POMPEO: The Biden Administration's Iran Negotiations Imperil American Security
Joe Biden is proving that he is determined to repeat the mistakes of the Obama Administration by revitalizing the broken nuclear deal with Iran, the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism. The Biden Administration’s intentions are based on the absurd assumption that Iran can be a trustworthy partner and that such a deal would bring stability to the region and a regime change in Iran.
The Iranian regime is not a trustworthy partner. It hasn’t been since its creation in 1979, when it seized power in a bloody revolution and took American diplomats hostage. Since then, the regime has only continued to spread the mayhem and terror that it was born in. Iranian Quds Force operatives, under the direction of now-deceased Qasem Soleimani, killed hundreds of U.S. servicemen with roadside bombs in Iraq. The proxies it funds – Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen – all engage in terror attacks resulting in the deaths of civilians. The destabilizing influence Iran retains through these groups directly imperils innocent lives from Israel to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. When Biden lifts sanctions, he will be directly granting billions of dollars to the regime and its terror apparatus.
The Biden Administration will also be breaking its promises to the American people. Both Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of the Treasury Yellen promised in their confirmation hearings that they would not remove any terror-related sanctions. Yet, according to whistleblowers within the State Department, the Administration is planning to do just that. They will start by lifting sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank. They claim this is a common-sense move, given that without its Central Bank, lifting other sanctions would be meaningless. But we know for a fact that Iran uses its Central Bank to move money to its terror proxies – that’s why during my time as Secretary of State, we imposed sanctions on it, and it’s why lifting those sanctions would be a disaster and a betrayal to the American people and our allies.
Iran is a serial treaty violator. In fact, the driving motive for the original “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA) – the ill-fated Iran Nuclear Deal – was that Iran was caught cheating on its pledge to not pursue nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Just this past September, the regime turned away inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at its Karaj centrifuge assembly site. For years Iran has refused to provide adequate explanations to the IAEA over why man-made uranium was detected at multiple undeclared sites. We also know, based on the Mossad’s seizure of a trove of Iranian nuclear weapons documents, that the regime was keeping a reference library for future weapons development. We know that Iran is currently enriching uranium at its Fordow facility, a location forbidden by the JCPOA – the agreement which Iran says it is still honoring. Let’s be clear: Iran has never honored its deals. It has every intention of developing nuclear weapons.
The Biden Administration has decided to coddle a regime that works toward the destruction of America, Israel, and all our allies and partners. Even as Iran has doubled its efforts to enrich uranium and develop facilities that someday will be used to build nuclear weapons, President Biden has decided that it is more urgent to cut a deal with them, rather than hit them with even tougher sanctions. He, his Envoy Robert Malley, and the rest of Team Biden are being played. Even worse, they have subcontracted their negotiations to the Russians, whose ambassador in Vienna has been doing all the face-to-face discussions with the Iranians “on our behalf.”
The American people do not want this to happen. The Biden Administration is not only being criticized by Republicans; just recently, 18 Democrat Members of Congress signed a letter condemning Team Biden’s negotiations.
No countries in the Middle East want this deal to happen either. That’s because a renegotiated Iran deal would be a disaster for stability in the region. A significant portion of the money that will flow through the front door to the regime will go right out the back door to its terror operatives throughout the Middle East. Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis – all will suddenly have more money and resources than ever before. The pain and suffering they inevitably will inflict on our allies, particularly Israel, will be immense and catastrophic. And worse, other Middle East governments know that the deal would put Iran on a path to a nuclear weapon, which could cause nuclear proliferation in the region or worse.
In the Trump Administration, we understood that only strength brings peace and stability. We withdrew from the JCPOA because it was demonstrably making our enemies stronger – giving Iran a clear path to nuclear weapons while allowing it to reconnect to the global economy, thereby enriching itself and its terrorist proxies. Congress failed to stop the original JCPOA, though disgust with it was evident from within both political parties. It is essential that Congress now act, in a bipartisan manner, to block Biden’s new, even more disastrous deal.
The ACLJ has been fighting to expose and defeat this disastrous deal for years, through our ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation. We obtained an email – unredacted via court order – from now-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki (then-State Department Press Secretary) showing that the Obama-Biden Administration was trying to “batten down the hatches” and “shut . . . down” any public discussion of the secret Obama-Biden bilateral negotiations with Iran on the disastrous Iran deal. We will keep fighting to expose the truth and defeat the renewed attempts at this deal.