NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE O n Thursday, the New York Times reported that the administration of President Joe Biden is allowing the Islamic Republic of Iran access to $6 billion of its frozen assets and releasing a number of imprisoned Iranians in exchange for the release of five American hostages. In the battle between the government’s responsibility to national interest and individuals, individuals appear to have triumphed.
It is wrong to say that since assuming office, Biden has been seeking to reach a nuclear-arms-control agreement with the Islamic Republic. It is more accurate to say that he has been seeking an agreement, any agreement, with the Islamist regime. The objective at first was to return to a “longer and stronger” version of the comprehensive agreement reached when the same people were in charge during the administration of President Barack Obama. The original agreement banned the regime from exporting ballistic missiles, regulated the Islamic Republic’s use of centrifuges, and limited uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent, but all of these provisions had deadlines. (The arms-export restrictions are set to expire this October.) Biden first tried to modify the agreement in the U.S.’s favor by offering to unfreeze $17 billion in Iran’s assets and provide sanctions relief. After that fell through, by which point the Islamic Republic had acknowledged 60 percent uranium enrichment and reached 84 percent secretly, the objective became reaching a more modest agreement with the enemy. The regime would release hostages and freeze enrichment at 60 percent — a significant U.S. concession — and the United States would provide Tehran access to $24 billion in frozen assets and IMF withdrawal rights. When that deal came undone, the administration settled for an exchange of hostages facilitated by the release of $6 billion in Iranian money, on top of the $2.7 billion it had already released as a gesture of goodwill.
The administration claims to have devised a plan to ensure that the Islamic Republic will only be able to use the funds for food, medicine, and other benign commodities: Qatar will control the money and release it to the Islamic Republic only for buying such goods. The first flaw in this plan is trusting that Qatar, which along with the Islamic Republic is a sponsor of the Hamas terrorist group, will be an honest broker.
The second flaw is that in Tehran’s budget, money is fungible. Even if the agreement is followed, the Islamic Republic can easily siphon funds slated for civilian commodities to its nuclear program, military, and terrorist activities, and use the unfrozen assets for those civilian goods instead.
Third, the Islamic Republic might, and in all likelihood will, cheat. The regime has spent nearly half a century under growing sanctions. This has helped it to develop very sophisticated sanctions-evasion mechanisms, which it is now sharing with Russia and Belarus. We should expect that it will use these mechanisms to circumvent the agreement.
The fourth problem is that the deal rewards the Islamic Republic for its malign behavior. Over the past few decades, the regime has frequently taken innocent foreigners as hostages, only to release them in exchange for cash, sanctions relief, or the release of Iranian criminals held in those countries. The most recent American case was the agreement under the administration of President Donald Trump to release then–Princeton Ph.D. student Xiyue Wang in exchange for Massoud Soleimani, who’d been charged with exporting sensitive biological materials to Iran.
The Islamic Republic’s hostage diplomacy has been so successful that other American adversaries are copying it. Russia, North Korea, and China have all kidnapped foreign citizens to get concessions from liberal democracies in recent years. This agreement will further encourage the tactic.
Fifth, and last, this is a hint that the Biden administration has given up on stopping the Islamic Republic’s nuclear-weapons program. From $17 billion to less than $10 billion, the deal cuts the amount of Iranian money frozen by the U.S. in half, and will further establish that Biden has no stomach for a confrontation with the Islamic Republic, strengthening Tehran’s hand. Meanwhile, the administration continues to handcuff Israel to stop it from attacking Iran. Instead, it is possible that the man who advised against the Osama bin Laden raid in 2011 out of fears that it could undermine Obama’s looming reelection campaign is again placing short-term political concerns ahead of U.S. national security.
The five Americans to be released have names and faces, and we will be reminded of their stories in the days and weeks to come. But the many who will lose their freedoms and lives as a result of the regime hostage-taking and terrorism this deal encourages will also be victims, and they’re likely to remain nameless and faceless. They deserve a voice — and, at minimum, an American administration that doesn’t actively incentivize the Islamic Republic’s evildoing — too.