces and bases are under fire in Iraq and Syria, having endured more than a hundred strikes by Iranian-backed militias in the past three months. Tehran-supported Houthi rebels have turned the Red Sea into a battlefield, having launched some 25 attacks on commercial vessels transiting the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, according to the head of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

The disruption of traffic in the Suez Canal, one of the world’s busiest shipping routes in global trade, is sending shipping costs surging, threatening the world economy. And that is after Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7 and Hezbollah fired more than 1,000 rocket strikes on northern Israel.

President Biden’s response? A "final warning," issued by his administration on Wednesday, to cease attacks or face unspecified "consequences." Biden’s strongly worded missive followed Iran’s deployment of a warship in the Red Sea, after the U.S. military sunk three Houthi boats and killed 10 militants.

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President Biden, President Reagan and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Associated Press | Getty Images)

Ultimatums and a mini-strike here and there will not deter Iran and its terrorist gangs. To prevent the crisis in the Middle East from reaching the boiling point and consuming the region, it is time for President Biden to switch strategy – from escalation control to escalation dominance.

Fear of escalation and of angering Iranian leaders has shaped Biden’s policy toward Tehran, with whom his administration is still hoping to renew a nuclear deal that had been broken by the Trump administration. As recently as August, Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged that the administration would "welcome any steps that Iran takes to actually deescalate the growing nuclear threat that it has posed since the United States got out of the Iran........

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