OPINION:
As the U.S. appears to be pushing for a quick signing of a new nuclear deal, Iran is now viewing the Ukraine crisis as an economic opportunity to be quickly grasped. Oil and gas prices have skyrocketed to levels not seen in years, and the immediate entry of Iran into the energy market could line Iran’s pockets where the deficit budget is still based on oil prices before they spiked and on sales of a million barrels a day.
While the government is tripping over itself to disclose classified information about operations in Ukraine, it is also doing its best to hide information about the ongoing negotiations with Iran over a return to former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement. Fortunately, some brave souls like Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department official, and others are very concerned with the concessions being made by U.S. Negotiator Robert Malley in Vienna that amount to total capitulation to Iran.
Mr. Noronha has been warned that what Mr. Malley has negotiated with the Iranians is a total disaster. Even more appalling and unacceptable is that Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulanov has primarily run the entire negotiation. The U.S. and Iranian delegations have yet to meet face-to-face with the Russians, still serving as an intermediary, filtering and changing things to fit their agenda. Shocking that the news media now covering Russian atrocities in Ukraine have largely failed to cover this at all.
In short, the deal being negotiated in Vienna by Mr. Malley is dangerous to U.S. national security. It fails to serve American national security interests in either the long or the short term. To make matters worse, it is being done by the Russians, who have now inserted conditions into the draft that run contrary to what the U.S. and the NATO allies are trying to accomplish with the sanctions levied against Russia.
Some of the leaked draft would lift the sanctions on Iranians Mohsen Rezaei and Ali Akbar Velayati. They were responsible for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish facility in Argentina where 85 people were killed, and hundreds more were injured. Another Iranian who would skate under Mr. Malley’s “deal” is the Iranian Gen. Hossein Dehghan, who led the Iranian Guard forces in Lebanon tied to the 1983 Beirut bombings where 241 U.S. Marines were killed while sleeping in their barracks.
Sanctions would also be lifted on major Iranian assets unrelated to the nuclear deal, such as the so-called “Mostazafan boneyard” — an operation run by the Iranian regime responsible for the illegal confiscation of Jewish property after the 1979 Iranian revolution.
State Department lawyers are now working at Secretary Antony Blinken’s direction on “very creative” ways to circumvent the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act that gives Congress a right to review any nuclear agreement reached with Iran. The last thing that the Biden administration wants is Congress getting involved with a new nuclear agreement with Iran.
On the money side, the U.S. is now poised to release billions of dollars of Iran’s currently frozen in South Korean banks next week and elsewhere. By some estimates, this might amount to some $7 billion that would support a great deal of Iranian-sponsored terrorism spread throughout the globe. Biden’s initial promise that any new deal with Iran would include a prohibition on further Iranian support to terrorism has magically disappeared, while the terrorists have not.
The understanding reached so far is that the talks remain unrelated to any political or military interest that either side has beyond the nuclear issue. Iran still refuses to discuss the issue of its ballistic missiles or its assistance to terrorist organizations.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has tried to insert himself into the negotiation with Iran demanding written guarantees that sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine would not affect commercial ties and cooperation between Russia, stating that “Russia wants to secure its interests in other places.” The Iranian reaction was also connected to Iran’s abstention in the U.N. General Assembly vote condemning Russia, which was passed by a large majority of 141 countries. It also comes against the backdrop of Iran’s pro-Russian stance so far on the Ukrainian issue.
The sanctions now imposed on Russia afford Iran an opportunity for new channels of investment to corporations that are pulling their investments out of Russia and looking for alternative opportunities — a bonanza that depends on a quick signing of the accord, after which sanctions on Iran would be lifted. Here, Iran can maintain its commercial ties and arms deals with Russia because sanctions on Russia are not binding on the Iranians as the U.N. Security Council has not adopted them.
Clearly, there is a time element here. Russia does not want to be excluded from the picture or lose its Iranian leverage. If there’s a link between its invasion of Ukraine and the nuclear accord, it lies in the fact that Russia’s ability to dictate Iran’s moves is eroding. At the same time, the opportunities the West can offer Iran are only beginning to come into focus.
Iran has an estimated reserve of 80 million barrels of oil that it could immediately market. Senior Iranian officials believe that Iran could be selling another 1.2 million barrels a day within a few days or weeks, thereby contributing to a lowering of oil prices around the world and permitting Iran to attract new European customers.
If left unstopped, these negotiations will forever compromise U.S. national security interests as well as those of America’s friends and allies in the region and the world. It sends a pernicious signal that the U.S. is willing to subjugate justice and basic morality just to make a deal with the regime in Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. So far, this is just what has leaked out, and there is no idea what else is being signed away.
• Abraham Wagner has served in several national security positions, including the NSC Staff under Presidents Nixon and Ford. He is the author of the recent book “Henry Kissinger: Pragmatic Statesman in Hostile Times.”
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