France, Germany, and Britain Sound Alarm on Iran’s Nuclear Moves. The U.S…? By Bryan Preston
On Tuesday afternoon, France, Britain, and Germany released a joint statement regarding Iran’s latest nuclear moves. VOA’s Jeff Seldin tweeted the statement out.
The three allies “note with grave concern the latest report by the IAEA confirming that Iran has taken steps in the production of enriched uranium material.” The statement further notes that Iran has no credible civilian use for its activities, leading the three to suspect that Iran is taking steps toward developing nuclear weapons.
It should be obvious why this is a gravely serious issue.
It’s made more grave by United States silence on the one hand, and Joe Biden’s obvious eagerness to get the Obama-era Iran deal back in vogue on the other. Like most American leftists, results that benefit Americans are of dubious value and matter a lot less to Biden than the appearances of inking some “historic” deal or initiating some government program that the media will cast as well-meaning. It’s the PR that sells the thought that counts.
Iran is not on strong footing these days, but that matters little. It’s internally as brittle as ever. Israel continues working solid diplomacy with some of its Arab neighbors after Trump’s historic Abraham Accords.
Iran lost power and even its “countdown to Armageddon” clock reportedly went offline in the blackouts. Yes, we’re having some blackouts too thanks to a grid that hasn’t kept up with population growth in Texas and an overreliance on wind and solar there and in other states. But America doesn’t keep a running clock that’s just counting down the seconds until we can annihilate someone based on their race and heritage. Iran does. That clock is what reportedly went dark.
Biden still wants to treat Iran as some kind of quasi-normal state despite the fact that it’s run by one of the world’s worst dictatorships — and one of the world’s most prolific sponsors of terrorism.
Nuclear weapons in such hands spell violence, misery, and doom.
In April 2021, Foreign Policy warned that Biden returning the United States to the Obama-era JCPOA would be unwise.
Right away, the regime could receive a payday of around $90 billion the moment Biden ends sanctions. After all, U.S. sanctions tied up $40 billion of oil and condensate sales in Asia and the Middle East while another $50 billion in funds remain inaccessible to the regime. Meanwhile, the restoration of the JCPOA would likely reinvigorate Iran’s oil exports, adding nearly $50 billion per year to the regime’s coffers at today’s market rate. Other economic sanctions would be lifted as well, bolstering the regime’s metals and petrochemicals sectors that are crucial to funding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) foreign adventures. Iran’s economy will start to grow again, and it will not take any time for the suitcases of cash to find their way to Hamas or Hezbollah.
Those billions of dollars would go a long way for the leading state sponsor of terrorism. Iran’s entire military budget has been reduced to less than $20 billion a year. But historically, Iran spent more than $16 billion supporting allies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen since 2012 and sent $700 million a year to Hezbollah.
There’s not much need for speculation regarding what Iran would use its sanctions relief for.
Or what it would use nuclear weapons for.
Biden isn’t listening. He or whoever is up today in the White House edition of Game of Thrones behind the scenes (DOCTOR Jill? Kamala? Ron Klain?) is already turning Afghanistan over to the Taliban, and they’re wasting no time taking over and turning American weapons left behind against what’s left of that place’s government.
Doing the unwise thing seems to be Joe Biden’s trademark move.
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