Will Biden strike a terrible deal with Iran just for short-term political gain?

It’s bad enough that President Biden is continuing his dangerous efforts to resuscitate the Iran nuclear deal. Worse still is the risk that the White House will settle for a worse-than-necessary deal out of crude political calculation, strategic imperatives to hell with.

The Biden version is already worse in every way than the rotten deal struck by President Barack Obama in 2015. That pact has emboldened Iran – the ultimate bad faith actor, which has frustrated serious facility inspection efforts nuclear from the start. and continued its global campaign of terror.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps not only funds and enables terrorism across the Middle East, but also attacks against US troops, such as the rockets that recently hit a base housing our soldiers in Syria.

Yes, Biden retaliated on Wednesday with missiles at IRGC assets in Syria. But this begs the question: where does the eagerness to strike a deal come from? everything with openly hostile power on the conventional front?

All right: a renewed deal could delay by a year or two the day Iran becomes a nuclear power, which no one but Tehran and its allies want. But the delay is the more it will be fine, since it would set in 2025. And the likely mass exclusion of Iranian energy projects from Russia would fill Putin’s pocket and bring Iran and Russia even closer.

It would also free up around $100 billion a year for Iran through sanctions relief, money too likely to fund terrorism – when Tehran already persists in attacks even in this country, including plotting to kill former Trump officials John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. (Heck, Team Biden reportedly played down its response to those conspiracies in order to keep the nuclear talks going.)

Tehran is currently testing how many more concessions Washington will make to clinch a deal, and America’s allies fear the White House may be unnecessarily conceding too much just to be able to announce a deal before the November election.

After all, the Biden team intends to provide as many distractions as possible from inflation, crime and the wide opening of the US southern border, the issues that are driving the success. likely from Republicans on Election Day. An apparent « victory » over Iran could even erase some of the lingering stain of the president’s disastrous evacuation in Afghanistan.

Similar calculations explain Biden’s outrageous student loan offer last week – a move that will soon fuel more inflation and increase the federal deficit that the prez just bragged about reducing in the horribly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.

In other words, this White House is obsessed with securing short-term political gains regardless of the far greater long-term expenditures on the nation. He wants all the distractions he can get, especially the ones his media allies will yell at.

Enthusiasts of the Iran deal have always portrayed it as a noble act of steely resolve, necessary to avert war, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and/or other geopolitical catastrophes. But no one will say whether Biden is handing over the store solely for dirty retail policy reasons.

Conclusion: If Biden brandishes a deal before November, it will likely be a betrayal of American interests only to bolster his own party.