Despite desperate efforts by the Biden administration to make concessions beyond reason, the Iranians may prove too greedy for their own good by rejecting U.S. overtures on a nuclear agreement.
Iranian leaders want assurances that the United States will not withdraw from an agreement again. The administration correctly assesses that they cannot guarantee future administrations will be bound by this poorly conceived pipe dream of an agreement.
The administration should let them go their own way. It was always going to be a good deal for Iran and a bad deal for the rest of the world. Iran will not allow itself to be reined in by a piece of paper and will sign only to buy time. We cannot count on the murderous regime to adhere to any agreement.
Iran will continue to whip up support internally to retaliate for the January 2020 U.S. killing of the terrorist ringleader Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Leaders in the American-led coalition in Iraq knew him to be an architect of attacks on its troops.
It is one of the many excuses that Iran will cite for continuing its international terror campaign with or without a nuclear agreement.
Iranian leaders have already been caught plotting to kill former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton. We likely have not seen the last of such efforts.
This action alone provides a sufficient rationale to remain outside the 2015 nuclear accord. In negotiations during the Soviet era, President Ronald Reagan cautioned “trust but verify.” We already have verification that Iran is a bad actor not worthy of any level of trust.
In 2018, President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the accord and reimposed sanctions on Iran that continue to this day. The deal did not “address the threat of Iran’s ballistic missiles or its malign behavior in the region,” according to the administration. It also has a sunset provision that expires in 2030, thus allowing Iran to pursue a nuclear weapon at that point unless there were renewed negotiations.
Further, according to the Trump administration, “intelligence recently released by Israel provides compelling details about Iran’s past secret efforts to develop nuclear weapons, which it lied about for years.”
(James Hutton is a former assistant secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs.)
