The Biden Admin’s Shadow Iran Nuclear Deal

Iranian and U.S. flags printed on paper in this illustration taken on Jan. 27, 2022. Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Commentary

The Biden administration is allegedly executing a shadow “nuclear deal” with Iran.

The administration never bothered to tell us about the deal.

It clinched the deal without Congress’s approval.

And it may well have purposefully never committed the deal to paper.

But make no mistake, every indicator suggests that we are party to an arguably illegally consummated pact that’s getting Americans killed.

The proof is in the pudding not only of the jihadist violence raging across the Middle East—leaving nearly 40 Americans dead and dozens more injured—but of the Biden administration’s unwillingness to strike the leading state sponsor of that violence, Iran, with anything remotely resembling sufficient force to deter it, and the White House’s fixation on forcing Israel to end the war on Hamas and abide by the establishment of what would almost certainly amount to a Palestinian terror state to boot.

The shadow Iran nuclear deal can be summarized as follows: bribe and baby the mullahs, and bludgeon Israel for “peace.”

Upon entering office, President Joe Biden eased his predecessor’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran and its proxies, such as the Houthis, in the run-up to an effort to reprise the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the so-called Obama–Biden Iran nuclear deal.

President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement was to bail out the mullocracy financially, legitimize its nuclear program, and oblige the United States to defend that program—while purporting to curtail it. Like the future shadow deal the Biden administration would pursue, it was also crafted surreptitiously and foisted on the country without Congress’s consent as a nontreaty.

President Biden tabbed the top JCPOA negotiator, Rob Malley, as U.S. special envoy to Iran to resurrect the deal. Mr. Malley would spend months offering ever-sweeter deal terms—unprecedented sanctions relief and major concessions on its nuclear program—aimed at enticing Tehran to reenter the deal from which President Donald Trump had withdrawn. Mr. Malley would lose his security clearance and end up suspended and under FBI investigation for his alleged mishandling of classified information—with additional evidence reportedly emerging suggesting that he had led an Iranian spy ring allegedly centered on the International Crisis Group nonprofit he once led.

Iran responded by not only rebuffing the Biden administration’s entreaties but also inflicting dozens of attacks on our troops, selling drones to Russia used to target the Ukrainian forces the United States was backing, deepening its strategic partnership with China, and accelerating its nuclear activities through deploying advanced centrifuges, building a new significantly more hardened nuclear facility near its existing Natanz site, and enriching uranium to near weapons grade.

When one effort to pay the regime for protection failed, the Biden administration took the lesson that it ought to try and try again.

Reports surfaced early last summer suggesting that fearful of U.S.–Iran relations spinning out of control, the Biden administration would pursue a new “informal” arrangement.

It would flow billions of dollars into the mullahs’ coffers. In exchange, the mullahs would freeze their nuclear efforts and get their proxies to stop striking U.S. troops.

The Biden administration refused to enforce sanctions on illicit oil sales, enriching Tehran to the tune of billions of dollars.

It provided waivers and paid a ransom as part of a hostage deal, collectively unfreezing an additional nearly $20 billion for the regime.

Then, the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, happened—a mini-holocaust carried out by Iran’s proxy Hamas against Iran’s arch-nemesis Israel, underwritten with money the Biden administration freed for Iran and its proxies.

Undeterred, the Biden administration allowed the oil revenues to keep flowing.

It let a United Nations embargo on Iranian missiles lapse.

Having already strengthened Hezbollah via support for Lebanon’s government and military and having effectively foisted Hezbollah-friendly maritime and additional deals on Israel, the Biden administration then insisted that Israel not liquidate the terrorist group as it was provoked and menaced with 200,000 rockets and missiles from its north.

Iran’s other proxies would dramatically intensify their attacks on the United States and our regional allies and partners in claimed solidarity with the Palestinians as Israel fought a uniquely challenging defensive war against Hamas.

The Houthis would repeatedly target American assets, shutting down the Red Sea. In response, the Biden administration could only muster pinprick strikes and a faux terror redesignation. The Houthi aggression continues.

Despite a mushrooming number of Iran-backed attacks on Americans and our allies and partners, in early January, the Biden administration tipped off Tehran to a coming attack centering around a ceremony for assassinated terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani.

That is, the Biden administration passed valuable intelligence to the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad—a nation at war with America since the Islamic revolution of 1979 that’s behind the deaths of hundreds of our people from Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel.

Only after an Iraqi Iranian proxy killed three American soldiers in Jordan, following more than 150 attacks from Iran’s proxies after Oct. 7, 2023, did the Biden administration take any action. To date, it has telegraphed strikes on largely noncritical targets in Iraq and Syria, after giving Iran and its proxies more than ample notice to flee. U.S. forces have taken out a grand total of zero high-value targets to date. These are nondeterrent attacks by design—strategic moves only insofar as they aim to maintain the Iran First status quo.

And then there’s the Biden administration’s Israel policy. After repeatedly seeking to stymie and micromanage Israel’s war effort, minimize its intensity, and force it to resupply Hamas—all of which had the effect of prolonging the war and putting more Israelis in harm’s way—now, the White House is fixing to end it once and for all.

It’s doing so under the guise of an extended ceasefire likely to end in an armistice, whereby Israel would pause its efforts, potentially withdraw from Gaza, free hundreds or thousands of terrorists in exchange for hostages, and provide further resupply to Hamas. Israel would effectively be made to lose. Hamas would survive. The released terrorists would rampage again.

On top of all that, the Biden administration is threatening to not only impose a “two-state” process on Israel after the war but skip ahead and recognize a Palestinian state that would no doubt threaten Israel’s existence.

Adding insult to injury, it imposed unprecedented and baseless sanctions on Israelis in Judea and Samaria that could extend to nongovernmental organizations and even government ministers who support policies that, in the Biden administration’s opinion, would threaten whatever “peace” plan it intends to foist on Israel.

The president’s maximum pressure campaign on Israel should be understood to be part and parcel of the shadow Iran nuclear deal. By forcing Israel to concede to Iran’s proxy and threatening it with a terror state on its borders, chilling and freezing those who would resist these policies, and protecting Hezbollah, it undermines Israel’s stability, security, and morale.

Israel, of course, provides the most serious threat to a nuclear Iran and the Iranian regime itself. So the Biden administration is endeavoring to neutralize that threat—as it had for months prior in delegitimizing the Netanyahu-led government as it pursued judicial and other reforms, destabilizing our closest ally in the region and making it ripe for attack.

The Biden administration’s shadow Iran nuclear deal is chiefly about protecting the mullocracy, as it did in de-linking it from Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack and in its messaging that Iran’s proxies armed, funded, trained, and directed by Iran have somehow gone rogue in attacking American forces.

The Biden administration is acting according to the asinine logic of Iran and its proxies: Iran-backed Hamas initiated war against Israel. That Israel fought back is the key irritant to the region. Israel must be made to lose the war, and only then will Iran’s proxies stop warring on Israel and the United States.

This is the same asinine logic governing the nuclear deal: Despite the fact that bribing Iran has underwritten its malign activities, including the advance of its nuclear program, still more bribes are the only way to stop the aggression.

Whether borne of progressive naivete, political calculus, or perfidy, President Biden’s shadow Iran nuclear deal is calamitous for the American people and our interests.

We must awaken to the treachery at hand and demand that Congress put an end to it.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.