Iran nuclear deal echo chamber rides again

OPINION:

The authors of our current policy disasters in the Middle East are back. To quote the Napoleonic-era French diplomat Talleyrand, “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”

In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, Ben Rhodes warned that the United States has “emboldened autocrats, misallocated resources, fueled a global migration crisis, and contributed to an arc of instability from South Asia through North Africa.” He is correct in noting the many failures of American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.

But Mr. Rhodes, who served as former President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, overlooks that many of these calamities are linked to policies he pushed. He seems unable to connect the dots between the strategies he and his colleagues advocated and their dire results.

Mr. Rhodes garnered attention after a May 2016 New York Times profile, “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru.” In it, he bragged that he had created an echo chamber to sell the Iran nuclear deal, which Mr. Obama hailed as the chief achievement of his second term. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, was billed as an arms control agreement that would prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and prevent a wider war in the Middle East. It did neither. 

Indeed, the terms of the deal, with its sunset provisions, enabled Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, to become a nuclear power, thus ensuring nuclear proliferation in a famously unstable part of the world. The deal also lacked a reliable verification regimen, allowing inspectors to inspect only sites that were “declared.” No limits were placed on Tehran’s ability to conduct research and development, nor were any placed on what the Obama administration referred to as Iran’s “non-nuclear” activities, including terrorism and the expansion of its missile program.

Worse still, the administration engaged in appeasement, reportedly quashing counternarcotics investigations into Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed U.S.-designated terrorist group that operates extensively in the Western Hemisphere. Pallets of cash were sent, and the Obama administration looked the other way at Iranian terror plots, both abroad and at home. Sanctions put in place to hinder Iranian malfeasance were revoked. Longtime U.S. allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, both targets of the Iranian regime, were alarmed that Washington was bargaining away their security.

On the face of it, this would be a difficult “deal” to pitch to the American people. But the proponents of the JCPOA found an easy workaround: Lie. The echo chamber built by Mr. Rhodes pushed the narrative that it was either “this deal or war” and likened critics of the deal, both in Israel and at home, to Iranian “hard-liners.” Many in the legacy media happily complied, with The New York Times even listing which members of Congress opposed the deal, denoting those who were Jewish in yellow. In a rare moment of candor, Mr. Rhodes bragged that “the average reporter that we talk to is 27 years old. … They literally know nothing.”

Yet the deal’s critics were proved right; instead of preventing war, the sanctions relief and appeasement helped fuel it. Iran used its overflowing coffers to do what it does best :finance terrorism. And America’s traditional allies, both in Saudi Arabia and Israel, began to question whether Washington would have their back — providing American foes such as China with an opening to Saudi Arabia. Conversely, the Trump administration built on these shared security concerns, leading to closer ties between the Arab Gulf states and Israel. After a careful review, the Trump team chose to exit the flawed Iran nuclear deal.

In April 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that during a secret mission in Iran, Israeli spies managed to remove thousands of documents, which were later authenticated by the United States, showing that Iran had not only lied about its nuclear program but was also engaged in hiding it while negotiating with the U.S. and others.

In 2021, the incoming Biden administration could have learned from the lessons of the past few years: Iran lies, the deal didn’t thwart the regime’s nuclear ambitions, and its ruling theocracy is the chief threat to regional stability. Instead, they tripped over themselves to do whatever it took to get another agreement, from ending sanctions enforcement to delisting Iranian-backed terror groups like the Houthis to failing to respond to attacks on American troops and personnel.

Winston Churchill famously said: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”

Last Oct. 7, that war came when Hamas and other Iranian-backed groups attacked Israel and perpetrated the largest slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust. In the immediate days afterward, Mr. Obama, Mr. Rhodes and other key proponents of the Iran nuclear deal kept quiet. One would be forgiven for thinking they were struck silent with regret or shame. But they proved themselves incapable of reevaluating their mistaken positions.

Mr. Rhodes and his former deputy, Tommy Vietor — both of whom now mercifully run a podcast instead of foreign policy — have spent the subsequent nine months attacking Israel, ignoring that the Jewish state’s current predicament is, in large measure, the outcome of the policies that they pushed. Some humility is in order, but none is to be found. Instead, Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Vietor seem wedded to their mistaken and unmistakably dangerous beliefs. That both are treated as experts whose opinions are feted instead of outcasts is an indictment of both the very American elite that Mr. Rhodes has claimed to despise and the Fourth Estate that often presents itself as the vanguard of truth.

In John Ford’s 1962 Western, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” a newspaperman tells Jimmy Stewart’s character: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Successful foreign policy, however, needs to be predicated on facts, not myths. And it is clear that appeasing Iran doesn’t deter war; it encourages it.

• Sean Durns is a senior research analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.