OPINION:
President Biden is treating Iran with mystifying deference given the Islamic Republic’s stubborn refusal to end its nuclear ambition.
If the administration has a strategy for converting conflict into cooperation, the president should hint at what is to come.
Otherwise, the only sensible conclusion is that we are witnessing inexcusable weakness in the face of Iranian intimidation.
Mr. Biden’s ongoing attempt to resurrect the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, nixed during the Trump era as useless, have failed, and his chief Iran emissary, Robert Malley, was for months nowhere to be found.
Reportedly under investigation for suspicion of disclosing classified material to his Iranian counterparts, Mr. Malley recently turned up safe behind the walls of Princeton’s ivory tower. Rather than practice diplomacy, he is scheduled to teach it in the coming school year.
Iran has not missed a beat pursuing its nuclear program. The regime is “close to possibly testing a nuclear weapons device,” the Jerusalem Post reports. Intelligence from the Netherlands finds that Iran is employing “sophisticated uranium enrichment centrifuges” capable of enriching uranium to 90% bomb-grade, the Post writes.
Sweden reports that Iran “engages in industrial espionage, which is mainly aimed at the Swedish high-tech industry and Swedish products that can be used in nuclear weapons program.”
And Germany in 2022 tracked a “consistently high number of indications of proliferation relevant procurement attempts by Iran for its nuclear programs.”
In February of last year, U.S. officials announced that Iran’s breakout time for producing sufficient fissile material for a nuclear bomb was “weeks rather than months.” Eighteen months later, indications that Iran could be ready to test a device shouldn’t be surprising.
In light of these developments, Mr. Biden’s eagerness to accommodate Iranian interests is baffling.
In recent weeks, the president has bowed to the regime’s demands that no one should touch the 800,000 barrels of Iranian oil contained in a Greek tanker that was seized off the coast of Africa for violating international sanctions. The tanker is now anchored in U.S. waters near Texas, but Iran has threatened to retaliate against any U.S. company that offloads its crude.
Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle are appalled that Mr. Biden would fall for the regime’s intimidation tactics. In an Aug. 16 letter spearheaded by Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat, they wrote: “The enforcement of petroleum sanctions will become irrelevant if American citizens and companies involved constantly live in fear of Iranian retaliation.”
At the same time, U.S. officials recently announced a deal in which Iran agreed to free five imprisoned Americans in return for the release of $6 billion in Iranian assets, held in South Korea, for the purchase of food and medicine. While happy that the suffering of their fellow citizens is soon to end, Americans should recognize that by paying a fortune for their liberation, Mr. Biden has just given our adversaries inventive to take Americans hostage.
Having failed through diplomacy to dissuade an enemy’s quest for nuclear weapons, Mr. Biden appears to have chosen appeasement as an alternative. Apparently, he has forgotten the other means of transforming conflict into cooperation: peace through strength.
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