President Biden is eager to re-engage with Iran and return to the nuclear deal. However, the criminal regime has no interest in changing its ways. It is stepping up its development of nuclear weapons and its network of deadly militias in the Middle East, continuing its hegemony.
Biden said during the campaign that he would join the nuclear deal “as a starting point for further negotiations” if “Iran returns to strict compliance”, working “to strengthen and expand the provisions of the nuclear deal, while addressing other issues of interest.” ”, Such as Iran’s ballistic missile program, human rights abuses and“ destabilizing activity ”.
This has always been naive, and Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, confirmed it on Friday: “There can be no renegotiation,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs. “Iran’s defense and regional policies have not been discussed,” as the West will not withdraw from the region and stop selling weapons to its allies.
Zarif proudly said that “Iran has significantly increased its nuclear capabilities” and, indeed, the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed this month in a confidential report that Iran took a crucial step in December, starting a assembly line to transform uranium metal, a key nuclear component – component of the weapon banned by the nuclear agreement. France, Germany and Britain have warned together of “serious military implications”, noting that the metal “has no credible civilian use”.
Earlier this month, Tehran said it was producing 20% enriched uranium, well above the 3.67% agreed in the nuclear deal, crossing what even European sedatives considered a red line. The IAEA said in November that Iran had accumulated a stockpile of uranium with a low level of enrichment 12 times higher than allowed under the agreement. Iran has barred the agency from visiting last Monday and vows to permanently ban inspectors if US sanctions are not lifted by February 21st.
The problem is not just nuclear weapons either. This month’s multi-day military exercises in Tehran included tests of ballistic missiles and bomber drones, Iranian state TV said, a “hypothetical shield of enemy missiles” and “hypothetical enemy bases.” Some missiles landed just 100 miles from the USS Nimitz, with debris flying after it exploded. A rocket hit the water 20 miles from a merchant ship.
Newsweek recently reported that Iran is delivering “suicide drones” (advanced unmanned aerial vehicles) to its Houthi representatives in Yemen. With a range of 2,000 kilometers, they can reach Israel, Saudi Arabia, and even American targets in the region.
All of this should be a wake-up call for the new president, but Biden seems to be holding back. His election as CIA Director William Burns played a key role in the Obama administration’s secret talks in 2013 with Tehran, which led to the 2015 nuclear deal. And it looks like Biden is trying to make Robert Malley his special envoy. in Iran.
Malley was ousted from the Obama campaign in 2008 after news broke that he had met with members of the terrorist group Hamas, but became the Middle East director for President Barack Obama’s National Security Council. Last year, he actually condemned the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
A dozen former Iranian hostages and human rights activists sent a letter to the secretary of state appointed by Biden asking him not to introduce Malley to the administration, because “it would send a terrible signal from the Iranian dictatorship that the United States is focused exclusively on re-entering the Iranian nuclear deal and ignoring its regional terror and internal crimes against humanity. “
This was exactly the approach of the Obama era, and Biden seems to be repeating that deadly mistake.