Last week, President Biden and his State Department renewed a waiver of sanctions on Iran selling electricity to Iraq. That waiver, first granted in July and now renewed, gives Iran access to a $10 billion account held in Oman.
We are at an inflection point in world affairs. That point will be in November 2024 when we choose our next president.
Once Iran is given access to these funds they supposedly convert them into Euros to spend on non-sanctioned products such as food. Anyone who believes the Iranians will only buy food with that money is a fool.
We need to understand the context of Biden’s latest sanctions waiver.
About two weeks ago, Biden let sanctions against Iran’s missile programs lapse without so much as a public statement justifying the action. In September, Biden paid the ayatollahs $6 billion in ransom for U.S. hostages. Biden reportedly froze that money in Qatari banks after public outrage at the ransom payment, so Iran supposedly can’t reach that money.(READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Ukraine Is Stalemated Again)
But there’s nothing to prevent the Qataris from “lending” Iran the $6 billion, knowing it won’t be repaid.
Qatar isn’t trustworthy. Hamas has an office in Qatar and the head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, had lived there for years. Haniyeh was last reported to be in Tehran.
Meanwhile, Iran has continued to push its development of nuclear weapons according to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report. According to the WSJ and the International Atomic Energy Agency (the UN’s usually purblind atomic watchdog) Iran has continued to build its stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium which is a short step to the 90 percent weapons-grade material.
While U.S. officials insist that Iran hasn’t decided to build an atomic weapon, and may not have the technology to do so, they concede that Iran could, in two weeks’ time, enrich enough uranium to build at least one atomic weapon.
In the middle of all this, Biden’s expert diplomacy has led Russia to exit the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Think about that for a minute in terms of Russia’s — and China’s — recent alignment with Iran. That means that Russia could easily test an Iranian nuclear weapon and say it was testing one of its own.
As I’ve written elsewhere, Russia, China and Iran have aligned themselves together closely, constituting a new Axis of Evil.
Russia recently hosted a meeting with Iranian and Hamas representatives. As a result of that meeting, Russia agreed to help Iran develop its missile capabilities. On October 30th, during a meeting with Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber, Chinese Premier Li Qiang proclaimed his nation’s “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Iran.
Iran is also approaching Saudi Arabia to ensure it doesn’t accede to former president Trump’s Abraham Accords. Before the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the Saudis were negotiating an agreement with Israel to join the Abraham Accords. That’s gone now because the Saudis won’t make any agreement with Israel while the war goes on.
China is also siding with Iran. It hasn’t condemned the October 7 attacks by Hamas and has sent six warships to the Gulf region to counter-balance the deterrent effect of the US sending two carrier battle groups to the area.
On November 11, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi made the first trip to Saudi Arabia by an Iranian leader in fifteen years to join in a meeting with League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Raisi used the meeting to call for a cease-fire in the Hamas-Israel war and to condemn what he called U.S. complicity in Israeli war crimes. The fifty-seven Arab nations issued a final statement that agreed with Raisi’s remarks. (READ MORE: Killing Hamas)
Iran, of course, supplied Hamas with weapons, money, and planning in aid of its October 7 attacks on Israel.
So what diplomatic game is Biden playing? He’s bankrolling the ayatollahs — the foremost sponsors of terrorism in the world — without getting anything in return. Which is no surprise because Biden always gives something of value and gets nothing in return.
Biden may be trying to bribe the ayatollahs into a renewed version of the Obama 2015 nuclear weapons deal with Iran which then-President Trump cancelled in 2018. He is probably doing just that because his only policy is to undo everything that Trump did.
In 2015, Obama said that Iran could play a constructive role in stabilizing Afghanistan but hedged his bets by adding that Iran had occasionally helped insurgents in ways that harmed our troops in Afghanistan.
On October 28, Brigadier-General Mohsen Rafighdoost, former minister of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and later Iranian minister of defense, said that Iran had Western hostages that could be killed within an hour of any U.S. military action against Iran.
Obama has long been suspected of guiding Biden’s foreign policy. Even if he isn’t actively doing so, Biden is evidently following the path Obama laid out for him. It’s a delusional path that can only result in Iran obtaining nuclear weapons — and the missiles to deliver them — if it doesn’t already have them.
Iran, regardless of any diplomatic agreement it may make, will never give up its development or possession of nuclear weapons peacefully.
The delusional nature of Biden’s diplomacy was illustrated in his Saturday op-ed in the Washington Post.
In the article, Biden poses an equivalence between Russia’s war on Ukraine and the Hamas war against Israel. There are many similarities but one is a war of conquest and one is a war of genocide.
Biden writes that we are at an inflection point in the world where our decisions today will affect everyone for decades. He asks whether we will hold Russian President Putin accountable for his aggression. But the word “Iran” never appears in the article despite the fact that the ayatollahs are entirely responsible for the Hamas attack on Israel. Biden doesn’t even ask whether they will be held accountable for their aggression. (READ MORE: Wars Raise Two More Critical Issues)
Biden and his team obviously do not understand that Iran is not susceptible to deterrence, but they still have an idea that Iran could be some sort of partner with the United States in generating a Middle East Peace. That’s worse than delusional: it’s an insane thought because every fact, going back to the 1979 Iranian revolution, is contrary to it.
Biden got one thing right in his op-ed. We are at an inflection point in world affairs. That point will be in November 2024 when we choose our next president. If Biden — or anyone like him — is elected, we and our allies may not survive the following four years.