The Islamic Republic of Iran is increasingly unconstrained.
Of most immediate concern are Iran’s continued attempts to kill American citizens on U.S. soil. In recent months, the FBI has disrupted advanced Iranian assassination plots against former national security adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Alongside other former Trump administration officials, they continue to receive full-time security details in the face of this threat. This necessary security provision is costing taxpayers millions of dollars every month.
Others have been less fortunate. Despised by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime for her moral courage, dissident Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad is high on Tehran’s hit list. In 2021, Iranian spies plotted to kidnap Alinejad from her New York home. Then, this July, a man wielding an AK-47 was charged after repeatedly lurking outside Alinejad’s home.
Novelist Salman Rushdie, long under an Iranian death sentence for writing The Satanic Verses, was stabbed multiple times in mid-August as he addressed a New York audience on the topic of free speech. His would-be assassin, a devoted follower of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanese Hezbollah, has been praised as a hero by Iranian state media.
President Joe Biden should be confronting Iran over these provocations, which are all acts of terror inspired or ordered by Iran’s theocratic regime. Instead, he settles for issuing an occasional indictment and deploying more junior administration officials to condemn Tehran in the mildest terms possible. Yes, national security adviser Jake Sullivan warns of serious consequences for Iran, but only after its leaders succeed at killing an American on U.S. soil.
Even if Biden won’t get serious about Iranian assassins, it should be a no-brainer for him to take nuclear weapons seriously. Alas, no.
More than 20 months since he took office pledging to renegotiate a strengthened Iran nuclear accord, Biden continues to dance to Tehran’s tune. Empowered by relaxed sanctions relief and encouraged by a sense that Biden is desperate to ink a deal, any deal, Iran is demanding more and more. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned for more than a year that time is running out for a renewed arrangement, but nothing has changed. Considering Iran’s proven penchant for covert nuclear development and its shameless ballistic missile development (absurdly veiled as “satellite launches”), the risks are clear. Analysts believe Iran has stockpiled enough nuclear material to achieve weapons-grade enrichment in a matter of months in sufficient quantity to use in a nuclear bomb.
Fearing the second holocaust that Iran’s leaders have repeatedly promised for Israel, Israeli leaders are understandably concerned. Prime Minister Yair Lapid has taken great pains to show respect for Biden in spite of the disadvantage at which the American president is putting him. Lapid has avoided public criticisms of Biden’s Iran negotiating strategy, instead raising his concerns in private. Yet Lapid has struggled even to get a phone call with the president, let alone a personal meeting. Iran, meanwhile, has the initiative and apparently all the time in the world.
Then there’s Iran’s growing malfeasance in the Middle East, most recently exemplified by Iranian drone and rocket attacks on U.S. forces stationed in Syria. Although Biden has belatedly ordered retaliatory airstrikes, they were of limited scale and ambition. More broadly, as media outlets continue their fixation on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s killing of Jamal Khashoggi, Iran continues to destabilize the Middle East in ways equally destructive.
Iranian-supported militias are preventing the formation of a new government in Baghdad and fomenting violence there. In Lebanon, Iran’s Hezbollah paramilitary force uses guns to prevent true political reform as demanded by Lebanon’s people and international investors. As a result of Iranian meddling there, unrestrained inflation and bank runs have become the new normal. Human suffering is great. State collapse and a second civil war are real possibilities.
Iran is happy with this, and Biden doesn’t even seem to care. He has failed to impose robust sanctions in response to all the terrorism and destruction. Nor has he sought to rally the world against Iran’s duplicity. America’s credibility with regional allies and its status as the world’s great voice for democracy are suffering because of Biden’s silence.
Biden and his top officials have repeatedly criticized the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran. But all they seem to be offering is maximum weakness. Iran smells blood in the water and revels in the scent.
