Iran Sends Its Missile Regards The U.S. pursuit of a new nuclear deal looks increasingly bizarre.
The Biden Administration’s hell-bent pursuit of a new nuclear deal with Iran grows harder to understand with each provocation from Tehran. The latest came Sunday in a missile attack near a U.S. consulate under construction in northern Iraq.
Iran typically commits mayhem through proxy militias, but this time Tehran took credit. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s paramilitary group, said it carried out a missile attack on what it claimed were Israeli targets inside Iraq. The group said it was in response to an Israeli airstrike in Syria last week that killed two IRGC commanders.
Notably, however, the missiles landed in Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. The Kurds are America’s best allies in that country. No one was killed but at least two individuals were injured. It’s likely the IRGC wants to send a message about the vulnerability of U.S. interests and allies in the region as the two sides close in on a renewed nuclear deal.
The deal would hand Iran tens of billions of dollars in money and investment. Iran also wants the U.S. to remove the IRGC from its list of terrorist groups as part of the deal. Iran knows the U.S. is preoccupied at the moment with Ukraine and Russian aggression.
Iran’s missile attack shows the incongruity of the looming nuclear deal. Like the 2015 original agreement, the new one would do nothing to restrict Iran’s support for regional terror groups. It includes no restrictions on Iran’s missile program that is growing more sophisticated and dangerous.
Iran also continues to support the Houthis in Yemen who use missiles and drones to target civilian and commercial targets in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And Iran is helping Hezbollah make its missiles targeted at Israel more accurate.
The U.S., France and others condemned the Sunday missile strike, yet they are eager to give Iran countless billions that it can use to fund more such attacks. It’s bizarre.
Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, seems undeterred despite the missile attack. “One thing I will say,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, “is that the only thing more dangerous than Iran armed with ballistic missiles and advanced military capabilities is an Iran that has all of those things and a nuclear weapon, and President Biden is still determined to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”
But the deal won’t stop Iran from pursuing, or getting, a nuclear weapon. Iran could continue to make progress at secret sites that are excluded from international inspectors as it waits for the deal to expire. Meanwhile, it will be able to sell oil and cut deals with Russia and Europe to finance its imperialism.
The nuclear talks paused last week after Russia—which is among the countries brokering the talks—demanded that sanctions related to Ukraine not interfere with its deals with Iran. A U.S. official told the Journal that it won’t make that concession to Russia, but unless a new nuclear deal bars Iran-Russia transactions it will open up new sanctions-evading opportunities. The world will see it as one more sign of American weakness.
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