The Biden administration seems willing to bear any Iranian burden, however bloody, in order to restore the flawed nuclear deal with Tehran.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken might have left it out of his weekend tweeting spree, but Iran’s missile attack on northern Iraq was hard to miss. More than 10 missiles were launched from Iran, targeting what Tehran claims was an Israeli intelligence station in Irbil. The State Department leapt to support that claim, its statement snapping that “the U.S. was not the intended target; press speculation otherwise is simply wrong.”
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Regardless of whether the U.S. was the target, those aerial deliveries from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps endangered U.S. facilities and lives in Irbil. Moreover, the Guard has a track record of targeting U.S. interests under the Biden administration. Last February, a Revolutionary Guard rocket attack on U.S. personnel in Irbil killed one American and wounded others. Last October, the Guard conducted a drone attack on a U.S. military base in Syria. Loaded with explosives and ball bearings — a combination designed to shred human bodies — the attack fortunately caused no casualties.
That’s just the tip of Iran’s recent terrorism iceberg.
As the Washington Examiner reported last week, the Biden administration is failing to confront Iran over its numerous assassination plots against former Trump administration officials. Instead of retaliating against Iran’s flagrant acts of war, the administration is spending millions of dollars each month to protect officials from Iranian plots. At the very same time, U.S. negotiators in Vienna are making any and all concessions to Iran in order to secure Tehran’s untrustworthy signature on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’s dotted line. Numerous media reports suggest that the Biden administration is even willing to grant the Guard, a terrorist organization, sanctions relief.
Iran is demanding extraordinary sanctions relief while also sending assassins, missiles, rockets, and combat drones against America and its allies. To accept, as the Biden administration does, that Iran is a credible negotiating partner thus requires a trip through the looking glass. Put simply, as President Joe Biden tolerates Iran’s blatant effort to bury Americans, the U.S. is burying its own credibility. No wonder U.S. allies in the Middle East are so concerned with Biden’s foreign policy. No wonder they literally won’t even take his phone calls.
Indeed, even if one accepts that Biden’s pursuit of a restored nuclear accord is the right strategy, how can anyone seriously assert that U.S. toleration of Iranian terrorism is beneficial to that pursuit? What lessons will Iran take from such overt, relentless appeasement? Biden is showing Iran that its terrorism has no consequences.
Iran will therefore find increasing confidence to demand the absolute maximum in concessions from the U.S. in exchange for the absolute minimum in concessions. Don’t, for example, expect any restored nuclear accord to include improved inspections protocols or restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program. Second, Iran will also likely conclude that its diligent pursuit of American bloodletting can happily coexist with U.S. diplomatic engagement.
Although much of the media appear not to have noticed this absurdity, it is at once morally pathetic and strategically absurd. No U.S. government should tolerate such an outrageous measure of terrorism against its citizens and interests. No U.S. government should offer vast financial gifts to a regime that offers knives in reciprocity.
Fortunately, Republican senators are taking a different approach. Excluding only Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, 49 GOP senators wrote to the White House on Monday to express their shared concern over the administration’s strategy. The senators also made clear that they would not be bound by any restored nuclear accord.
It’s a sliver of good news, albeit one that will be crushed at the intersection of Biden’s weakness and Iran’s appetite for blood.
