Although Iran has been on our minds at least since the days of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, it seems to have exploded as an issue these past few days.
President Biden has been indicating since his presidential campaign that he will try to resurrect the Iran deal, which places some limits on Iran’s nuclear weapons dreams but which President Trump disdained as dangerously ineffective in terms of inspection and verification, having too short a shelf life – and from which he ordered a U.S. withdrawal.
Unfortunately, after having staunchly insisted that he would require Iran to fulfill some key U.S. requirements before any economic sanctions would be lifted and also submit to some significant game-changing upgrades in restrictions, in the last few days he has done a virtual complete about-face.
What now seems to be in the works is a new approach of promising Iran anything in order to get it back to the negotiating table – including substantially reducing U.S. economic sanctions as an inducement – with the aim of negotiating a return essentially to the original agreement.
Perhaps as a means of assuaging the Israelis, Biden dispatched U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Israel – a former senior U.S. Army general with special expertise on Middle East defense and security issues, having served four years as head of U.S. Central Command in the region – who promptly declared that he had met with Israeli leaders and reaffirmed that “our commitment to Israel is enduring and ironclad.”
For its part, Israel – which continues to maintain that a nuclear Iran represents an existential threat to its survival and notes at every opportunity that Iran continually threatens a nuclear attack – seems to be in the process of telling Biden that if it comes to defending itself, Israel is prepared to do what it has to do, even proactively (and maybe despite what the U.S. would like).
This seems to be the message in the “shadow war” it has been waging against Iran these past months which features regular attacks against Iranian assets in the Middle East. The most significant and incendiary one will doubtless turn out to be last week’s massive cyber attack against Natanz, Iran’s major nuclear production facility.
The attack reportedly set back Iran’s nuclear program by almost a year. To be sure, Israel denies having acted in this instance but it is widely believed to have been responsible.
For their part, the Gulf nations that have recently joined together with Israel in the Abraham Accords – and those who are reportedly waiting in the wings to do so – are incredulous about America’s willingness to undermine the nascent military/political and economic bloc in opposition to Iran they all represent.
In addition, it is fascinating that there seems to be an unusual interest in Congress over the new Biden stance. Perhaps some of them still sting from President Obama’s having deftly outmaneuvered the Senate by concluding a deal with Iran that looked and sounded like a treaty without the constitutionally-required approval of two-thirds of the Senate.
In fact, Republican lawmakers in the Senate and House have introduced a surge of legislation in recent weeks seeking to crack down on Iran and putting the brakes on the Biden administration’s new plans to reenter the Iran nuclear deal in its 2015 iteration. While they differ in focus, they all are aimed at strengthening inspections and include missile production and support for terror among the banned activities that are not included in the restrictions in the 2015 deal.
Central to almost all of the legislative proposals is that any new deal must get the approval of two-thirds of the Senate or fail. It behooves us all to monitor the process and make sure our legislators don’t lose interest.