America: After the Taliban, Get Ready for Iran

Far be it from me to extract a silver lining from a gold mine of regional instability, but if the evacuation of Afghanistan is a preview of the impending revival of the Iran deal, let’s save us all the embarrassment and roll out the Persian rugs for the Ayatollahs now. Given America’s botched exit from Afghanistan and ensuing terror attacks that took the lives of 13 U.S. troops, and the Biden administration’s surreal trust in the Taliban, it will be impossible for Iranians to keep a straight face in any direct negotiations.

Last time, as a condition of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, the formal name for the Iran deal), we unfroze $150 billion in Iranian assets and rewarded them with a $1.8 billion cash payment. This time don’t be surprised if they sell us the Brooklyn Bridge.

It’s not farfetched. The foreign policy team that supervised America’s end of days in Kabul are the same people who, while in the Obama administration, assured us that the Ayatollahs could be trusted not to spin centrifuges for enriched weapons-grade uranium. The deal contemplated surveillance cameras to inspect Iran’s nuclear facilities in case they cheated.

The foreign policy team that supervised America’s end of days in Kabul are the same people who, while in the Obama administration, assured us that the Ayatollahs could be trusted not to spin centrifuges for enriched weapons-grade uranium.

We were told that oil-sloshed Iran, improbably, intended its stockpiles of nuclear energy for civilian, peaceful purposes only. Who in their right mind would doubt that? When an extremist, Islamist nation repeatedly threatens Israel’s erasure from the map, they don’t mean literally, like with Wite-Out, but the real deal, eliminating the country itself, with warheads!

It’s time we start listening more seriously to those who take steps toward, and make threats of, another nation’s annihilation. Iran is a great object lesson, but are we prepared to read their intentions more honestly?

Yes, President Trump decertified the Iran deal, but the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran stockpiled 273 kilograms of enriched uranium—16 times what was permitted under the JCPOA. Moreover, three undeclared enrichment sites were discovered that received no monitoring at all. As for inspections, surveillance cameras were found to be either broken or restricted, with the precise data unknown, especially in Natanz, which is conveniently underground.

Worse still, the agreement never addressed Iran’s formidable ballistic missile program or promiscuous patronage of terrorists everywhere.

The faces behind the Iran deal should be familiar to anyone watching the unfolding debacle in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was the National Security Advisor to then Vice-President Biden and a principle architect of the Iran nuclear talks. President Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was a senior advisor to Barack Obama on the Iran deal. In 2015, the lead negotiator was Robert Malley, who President Biden recently appointed as his U.S. Special Envoy on Iran. In 2008, the British Times reported that Malley had some troubling contacts with Hamas.

All of them received promotions in the new Biden administration, and all three are invested in establishing friendlier diplomatic relations with Iran—even if it means lifting the numerous sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, that his approach to Iran will be through diplomacy first, but if diplomacy doesn’t work, he’ll consider “other options.” After Afghanistan, who will take his warnings seriously?

The Biden braintrust, as the debacle in Afghanistan amply demonstrates, will trust anybody. They hold themselves out to be experts in Middle Eastern affairs. For the sake of America’s future, we’d all rest easier knowing that Biden has a deeper bench than just these three.

Remember President Obama’s placating foreign policy in the Middle East? Soon after taking office, he traveled to Cairo to apologize to the Arab world, then neglected to visit Jerusalem. He drew a red line on Syria that was immediately wiped away, which allowed President Assad to gas his own people in a civil war that would claim over half a million lives. The United States led from behind while France took the lead in Libya. A civil war erupted in Yemen without America seeming to notice. Hezbollah operated freely in Lebanon without any objection.

Obama first toured Israel as a candidate for the presidency in 2008. He famously commented that he would do everything in his power to protect his own daughters should they face such existential threats. When it came to Israeli parents, however, he and his foreign policy team insisted in 2014 that Israel use restraint in defending against rocket bombardments from Gaza.

The misreading of this region was endless. Who can forget that Obama dismissively referred to ISIS as the “JV team.” That would be the same terrorist outfit that just recently engineered the two bombings and a shootout in Kabul, with more planned attacks underway.

Iran held its elections and a new hardliner was installed as president. But even a softie could have his way with America. The events as of late reveal not a ferocious but a feckless America, unwilling to stand up for itself and its allies.

Our foreign policy priorities appear to be nonexistent. Domestically, the nation is seriously debating whether to defund its police. America’s global enemies can reasonably conclude that it has lost its will to fight, that its descent into moral relativism makes no distinction between good and bad guys.

America’s global enemies can reasonably conclude that it has lost its will to fight, that its descent into moral relativism makes no distinction between good and bad guys.

Social workers deployed to answer the call of crime victims in Chicago’s South Side can also be sent to reason with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS-K, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

We are left to wonder: When Biden’s foreign policy gurus survey a map of the Middle East, what do they see? Abandoning Afghanistan and stranding Americans and Afghan allies apparently raised no concerns. Forfeiting a strategic airport and gifting weapons to the Taliban was, apparently, a nice way to welcome terrorists to the community of nations.

Our objective in Afghanistan two decades ago went unfinished. We now find ourselves saluting our enemy and begging them to grant us safe passage to airports we once controlled.

Democratic administrations have long had a fondness for Ivy Leaguers who mastered the Ancient Greeks yet have little understanding of the world and the unsavory characters who inhabit it. All too happy to cut deals with terrorists who chant, “Death to America.” Almost immediately they conclude: “What a wonderful group of guys. Do they summer in Palm Springs?”

The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran coincided with the taking of 53 American hostages for 444 days. The lone rescue attempt resulted in helicopters stuck in the desert sand.

Nowadays our heads are stuck in the sand, too.

One final question: When it comes to negotiating with Muslim extremists, do we even have a varsity team?