President Joe Biden seems set to restore the fatally flawed Iran nuclear accord. Iran, knowing that Biden is irrationally desperate for a deal at nearly any cost, has played the Biden administration pitch perfectly — just as it played the Obama administration previously.
Iran will use sanctions relief under any restored agreement to bolster its oil sales and access its frozen bank accounts. This will produce an annual windfall of tens of billions of dollars, which Iran will use to export its sectarian Islamic revolution, further destabilizing the Middle East. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, hit hard by Trump-era sanctions, will be grateful for Biden’s generosity. Biden’s folly will also help Iran restore its subsidies to terrorist proxies such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, various Iraqi militias, and the Yemeni Houthi rebels.
It is hard to overstate the hypocrisy that undergirds Biden’s approach. As with his prior reluctance to sanction Russia’s Nord Stream 2 energy pipeline, Biden’s tolerance of Iran’s oil export economy is baffling. Between his cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, his aggressive empowerment of the Environmental Protection Agency, and his cancellation of oil and gas leases on U.S. public lands, one can only ask why he cripples the domestic energy industry while going out of his way to help that of Russia and Iran.
As Biden preaches a mirage of a hard-won peace with Iran, the Iranians will continue their covert development of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. Iran will benefit from the restored agreement while continuing to do exactly what the agreement is supposed to prevent: its accession as a nuclear power. Given Iran’s stated commitment to wipe Israel off the map, the Israelis will likely find this threat intolerable. Israel’s nuclear security strategy is inextricably linked to the legacy of the Holocaust.
Nor would Biden’s folly limit the nuclear threat to Iran, whose nemesis, Saudi Arabia, is working with China to develop its own nuclear power capability. Analysts believe that Saudi Arabia has made a deal with Pakistan to receive that nation’s nuclear weapons should Iran build its own. This threatens nuclear brinkmanship between two regimes with a shared and theologically vested hatred for one another.
Biden conceitedly ignores these concerns. As with Barack Obama before him, Biden appears to believe that as long as Iran does not gain nuclear weapons while he’s in office, any deal is better than no deal. This is why he is unfazed by the fact that the Iranians have repeatedly been caught conducting illicit nuclear weapons research. And Iran barely even hides the use of its “satellite development” as a veiled excuse for its ballistic missile program.
Put simply, Biden can have no credible confidence that Iran will live up to its nonproliferation obligations, especially given that Iran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium is now sufficient for a rapid “breakout” from any deal to a first-strike capability.
There is a better course. Biden should retain the sanctions that are currently crippling Iran’s economy. Working with France, which is more hawkish on Iran than is commonly understood, and Britain, he should insist that any new nuclear agreement include three key additions. First, it should eliminate the original agreement’s 2030 sunset clause. Second, it should include restrictions upon Iran’s ballistic missile program. Third, it should contain a new inspections protocol that allows for the rapid International Atomic Energy Agency investigation of all suspicious nuclear sites, including military bases.
This strategy would leverage Iran’s access to economic relief against its verified willingness to suspend nuclear weapons activity. It would serve the ultimate security goal of preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and avoiding the threat of a second Holocaust. It would thus justify the benefit of sanctions relief for an evil regime at the benefit of a far greater security prize.
Put another way, Biden should be trying for a good deal rather than pursuing the folly upon which he seems bent.
