BIDEN ONLY WANTS TO PUNISH FOREIGN GOVERMENTS THAT HE BELIEVES WORKED AGAINST HIM

Washington must reverse course on Iran

 

By Farley Weiss

 

 JNS

April 22, 2021 

 

 

 

Iran has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction, is the leading exporter and financer of global terrorism and is producing ballistic missiles and pursuing nuclear weapons. The former US administration of President Donald Trump was thus right to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal that Iran was violating – and which had led it to increase its military spending by 40%, helping it to keep funding entities like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Now the administration of President Joe Biden is trying to return to the failed JCPOA – something that even many Democrats are having a hard time grasping.

"I don't understand how you can go back to a deal that was put into place under different circumstances, many years ago," newly elected Democratic member of Congress Kathy Manning (NC-06) told this week's Jewish Insider "Limited Liability" podcast.

She explained: "Some of the sunset provisions have already expired. We no longer have the arms embargo at the UN We were hoping that being in the deal would cause Iran to curb its bad behavior, and perhaps even cease from some of its malign behavior in fostering terrorism around the globe. And what we've seen is that they've done exactly the opposite. We also see that when faced with real economic trouble for its own people, rather than use their resources to take care of their own people, they are using that money to continue to foster and support terrorists around the world. So, when you think about all those things that have changed, or that we've learned from since when the deal was put into place, I don't even understand how you can say, 'Let's get back into the same deal.' We're not in the same world today."

Another incomprehensible Biden move is the sanctioning of Russia for attempting to "interfere" with the 2020 US presidential election on behalf of Trump, yet ignoring American intelligence reports that Iran sought to undercut Trump's reelection. Why doesn't Biden sanction Iran for that? The answer appears to be he only wants to punish foreign governments that he believes worked against him.

But not only is the Biden administration not adopting punitive measures against Iran, it is reportedly considering giving the Islamic Republic extra money, to compensate for Trump's having exited the deal and increased sanctions. Yet, it's clear that any money given to Tehran will be spent on terrorism and missile development. This was proven by the trove of documents that Israel seized from a warehouse in Tehran in 2018, after which Trump exited the JCPOA.

Today, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is demanding clarification from Tehran about the traces of uranium discovered at undeclared sites. It's obvious, however, that it is not for a "peaceful" nuclear program.

A bipartisan majority in Congress opposes the administration's efforts to renew the Iran deal. While one might argue that the previous administration of President Barack Obama, which signed the deal, had hoped that it would curb Iran's nuclear program, nobody has reason to harbor such false hopes any longer. The Biden administration must change course immediately.