National Review
Joe Biden should not return to Iran deal
Although President Biden has demanded that Iran rejoin the Global Joint Action Plan before receiving economic relief, he will likely begin soon to approve billions of dollars in assistance and lift sanctions. Undoubtedly, Tehran will continue to violate the atomic agreement and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory. Biden will do so for the same reason that Barack Obama has repeatedly yielded ground in negotiations with the Islamic Republic: fear of risking war or publicly granting a nuclear bomb to the clerical regime. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who has an autarchist tendency and despises the United States, has been increasing the pressure. Tehran increased the quantity and quality of its enriched uranium and began to build and deploy advanced centrifuges faster than allowed by JCPOA. The clerical regime is also preventing the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency from accessing Iran’s nuclear facilities, which violates the NPT. And for the fourth time under the Biden government, an Iran-led Shi’ite militia launched a rocket at an American base in Iraq. The president responded to one of the attacks with a limited attack in Syria. Khamenei went point-blank – more than he used to be when he wanted to have the luxury of room to maneuver: “We have no sense of urgency, we are in no hurry to see the United States return to JCPOA; it was never a concern for us. . . . Our entirely reasonable requirement is to lift sanctions; this is the usurped right of the Iranian nation. “While senior government officials are reluctant to say this publicly, they need the credible threat of U.S. military power and the pain of sanctions to bring the supreme leader back into negotiations. Punitive as the sanctions were for two and a half years under Donald Trump’s maximum pressure campaign, they did not break the courage and faith of the Iranian ruling elite. For Khamenei and his security forces, the turning point came in the winter of 2019, when they crushed anti-regime protests across the country, initially sparked by a rapid rise in fuel prices. In 2020, after using machine gun shots at the poor, the supreme leader had overcome three years of increasingly severe demonstrations. In his mind, he overcame American provocations. Addicted to arms control, ticking the uranium clock, fearing the prospect of another conflict or violence orchestrated by Iran against US forces, President Biden is probably meditating more on the following: how his administration can choreograph the nuclear extortion as a mutual reduction that makes it appear that Tehran has given something substantial for the billions of dollars that the White House is going to release? Europeans, especially the French, have similarly concentrated, serving as intermediaries in an attempt to resurrect what they consider a diplomatic triumph. Philosophically, the president is in a worse position than his former boss. President Obama was averse to the use of military and economic coercion, seeing “engagement”, especially Western trade, as a catalyst for moderating the clerical regime. He certainly seemed to believe that if Washington were any nicer, Tehran would reciprocate. The United States could make concession after concession in the negotiations – on expiry clauses, the destruction of existing centrifuges, the development of more powerful and easy to hide centrifuges, intrusive inspections, undisclosed nuclear activities, ballistic missiles and regional aggression – and developments it could very well prevent the worst-case scenarios, which Obama was probably not prepared to militarily prevent. President Biden does not seem so naive. Since Obama’s nuclear reach to Khamenei in 2012, we’ve seen official Islamic Republic emissaries take the lead in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Syrians; waging a assassination campaign against expatriate dissidents and attempting to bomb an opposition conference outside Paris, which many Americans attended; and savagely crush ordinary Iranians in protest. Some of Obama’s staff members, who are now the people of Biden, were able to shudder when Iran’s depredations in Syria were combined with easing sanctions on the theocracy. Liberal internationalists, and the Biden government may be the last breath of its kind, are aware. They are not blind to the problematic nature of the theory that the Islamic Republic would be on the verge of Termidor if it were not for the “hardliners” of the United States. Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted that the JCPOA was far from what former Secretary of State John Kerry claimed to be, an agreement that forever closes all roads to a bomb. If a subsequent agreement needs to be “longer, stronger and broader”, then JCPOA was, at best, a stepping stone. If the government succeeds in selling a JCPOA 2.0 in Washington, the president will win the support of congressional Democrats who opposed the deal in 2015, and may even break the Republican consensus, which has so far remained solidly against any return from US to the nuclear deal. Some Republicans, like in 2015, may want to find a diplomatic way to escape the American-Iranian confrontation, to see hope on the desert horizon, even if it is a mirage. But how President Biden takes another step with Tehran is unclear – unless the government only intends to give in to Iranian demands, including lifting sanctions linked to terrorism, proliferation of missiles and the depredations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, while using rhetoric hard to camouflage your retreat. Namely: Obama’s policy with the voice of Senator Tom Cotton. Iran’s supreme leader will certainly no longer accept restrictions on its industrial-sized atomic aspirations after the United States has lifted sanctions. Iranian Shiite imperialism and the nuclear weapons program are not exercises that have made financial sense; they give satisfaction and security to religious revolutionaries who still have a cause. Blinken, who lacks Kerry’s kumbaya instincts and arrogance, may know that. President Trump never really tried to apply a policy of containment against the Islamic Republic, where Washington doggedly tries to reverse the clerical regime’s influence throughout the Middle East, patiently aggravating the theocracy’s internal weaknesses. And he recklessly rewarded his sanctions regime for a new, more comprehensive atomic bomb deal – a fantasy while Iran remains the Islamic Republic. But restraint would create limits. Billions of dollars would not be transferred to a short, weak and narrow nuclear deal. The mass slaughter and terrorism would not be rewarded. And the president of the United States could answer the supreme leader: “I don’t have to go back to JCPOA, either.” In the endless disputes over the Middle East’s tough power, that would be the next important step. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Iranian targets officer at the Central Intelligence Agency, is a senior member of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, where Mark Dubowitz, sanctioned by Iran in 2019, is the CEO.