Why There Should Be No Deal Making With Iran

There have been increasing geopolitical swirls around the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) also known as the “Iran Deal”. A video was released in which US president Joe Biden said that the JCPOA is “dead” but that he would not announce it publically. At the same time, outlets like Reuters are reporting that the US is leaving the door open for a different Iran deal. This is consistent with the Biden video which seems to indicate at the end that Joe Biden feels that diplomacy is necessary to prevent a nuclear Islamic Republic.

The major problem with the Biden administration and the major European powers is that their entire approach to negotiation with the Islamic Republic is flawed. The deal does not prevent the Islamic Republic from getting nuclear weapons, it guarantees that they would get nuclear weapons along with the ballistic missiles to launch them off of. 

While the original JCPOA was a terrible deal for everyone but the regime, an issue I have written about before, the very notion of negotiating with the regime is counterproductive.

There is a very good reason for the popular phrase “you don’t negotiate with terrorists”. The Islamic Republic is the top global supporter of terrorism. In their own words, they are Islamist Jihadists with the stated goal of world domination that directly finance listed terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Also, their own IRGC has committed terrorist attacks in Argentina, and Germany, and shot down the flight PS752.

No reasonable person should expect that the mullahs would ever abide by the terms of the deal. In fact, the Israelis managed to obtain proof that the regime was in violation of the original deal. 

The Islamic Republic wants nuclear weapons, and there is nothing we can say to them that will change that. If we want to prevent them from gaining nuclear capabilities we have to make it more difficult for them to enrich uranium. This means economic and political sanctions, sabotage of their nuclear program, and listing the IRGC as a terrorist organization and punishing anyone who directly or indirectly aids them.

Any deal with the regime would provide economic funds to the regime, and therefore would give them the resources that make building a bomb far easier. The last time the Obama administration dumped billions of dollars on the regime it resulted in disaster. None of the money went to improving the lives of the people inside Iran, instead, it went to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and rebel groups like the Houthis in Yemen, which in turn turned the country into a hellscape of a civil war.

To re-enter a new deal with the Islamic Republic would be a horrible betrayal of the people in Iran fighting the regime on the streets, the families in Lebanon blown up in the Hezbollah Beirut explosion, Israelis under Islamic Republic rocket fire, Yemenis hoping for peace, the victims of PS752 and all others who value humans rights around the globe.

Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is to try the same thing over and over and expect a different result. The first Iran deal was a disaster, another one would be the same.