Negotiators resort to self-flagellation to appease Tehran.
Negotiators resort to self-flagellation to appease Tehran.
T he Biden administration came into office with big goals and, so far, has been unable to achieve any of them. Meanwhile, the border crisis is substantially worse, Russia is on the brink of an invasion, Build Back Better is on the chopping block, Covid still exists, and inflation is raging. As midterms approach and approval ratings tank, there’s very little Democrats can claim as “achievements.”
So it’s no great wonder that the White House is seemingly willing to do — and tweet — almost anything for a win as nuclear negotiations come to a close in Vienna.
After plenty of concession-making and blind-eye-turning, the White House is now resorting to self-flagellation to appease the leadership of the Islamic Republic.
This week, the White House’s virtual embassy for Iran tweeted the following quote from Vice President Kamala Harris’s remarks when President Biden signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act:
.@VP: حقیقت این است: تبعیض نژادی در آمریکا وجود دارد. بیگانه ستیزی در آمریکا وجود دارد. یهود ستیزی، اسلام هراسی، همجنسگرا هراسی، ترنس هراسی، همه وجود دارند. رسیدگی به بی عدالتی هرکجا که باشد، فعالیت پیش روست. pic.twitter.com/mF14nwl9CZ
— USAbehFarsi (@USABehFarsi) February 16, 2022
The State Department tweeted roughly the same quote on its main account in English on January 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It reads as follows:
Here’s the truth: Racism exists in America. Xenophobia exists in America. Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, it all exists. The work to address injustice wherever it exists remains the work ahead.
The State Department created the virtual embassy in 2011 for Iranian citizens to get “information directly from the US government about US policy and American values and culture.”
For Iran, a nation that deplores the U.S. and its values, the tweet was surely a delight. David Harsanyi pointed out the painful irony of this statement:
Xenophobia exists everywhere, of course, but less here than in most places — and by “most places,” I definitely mean the Islamic Republic of Iran. Earlier this month, the Iranian government executed two gay men, who had been sitting on death row for six years, on sodomy charges. So the Iranians know a thing or two about homophobia. The Islamists who’ve been running that nation since 1979 have also systematically persecuted Baha’is, Christians, Sunnis, and Sufis, according to the United States government. The mullahs’ xenophobia doesn’t manifest in dog whistles and bad tweets, but in imprisonment and state-sanctioned violence. Iran is also perhaps the leading antisemitic state in the world.
Yet the Biden administration and their negotiators are so desperate to put a deal on paper that they’ll concede anything, even the dignity of their own country. Negotiators claim that a deal could be days away from finalization, perhaps explaining the bizarre prostration to the rogue regime.
Eric Mandel, director of the Middle East Political Information Network, summed up the negotiation dynamics perfectly:
When two parties want to conclude a contract and one of them is willing to give up its leverage for a deal, the result may be a foregone conclusion.
The tweet amounts to one of many U.S. concessions, though perhaps the most egregious yet. From the format of the negotiation to the Biden administration’s nonresponse to Iran’s rogue behavior to the contents of the deal itself, the White House has shown itself willing to do just about anything to reach an agreement.
Let’s start with the format. Throughout the eight rounds of negotiations, the Americans have had to communicate through European delegations because Iran is unwilling to speak to Americans.
Throughout, the Biden administration also has been silent about Iran’s flaunting of sanctions. Iran continues sending tankers to and from Venezuela without a peep from the Biden administration. It has also been evading IAEA inspections.
What is the U.S. doing in response? We granted Iran sanction waivers on its gas trade with Iraq and its civil nuclear program.
You’d hope that all of this “diplomatic goodwill” would be steering us toward a good deal. Think again. Richard Goldberg from the Foundation for Defense of Democracy wrote:
The turnabout for Iran is breathtaking. A regime that was under more pressure one year ago than it was before the JCPOA is being handed better terms than it received under the prior deal. Despite being warned time and again to abandon its carrot-filled, stickless negotiating strategy, the Biden administration is poised to conclude an agreement precisely as bad as Biden’s critics predicted.
Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian called Biden’s sanction concessions “good but not enough.” His spokesman said: “Everyone knows” that American goodwill in the form of sanction waivers “is not sufficient.” Given the White House’s desperation for a deal, Iran is right in assuming it can get more.
President Biden promised a return to the 2015 JCPOA standards. The reality of this new deal is even bleaker.
Iran will have a much shorter breakout period, especially after augmenting its expertise in enrichment. Since that 2015 deal, Iran has advanced its program to a point where the old “sunset clauses” will be setting sooner rather than later.
Jacob Nagel and Mark Dubowitz wrote:
Tehran has shattered all temporary restrictions and can easily return to nuclear weapons development after key constraints in the 2015 agreement expire. . . . Most of that nuclear expansion—including the development of fissile materials, uranium enrichment up to 20 and then 60 percent, the operation of advanced centrifuges and the development of uranium metal for use in a nuclear warhead—have occurred since President Biden abandoned the pressure campaign of his predecessor.
Under the expected agreement, Iran could have a nuclear-tipped missile in six months.
Biden is also willing to lift terrorism sanctions if Iran maintains “strict compliance” with the 2015 JCPOA terms. (Again, don’t hold your breath.) What’s more, the deal would lift sanctions on Iranian corporations and entities linked with terrorism.
Maintaining terrorism sanctions on Iran has always been bipartisan. In 2017, Congress passed a bill to sanction the IRGC. Sanctions were expanded to include Iran’s Central Bank, the National Oil Company, its financial sector, and its energy sector in 2019 and 2020.
It turns out that sanctioning terrorists isn’t so polarizing. During Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s nomination hearing, he clearly stated that the U.S. had to do “everything possible, . . . including the toughest possible sanctions,” to deal with Iranian-sponsored terrorism. During the JCPOA era, the Obama White House maintained non-nuclear sanctions on terrorism as well.
But Biden, so desperate for a deal, is willing to nix them in the face of Iran’s sustained support of destabilizing activities and groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthi rebels.
Make no mistake, Iran is paying close attention and knows its leverage. Chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani warned in a tweet: “Our negotiating partners need to be realistic, avoid intransigence and heed lessons of the past 4yrs.”
It looks like the Biden administration is going to “heed” as much as they can. Even if that means enriching Iran’s economy and fueling its terroristic endeavors. Even if it means giving the Islamic Republic a legitimate path to a nuclear weapon. And even if it means publishing statements in the name of the vice president of the United States that, in this context, could have easily been mistaken for the screeds of a mullah.