It’s time President Biden revisited his conclusions about the Iranian threat to world order. He has famously insisted that he was determined to reengage with the Iranians in order to deter them from securing a nuclear weapons capacity and other factors he deems detrimental to world peace. Thus, from the get go of his presidency he has dismissed President Trump’s hard line as being unduly provocative and making impossible his dream of not only getting Iran to restrict its nuclear weapons program but also its missile development, its support for insurgent Shiite militias fighting all over the Middle East and end its aggressive behavior towards its neighbors.
He also suggests the possibility of a revised deal with Iran than would carry well beyond the 15-year shelf life of the first one, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA and impose a far more serious inspection protocol than the laughable one which was part of the first JCPOA.
And all of these things, he maintains, can be brought about simply by a skillful renegotiation of the JCPOA. As a sweetener he has already gone so far as to pull back on some of the onerous economic sanctions of the Trump era that had devastated the Iranian economy and were almost at the point of making them “cry uncle.”
Sounds good, but the President should pay attention to what the Iranians are actually saying.
Just the other day, the Iranian president-elect, Ebrahim Raisi , fresh from his overwhelming victory at the polls last week, said Iran, or the Islamic Republic as he prefers to call the country, was not about to stop supporting the militia groups that were doing its bidding. Nor was it interested in discussions on how to reduce its military footprint in the Middle East. He was emphatic that “[r]egional and missile issues are not negotiable.”
Nor should all of this have been unexpected. It is easy to see that a central part of Iran’s Middle East military strategy is to have the benefit of the depredations of insurgent armed militias and of its impressive missile program, which extends it political influence well beyond its own borders.
So it is hard to understand President Biden’s thinking, inasmuch as what he wants to see happen, with Iranian input, is largely inimical to the way the Iranians themselves see their national interests.
What we are left with then is a situation like that prior to the making of the JCPOA in 2015. Then a rogue Iran was lording it over its neighbors and seemed bent on developing a nuclear weapons arsenal that would catapult it into major power status.
Led by the United States, the Western powers then called for a halt to Iran’s production of the essential components of nuclear weapon development. Imposition of economic sanctions to bring this about, and the threat of military action to thwart Iran’s plans, soon followed. As a possible alternative, the West offered negotiations that would result in satisfactory limits on what Iran could or could not, do.
The JCPOA followed. It restricted Iranian weapons-level nuclear fission production for 15 years and provided for inspections that would ostensibly insure Iranian compliance. But it was silent on such issues as missile development and support for terrorism.
President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA in 2018, claiming that Iran was cheating on the production limits and that the prescribed inspections themselves fell laughably short. Iranian missile development was totally unaddressed, Iran’s predatory support for terror groups was ignored, and in any case the JCPOA would expire in within 15 years, leaving Iran free to do whatever it wished.
President Trump then proceeded to impose ever greater economic sanctions on Iran in an effort to get maximum compliance with the restrictions placed on its nuclear program. And they were near to caving in.
But then came Joe Biden who now comes as the leader of a supplicant America, entreating an imperious Iran, newly installed in the catbird seat, to come back to the negotiating tale and somehow agree to meaningful restrictions on its nuclear programs. This, although Iran previously came to the table because of debilitating sanctions and a serious threat of military action. To boot, Biden offers powerful incentives in the form of billions of dollars in sanction forgiveness.
However, although the key player in this mix, Biden is not the only player. Just the other day, Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett cautioned the United States to “wake up” before rejoining any effort to simply tinker with the JCPOA as a possible solution for the Iran problem. And Bennett speaks for a country that is regularly engaged in violent confrontations with Iran, both directly and through its surrogates, and will not abide appeasing a nation that avowedly seeks its destruction.
It may not be politically correct these days to talk about military action as the solution to issues between nations. But given Iran’s record of responding ultimately only to military threats, the existential challenge a nuclear Iran poses to Israel and the West may require some out-of-the-box thinking, however regrettably.