As a senior national-security official, imagine dealing with a revolutionary foreign power that has worked for decades to undermine American strength and alliances in a critical region. This power is the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism, and it has funded and directed proxy forces that have killed and maimed U.S. personnel. Its ultimate goal is to drive the United States from its corner of the globe and eliminate America’s closest ally in the Greater Middle East. Meanwhile, it has spent the past four presidential administrations building the military and technical infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons while concealing and lying about its program. It violates human rights with impunity and has spent the past nine months brutally suppressing a popular revolt against its theocratic rule. Additionally, it supplies the drones and other weaponry that Russia uses to prosecute an illegal and barbaric war on the sovereign nation of Ukraine.
Given these circumstances, would you be inclined to bargain with such a regime? If your answer is yes, then you can anticipate a short and unhappy career in Joe Biden’s State Department. According to news reports, Biden is prepared to authorize billions of dollars in payments to Iran in exchange for the release of U.S. prisoners, a halt to militia attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a moratorium on ballistic-missile sales to Russia, and a freeze on uranium enrichment at 60 percent. However, Biden cannot call this agreement a deal because he wants to avoid congressional review. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 forbids the president from relieving nuclear-related sanctions on the Islamic Republic without congressional approval. The administration’s end run around the law is clever, but it is also pathetic.
This deal, which dare not speak its name, will have no force and will rely entirely on the goodwill of the 84-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a grizzled trickster and ally of Vladimir Putin. The New York Times reports that Khamenei has authorized the deal because it leaves Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in place. The second Biden begins to doubt the wisdom of paying further ransom money, Khamenei will start spinning his centrifuges once more. Additionally, the deal says nothing about Iran’s deadliest proxy, Hezbollah, or about Iran’s drone traffic. This omission is consistent with Biden’s habit of selling out America’s allies, including the democratic government of Afghanistan, the peoples of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, and the Ukrainians resisting Russian occupation.
Biden’s bribe is limited in scope, bereft of accountability, brazenly desperate, and lacking in strategic purpose. Its aims are political. Biden wants to keep the Middle East quiet ahead of Election Day 2024. That is why his support for the Iranian rebellion was merely gestural, why he allowed these talks in Oman to continue despite Iran’s assistance to Russia, and why he has submitted to the humiliation of paying off rogues for promises of good behavior in a few select areas.
This is partly a story of diminished diplomatic expectations. Biden’s old boss, Barack Obama, dreamed of subletting the Greater Middle East to Iran. Now Biden is left paying the bully to leave him alone. It is also another entry in the saga of Joe Biden’s incompetence. In his rare discussions of foreign policy, President Biden has portrayed international relations as a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. However, his actions tend to give the authoritarians the upper hand. Appeasing Iran does nothing to further the cause of democracy. Nor does attempting détente with a China that has grown in belligerence since the spy-balloon incident earlier this year. Nor does slow-walking weapons deliveries to Ukraine while hemming and hawing over Ukraine’s future in NATO. If Joe Biden wanted to preserve and promote democracy abroad, he would do more than give the occasional speech on the subject. He would mobilize hard power to confront authoritarians and deter them from hostile acts.
Biden has made a career out of misjudgment. This sure-to-fail bargain with Iran is another entry in a depressing catalogue. This column originally ran at the Washington Free Beacon.
