Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran, continues his effort to win a new nuclear accord. Already, the White House and State Department have agreed to lift billions of dollars in sanctions. Other sanctions, they simply do not enforce, netting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps billions of dollars in profit.
Biden’s team believes the price is worth it. While an aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now-national security adviser Jake Sullivan bit on an Omani proposal that he negotiate with Iranian officials in Muscat. Sullivan was ambitious: Negotiating with rogues, however inadvisable, is a career catalyst in the State Department. Just ask Dennis Ross about the PLO or Zalmay Khalilzad about the Taliban. Sullivan was a Rhodes scholar astute at process but lacking regional expertise. Clinton’s leaked emails show Sullivan was more a trusted sounding board than strategist. He believed the conventional wisdom that the struggle between reformers and hardliners in the Islamic Republic was meaningful and could alter Tehran’s direction.
