The Verity Courier
The Biden Iran Future
By Ron Estes
2 December 2021
According to Tom Friedman of the New York Times, on 30 November, Trump’s decision to tear up the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 — a decision urged on him by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was one of the dumbest, most poorly thought out and counterproductive U.S. national security decisions of the post-Cold War era. At a conference in mid-November 2021, Moshe Ya’alon, former Israeli Defense Minister, said the Trump abrogation of the treaty was “the main mistake of the last decade.”
Two days later, Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s top military commander when Trump withdrew from the deal, offered a similar sentiment, “a net negative for Israel: It released Iran from all restrictions, and brought its nuclear program to a much more advanced position.” Indeed it has, the International Atomic Energy Agency recently reported that Iran has amassed a stock of enriched uranium sufficient to produce weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear bomb in as little as three weeks.
Up until Trump abrogated the Iran deal, the time required for Iran to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon was one year, and Iran had agreed to maintain that buffer for 15 years. Now it’s a matter of weeks. But it would still take Iran a year and half or two years to manufacture a deliverable warhead, U.S. officials believe.
Iran’s new hard-line government wants to see the U.S. and the European Union lift all sanctions on Iran — not just those related to its nuclear activities but also those related to its human rights abuses and regional adventures. It also wants assurances that if it does resume compliance with the accord — and gives up the fissile material it has amassed since Trump tore up the deal, the next U.S. Republican president won’t withdraw again. That promise cannot be met. But, the Iranian hand is weaker than it looks.
The Israelis with F-35 aircraft and Dolphin-class submarines in the Persian Gulf keep darting back and forth between Iran and President Joe Biden, unsure whom to worry about the most. For years the Israelis have been hearing American presidents say that they will not permit Iran to get a bomb. Now they are not certain they can trust America. Trump didn’t retaliate when the Iranians launched cruise missiles and blew up one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest oil facilities.
The Iranian leaders let Trump and Pompeo know that they were homicidal, not suicidal. And they went out and got China to buy their oil and started enriching enough uranium to make themselves a threshold nuclear state.
So what did Trump do. He passed the cards in his hand to Biden.
Rather than immediately move to revoke Trump’s sanctions and restore compliance, in return for Iran rolling back its uranium stockpile, Biden got himself involved in a diplomatic fight with the Iranians over who would go first. And with his urgent focus on getting out of the Middle East — starting with Afghanistan — Biden did not exactly strike fear into the hearts of the Iranians. So nobody went first, and Iran kept enriching. The Israelis are terrified that Biden will go for a mini-deal — whereby Iran agrees to freeze its fissile material stockpile where it is, in return for an easing of some U.S. sanctions. This would keep Iran a threshold nuclear power and make it very difficult for Israel to bomb its facilities, because it would be disrupting a U.S. brokered deal. The Israelis are trying to convince Biden that only by threatening to bomb Iran will he not have to bomb them.
In the meantime, Biden is trying to enlist the Russians and Chinese to squeeze Iran. But that won’t work. They want too much in return, Russia to have a free hand in Ukraine, and China for the U.S. to keep quiet about Taiwan and Hong Kong and the treatment of the Uyghers.
Biden’s near future with Iran may rest with negotiations to restore Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal, the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Negotiations over the restoration of the Iran nuclear deal have resumed in Vienna between Iran China, France, Germany, Russia and Britain — with the U.S. participating from another room because it is no longer a party to the accord, thanks to Trump.