If the Biden administration isn’t careful, it could soon find itself confronting at least two major disasters in the broader Middle East. The first: the permanent entrenchment in Yemen of an Iranian-backed Houthi regime—a version of Hezbollah on the Arabian Peninsula, armed to the teeth with long-range precision weapons capable of targeting U.S. partners and interests across the region from Egypt and Israel to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Monday’s reports of another barrage of lethal drones and ballistic missiles fired at targets across Saudi Arabia are just the latest reminder of how bad things can get.

The second disaster: the full-blown collapse of the U.S. and NATO position in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s return to power, who remain in league with al Qaeda terrorists who helped Osama bin Laden perpetrate the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington nearly 20 years ago.

U.S. President Joe Biden certainly didn’t create the dire circumstances the United States now faces in both countries. They’ve been in the works for years. But the policies his administration has pursued in its first two and a half months in office have almost certainly made two bad situations even worse. Equally clear is if the scope and consequences of these pending defeats for U.S. policy be fully realized, Biden will inevitably be saddled with the bulk of the blame.

The folly in Yemen is the most obvious. The administration entered office in high moral dudgeon, determined to punish the Saudis for their multitude of sins, including their inept and brutal prosecution of the war against the Houthis. Pending arms sales to the kingdom were immediately suspended. All support for Saudi offensive military operations ceased. The Trump administration’s last-minute decision to designate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization was reversed. An intelligence report announcing the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, responsible for the grisly 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was made public. Boom, boom, boom, boom. The casual observer of Biden’s start in office could have been forgiven for concluding that U.S. foreign policy had no higher purpose than finding new ways to demonstrate its disgust and disdain for the House of Saud.

What happened next should not have been a surprise—at least not for anyone who has spent more than five minutes analyzing who was on the other side of the Yemen conflict: a murderous band of radical ideologues in bed with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and determined to conquer most of Yemen in service to their slogan “Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse the Jews. Victory to Islam.” You don’t have to be former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to appreciate the most likely response to a U.S. decision to pull the rug out from under the Saudi war effort would be a dangerous escalation of the Houthi military campaign.

The acceleration of rocket, drone, and ballistic missile attacks against Saudi towns, airports, and critical oil infrastructure has been unrelenting and breathtaking in its scope and audacity. It’s been coupled with a surge in the long-running Houthi effort to take the strategic city of Marib, the last toehold of the United Nations-recognized, Saudi-backed government in north-central Yemen and the location of the country’s largest oil and gas fields. Should the Houthis succeed, it would effectively be game over for the seven-year effort to block the consolidation of a Hezbollah-like revolutionary regime across northern Yemen, abutting the Red Sea and Saudi border, beholden to Tehran, and—much like their Lebanese counterpart—brandishing a rapidly growing arsenal of weapons capable of raining down destruction on high-value targets in every major U.S. regional ally with potentially catastrophic effects.

For its part, the Biden administration seems to be taken aback that a band of anti-United States fanatics backed by the IRGC ended up interpreting Biden’s promise to “reassess” relations with Riyadh as an open invitation to press their military advantage rather than lay down their arms. On more than one occasion, U.S. officials have expressed “alarm” that their good-faith peace gestures to end the war have triggered a major uptick in Houthi attacks on the kingdom. The administration’s spokespersons have dutifully condemned each new Houthi outrage. And they have repeatedly underscored their commitment to help Saudi Arabia protect its territory from the assaults, pledging “we’re not going to allow Saudi Arabia to be target practice.”