As discussed on the Three Martini Lunch today, in addition to all of his other problems, Joe Biden does not fail quickly. You might wonder why the speed of failure matters, but every human being fails. This means every leader and institution populated by human beings is destined to fail at some point. Certain leaders and institutions like IBM have a philosophy of “fail fast and learn fast” — give teams the freedom and experiment with an idea that isn’t guaranteed to work, but don’t hesitate to pull the plug, quickly determine what went wrong and study how it can be fixed, and try the next idea.
A vivid example of failing slowly: “According to reports in the Israel Hayom newspaper and the Kan public broadcaster on Tuesday, US administration officials are closer than ever to admitting defeat on US President Joe Biden’s stated goal to return to the 2015 deal.”
Anyone with eyes could see that the regime in Tehran was not interested in seriously restarting talks to renew the Obama-era nuclear deal. Negotiations dragged on with the Iranians refusing to make even the most basic concessions, as well as the continuing problems of, as Carine Hajjar laid out, “regional destabilization, Iran’s countless violations of enrichment limits, and its evasions of inspections by the IAEA.” Iran even demanded the U.S. stop labeling the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a foreign terrorist organization… without pledging to stop committing acts of terrorism.
What’s more, once Russia invaded Ukraine, it became absurd to rely on Vladimir Putin’s regime as a good-faith guarantor of U.S. interests in the negotiations. That was more than two months ago! And yet only now are Biden and his team willing to face reality that another Iran deal is impossible.
Many Iran hawks would argue that negotiating with Tehran was always pointless and destined to end in failure, but you could conceivably justify reaching out and seeing what Iran’s response was, shortly after Biden took office. Biden appointed special envoy Rob Malley, architect of the 2015 deal, on February 21, 2021. Eight rounds of negotiations followed, over the course of the entire year! By this January, three members of the U.S. negotiating team had quit, frustrated that the administration wasn’t taking a tougher line.
And only now, in late April, is the Biden administration giving up on the unrealistic hope that the Iranians would be reasonable, conciliatory, and trustworthy. Slow learners.