Iran

Having conspicuously failed in its efforts to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration looks set to add to its global reputation for weakness by agreeing yet another flawed nuclear deal with Iran.

Negotiations in Vienna to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 deal to limit Iran’s attempts to acquire nuclear weapons, are said to be reaching a conclusion, with the possibility that a new agreement could be announced in the coming weeks.

Indeed, with both Iranian and Western officials indicating that a deal is close to being agreed, the only remaining stumbling block appears to be last-minute demands by Russia for Moscow to be granted sanctions relief on its future trade dealings with Tehran.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ strikes may indicate that Iran is growing more emboldened and willing to directly retaliate with ballistic missiles against its adversaries.

On Sunday, March 13, Iran launched nearly a dozen Fateh-110 ballistic missiles at targets in Erbil, northern Iraq, close to the United States Consulate compound. The attack injured at least two people and caused significant damage to a number of cars and properties, including to the Kurdistan 24 newsroom. It also heightened concerns about additional escalation amid the floundering efforts to revive the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The last thing the world needs is another nuclear-armed dictatorship flush with cash and attacking its neighbors. But that’s what President Biden and his Iran envoy Robert Malley are creating in the deal they are about to close in Vienna, according to career State Department sources.

Anyone seeking to gauge the imminent outcome of the international talks over Iran’s nuclear program being held in Vienna should take a look at reports from late January that three top U.S. diplomats had quit—largely in protest over the direction set by U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley, who serves as the U.S. government’s chief negotiator.

Having served for two years in former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Iran Action Group, I knew that this development was tantamount to a public cry for an intervention. Such resignations—not of conservative dissenters, but of career staff and President Joe Biden’s own political appointees—should have been cause for Biden or Secretary Antony Blinken to recall Malley and investigate. Their failure to do so is a sign either of a troubling lack of attention to the talks, or else the possibility that Malley—who served in the same capacity under President Barack Obama when the first Iran deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was originally negotiated and signed—has been given a free hand to negotiate whatever he wants, as long as he gets Iran to sign.

The State Department wants this, Biden isn’t capable of driving anything.