The American concession that enables Russia to conduct nuclear work with the Islamic Republic, even as Putin threatens to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, is foreign policy malpractice. It’s hard to argue otherwise. Still, some might say that at least the White House held firm and denied the Russian request for a sanctions “white channel” to trade with Iran. Yes, that was technically taken off the table. However, Russia will effectively get a white channel anyway because the Biden administration would never sanction Iranian entities transacting with Russian businesses once a deal is signed. Indeed, the administration has already surrendered to Iranian nuclear blackmail. Besides, it’s also possible that the U.S. will provide secret guarantees to Iran or even Russia in side letters. Washington struck secret side deals in the last agreement that were never made public. Nothing prevents the White House from doing so again.
Not to be left out, China reportedly is also asking for a special carve-out for Chinese entities previously sanctioned. Russia recently approached Beijing to help finance the war effort in Ukraine. Should Joe Biden agree to any of this, it would be a political collapse of epic proportions.
What makes this all so baffling is the fact that the Iran deal of 2015 was no great achievement in the first place. Tehran did not need to cheat to reach threshold nuclear-weapons capabilities. With key constraints set to sunset, the regime was prepared to wait for a decade while the terms of the deal yielded the regime an industrial-size enrichment program, a near-zero breakout time, an advanced centrifuge-powered clandestine path to a nuclear warhead, long-range ballistic missiles that could threaten America, and access to advanced conventional weaponry to target America’s allies across the Middle East. The estimated $150 billion in sanctions relief granted to Iran enabled it to fund its terrorist proxies to expand the regime’s regional dominance. Worse, those funds increasingly immunized the regime against future Western sanctions.
Former President Donald Trump exited the original deal in 2018. Biden’s team has vowed to restore it. But the “new” deal promises to be far worse than the original. Biden’s chief negotiator in Vienna, Rob Malley, reportedly aims to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the State Department’s list of terror groups; the Guard has been responsible for terrorist attacks worldwide. He was reportedly ready to cave on U.S. sanctions against the regime’s top human rights abusers, including the current president, Ebrahim Raisi, who is responsible for murdering thousands of Iranian dissidents in the 1980s. Biden was also prepared to lift sanctions on the office of Khamenei, a human rights abuser himself, along with his multibillion-dollar slush fund.
As our colleague Saeed Ghasseminejad calculated, under the new deal, the Islamic Republic could immediately gain access to a total sanctions relief package of up to $130 billion. And that doesn’t include tens of billions in additional perks as the regime plugs back into international banks and businesses. This is not only an outrage to our regional allies, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel, which are under constant threat of Iranian missiles and terrorism. I
Not to be left out, China reportedly is also asking for a special carve-out for Chinese entities previously sanctioned. Russia recently approached Beijing to help finance the war effort in Ukraine. Should Joe Biden agree to any of this, it would be a political collapse of epic proportions.
What makes this all so baffling is the fact that the Iran deal of 2015 was no great achievement in the first place. Tehran did not need to cheat to reach threshold nuclear-weapons capabilities. With key constraints set to sunset, the regime was prepared to wait for a decade while the terms of the deal yielded the regime an industrial-size enrichment program, a near-zero breakout time, an advanced centrifuge-powered clandestine path to a nuclear warhead, long-range ballistic missiles that could threaten America, and access to advanced conventional weaponry to target America’s allies across the Middle East. The estimated $150 billion in sanctions relief granted to Iran enabled it to fund its terrorist proxies to expand the regime’s regional dominance. Worse, those funds increasingly immunized the regime against future Western sanctions.
Former President Donald Trump exited the original deal in 2018. Biden’s team has vowed to restore it. But the “new” deal promises to be far worse than the original. Biden’s chief negotiator in Vienna, Rob Malley, reportedly aims to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the State Department’s list of terror groups; the Guard has been responsible for terrorist attacks worldwide. He was reportedly ready to cave on U.S. sanctions against the regime’s top human rights abusers, including the current president, Ebrahim Raisi, who is responsible for murdering thousands of Iranian dissidents in the 1980s. Biden was also prepared to lift sanctions on the office of Khamenei, a human rights abuser himself, along with his multibillion-dollar slush fund.
As our colleague Saeed Ghasseminejad calculated, under the new deal, the Islamic Republic could immediately gain access to a total sanctions relief package of up to $130 billion. And that doesn’t include tens of billions in additional perks as the regime plugs back into international banks and businesses. This is not only an outrage to our regional allies, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel, which are under constant threat of Iranian missiles and terrorism. I
