President Joe Biden’s most important job is to protect America from foreign threats, and not necessarily appease the left-wing of his Democratic party. The threat that China, Iran, and Russia pose to US security is considerable. While China and Russia are brute forces in the international arena, they have not caused American deaths in military-like operations. Iran, on the other hand, did. The Military Times reported (April 4, 2019), “The Pentagon…upping the official estimates of US troops in Iraq who were killed by Iranian-backed militias, now put that number at 603. Those casualties were the result of explosively formed penetrators (EFP), other improvised explosive devices (IED), mortars, rocket propelled grenades (RPG), small arms, sniper and other attacks.”
Following the drone strike that killed Maj. General Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, in January 2020, US President Donald Trump explained that Soleimani’s orders have “Viciously wounded and murdered thousands of US troops, including the planting of roadside bombs that maim and dismember their victims.” Trump also attributed to Soleimani the killing of an American contractor, Nawres Hamid. Trump pointed out that Soleimani was planning additional attacks on Americans when he landed in Baghdad.
Lest we forget, on November 4, 1979, Islamist and radical Iranian students, inspired by the Ayatollah Khomeini, seized the US embassy in Tehran and took 50 American diplomats as hostages, and held them for 444 days. This was certainly an act of war against America, which the US has never really avenged, and currently, the Biden administration is simply appeasing.
While negotiations on the renewal of the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran were going on in Vienna, missiles from an Iranian base struck in the vicinity of the newly constructed US Consulate just outside Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), earlier this month. It is clear that the Ayatollah regime intended to hurt American lives and property. It did not however give pause to the US participation in the negotiations. It is compounded by the insulting setup whereby US representatives had been exiled to a separate hotel location in Vienna, as demanded by the Iranians. Moreover, Iran demanded the delisting of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) from the list of terrorist organizations. The combination of all of these facts, along with the continued cheating by the Iranians on their previous nuclear commitments, has diminished the US stature. All of that notwithstanding, the Biden administration’s eagerness for a deal with the leading state-sponsoring terrorist entity endangers American security, and that of its allies, including Israel, is inexplicable.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the continued negotiations in Vienna over the renewed nuclear deal with Iran, “absurd.” He pointed out that signing the current nuclear agreement with Iran would provide the Ayatollahs with a nuclear arsenal. “It would also relieve sanctions and give them (Iranians) hundreds of billions of dollars to continue the terror that they waged yesterday (the attack on the US Consulate in Erbil), and wage every day throughout the Middle East and the world.” Netanyahu added, “This agreement is even worse than its predecessor, because in three years’ time, under this agreement, Iran will be a threshold nuclear state. It will have enough enriched uranium to create dozens and dozens of nuclear bombs, and will have ICBM’s (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) to deliver them to any place in the US.”
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, at a cabinet meeting earlier this month, reiterated the position the current Israeli government has taken with regard to the ongoing nuclear talks: “The disadvantages of the agreement far outweigh its advantages. In any case, the agreement does not obligate the State of Israel in any way.”
It seems that President Biden is driven by two commitments; the first is to his former boss, President Barrack Obama, and one of his major foreign policy “achievements,” namely the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal. The second is to stem the current escalating energy costs that contribute to inflation, by enabling the Iranian regime to deliver its oil to the open markets. While domestically produced energy could easily meet the shortages, Biden is constrained by his “Green New Deal” proponents of leftist Democrats in Congress. In any case, whatever extra oil Iran could deliver to the market, China, not American consumers, will benefit from it.
It is not, however, only Israeli and Arab Gulf leaders who believe that the current nuclear deal with Iran, and lifting the sanctions on Iran is misguided and dangerous. US Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) thinks so as well. Menendez articulated best, saying: “We cannot allow Iran to threaten us into a bad deal or an interim agreement that allows it to continue building its nuclear capacity.” He went on in his address to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (February 1, 2022), “I have been cautiously optimistic about the Biden administration’s initial efforts. I waited for the last year to see results. Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Secretary of State and others, senior members of the administration insisted they would look for a ‘longer and stronger’ agreement… However, a year later, I have yet to hear any parameters of ‘longer’ or ‘stronger’ terms or whether that is even a feasible prospect. And even when it seemed a constructive agreement might be possible last summer, upon taking office, the Raisi government abandoned all previous understandings and, as I mentioned, made absolutely clear that Iran’s ballistic missiles and regional proxy networks are ‘not negotiable.’ Moreover, at this point, we seriously have to ask what exactly are we trying to salvage?”
Senator Menendez continued: “We cannot ignore Iran’s nefarious support for terrorism or accept threats to American interests and lives. We must welcome legitimate and verifiable peaceful uses of nuclear power, but remain true to our nonproliferation principles and our unyielding desire to build a more stable, safer, prosperous world for the American people and all peace-loving people to thrive. In order to do so, Iran cannot and must not possess a nuclear weapon.”
Menendez added, “As someone who followed Iran’s nuclear ambition for the better part of three decades, I am here today to raise concerns about the current round of negotiations over the JCPOA, and Iran’s dangerously and rapidly escalating nuclear program that has put it on the brink of having enough material for a nuclear weapon… That’s how long most analysts have concluded it would take Iran to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb if they choose to do so. This isn’t a timetable we can accept.”
Iran’s current regime is not just another ordinary state with the usual interests. It is a fanatical theocratic regime that has pledged to “wipe Israel off the map.” Its regime has sponsored parades of thousands shouting “death to America.” The Ayatollah’s regime isn’t only a threat to America, Israel, Gulf Arabs, and the world; it is putting in danger its own people due to its messianic and jihadist dreams. The Iranian regime has abused its own people, including the execution of teenagers and minorities. This Ayatollahs regime is devoted to deception and terror, and it is practicing taqiyyah, which in modern terms means to conceal one’s intentions. Netanyahu exposed the Iranian lie about wanting nuclear energy for “peaceful” means; now Biden, as America’s commander-in-chief, must protect America by offering a credible military option against the threat of an eventual nuclear Iran.
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