The Biden administration is appeasing Iran with words and deeds.
It’s a serious error of judgment. The Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran was effective in denying the regime the funds it needs to support its proxies, including Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. Those sanctions have also put Iran’s economy on the brink of collapse.
Unfortunately, instead of using this leverage, the Biden administration has squandered it. In February, President Joe Biden removed the Houthis from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations. The administration cited humanitarian assistance reasons for doing so, but the decision just doesn’t add up. The Houthis conduct terrorism in Yemen and attempt to export terrorism with ballistic missile attacks on population centers in Saudi Arabia.
But the nuclear deal issue is the big concern.
On the campaign trail, Biden pledged that the United States would not return to the nuclear deal unless Iran first returned to compliance with it. Biden added that he would also seek to address nonnuclear issues, including the regime’s malign regional activities, ballistic missile program, and human rights violations.
Instead, the Biden administration and Iran have agreed to establish two working groups on how both parties can reenter the deal. This clearly breaks Biden’s pledge from the campaign trail. Instead of waiting for Iran to return to the deal, Biden is showing himself desperate to return to a policy of dangerous failure. How else can we consider the 2015 arrangement that gave the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism $150 billion in sanctions relief while failing to address the regime’s regional aggression, ballistic missile program, human rights violations, and covert nuclear weapons research?
If the U.S. returns to the nuclear deal and lifts sanctions on Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei won’t exactly be ready to reconsider his other destabilizing activities. On the contrary, he’ll have the political rationale and treasury investments to double down on those activities.
Jackson Richman was most recently the Washington correspondent for JNS.org. Follow him @jacksonrichman.
