Nothing seems to stop the Biden administration from wanting to reward the ruling mullahs of Iran with a nuclear deal that will pave the way for the Islamist regime of Iran legally to obtain as many nuclear weapons as it likes, empower the ruling mullahs with billions of dollars, lift sanctions against their theocratic regime, allow them to rejoin the global financial system and enhance their legitimacy on the global stage.
These benefits presumably include further enabling the regime's ruthless expansion throughout the Middle East -- Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and the terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip -- and into Latin America.
According to the Independent Persian on February 23:
"Ali Bagheri Keni, the chief nuclear negotiator of the Islamic Republic, emphasized the continuation of negotiations to revive the JCPOA and announced that negotiations are still ongoing [between Iran, the Europeans and the Biden administration] within the framework of the exchange of messages between the two sides, and the parties are exchanging their views... The Americans are keeping their desire to negotiate with the Islamic Republic [to revive the nuclear deal] in secret in the midst of denial and silence".
Here are some the Iranian regime's terrorist actions since the Biden Administration assumed office:
Most recently, the Iranian regime, with a drone strike, killed an American contractor and injured six other US personnel deployed in Syria. On the same day, Iranian-backed groups also launched 10 rockets that targeted coalition forces at the Green Village in northeast Syria.
The Iranian regime, by providing weapons and troops to Russia, is also entrenched in the war on Ukraine. Even the European Union ultimately acknowledged that the Iranian regime was "provid[ing] military support for Russia's unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine," via "development and delivery of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Russia."
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly noted in a statement:
"These cowardly drone strikes are an act of desperation. By enabling these strikes, these individuals and a manufacturer have caused the people of Ukraine untold suffering."
In addition, Iran, called by the US Department of State a "top sponsor of state terrorism," has been ratcheting up its presence and terror cells in Latin America while using that continent as a sanctuary.
During the Biden administration, the Iranian regime has also attempted to assassinate US officials on American soil. A member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Shahram Poursafi, aka Mehdi Rezayi, 45, of Tehran, was charged on August 11, 2022 with a terrorist plot to pay an individual in the United States $300,000 to murder former US National Security Advisor John Bolton. According to the US Department of Justice:
"An Iranian national and member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was charged by complaint, unsealed today in the District of Columbia, with use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire and with providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot."
The regime also attempted to assassinate former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was reportedly the second target of the Iranian regime. The IRGC member allegedly offered $1 million for Pompeo's murder. In addition, a man armed with an assault rifle showed up at the Brooklyn, NY home of Iranian-American author and human rights activist Masih Alinejad. Last year, she was the target of a kidnapping plot in which she says she would have been killed. There are likely other US citizens on the regime's murder list as well.
"An attempted assassination of a former U.S. Government official on U.S. soil is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated," said Steven M. D'Antuono, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office.
These attempts to murder US citizens on American soil by the Iranian regime are unprecedented and deliberate violations of US sovereignty. The Biden Administration, however, as can be seen from the chaos on the US southern border, is not taking the security of the American people seriously. So far, at just that border, the US has seen the entry of 5.5 million illegal migrants; 1.4 million "gotaways," about whom the government knows nothing; 853 people who died trying to enter in just 12 months; fentanyl, originating in China, that has been killing tens of thousands of Americans each year and is now, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "the top cause of death among U.S. adults (ages 18-45)," and continuing to kill Americans "in record numbers." Also seen across America's southern border, are 87,000 children who are unaccounted for and may well have been abducted into child slavery or sex-trafficking.
Even the Washington Post pointed out that Iran's attempted kidnappings on American soil should be a serious warning to the Biden administration:
"The message for the Biden administration, which has frequently proclaimed its intention to defend pro-democracy dissidents, is that Iran and other foreign dictatorships won't shrink from launching attacks inside the United States unless deterred..."
Instead, the Biden administration remains silent and evidently still wants to reward the mullahs with the nuclear deal and it continues to see "diplomacy" -- read: appeasement -- as the only path to deal with the Iranian regime. "I continue to believe, Biden said on July 14, "that diplomacy is the best way to achieve this outcome."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, "We continue to believe that ultimately diplomacy is the most effective way to deal with this, but that's not where the focus is."
Nothing, not even the killing and wounding of American citizens, seems to be deterring the Biden administration from trying to give the Islamist regime of Iran the ultimate gift: unlimited nuclear weapons.
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
Hamish MacDonald