Victoria Coates has been Deputy National Security Adviser for the Middle East and North Africa on National Security Council staff and Senior Political Adviser to the Minister of Energy in the Donald J. Administration. Trump
In a bombing raid, career State Department diplomats who have become informants are said to have told my former colleagues in the Trump administration that the new Iran concluding the nuclear deal in Vienna is so dangerous that they have to sound the alarm.
Because the world is distracted by Russia invasion of Ukraine and while president Joe Biden condemns Vladimir Putin on the world stage – the United States is negotiating with Kremlin negotiators to renew the agreement with Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist leaders.
And it is said that there are 24 to 48 hours left from the finalization.
Former senior State Department official Gabriel Noronha blew the lid on this earlier this week by posting details of these alleged discounts on Twitter.
As reported, the terms of this new deal are weaker than the agreement reached with President Barack Obama.
Biden’s senior envoy to Iran, Rob Mali, is apparently so determined to achieve a “victory” for his boss that he is ready to make unprecedented concessions to bring Tehran back into an agreement.
It is difficult to see how this new deal is driven by anything other than the Biden administration’s desire for a short-term political victory that they can highlight to the local public.
Biden’s senior envoy to Iran, Rob Mali, is apparently so determined to achieve a “victory” for his boss that he is ready to make unprecedented concessions to bring Tehran back into an agreement.
(Above) Robert Mali, US Special Representative for Iran
Unfortunately, this puts the world at greater risk.
For example, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran (IRGC) will be removed from the list of the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will have his human rights sanctions lifted.
Neither terrorism nor human rights abuses have anything to do with the nuclear program, but the Iranians are known to make a tough deal.
As Senior Director and then Deputy National Security Adviser for the Middle East and North Africa at the White House, when the IRGC was appointed and Raisi sanctioned, both in 2019, I personally oversaw the interdepartmental process that recommended the FTO. for President Trump.
This unprecedented determination of a foreign army was not an action we took lightly, and it was extremely important that all voices be heard and that the strongest possible case be built.
Ultimately, the evidence that the IRGC has crossed the line from sponsoring terrorism to becoming an active perpetrator of terrorism, led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has been overwhelming.
From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, the IRGC under (then) Commander Quds Qassam Solimani involved terrorists to train and equip them not only but also to participate directly in the attacks.
According to the Pentagon, IRGC-sponsored undercover agents killed at least 603 U.S. servicemen during the Iraq war.
During the Trump administration, IRGC goals included civilian infrastructure such as Dubai Airport, energy infrastructure such as merchant ships in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and even gatherings of Iranian opposition groups in Paris.
And even as these infrastructure attacks were planned and in some cases carried out, senior Iranian officials continued to meet with former Obama administration colleagues to support dreams of reviving the 2015 agreement after President Trump left in 2018
The case against Raisi, who has served as the family’s forced service for decades for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was even more humiliating.
According to an executive order issued by President Trump in 2019, Raisi was sanctioned for the extrajudicial killings of about 5,000 people in 1988.
He was also involved in the brutal crackdown on the 2009 Green Revolution, a mass political movement that emerged in Iran following another fraudulent presidential election.
Instead of listening to our regional partners and critical ally Israel, the administration is listening to the Russians and the Chinese. (Above) The Russian envoy Mikhail Ulyanov
Instead of holding him accountable, lifting sanctions against him means he will be able to travel to America for events like the UN General Assembly and be able to engage with the Western media, as his predecessor Hassan Rouhani did so effectively on behalf of the supreme leader.
But the reality is that the last time sanctions were eased against the Tehran regime, we saw no improvement in their practice of state-sanctioned terrorism or human rights abuses.
Rather, there was a direct effect between increased revenues coming to Iran due to increased oil sales and the regime’s offensive military capabilities and proxy training and equipment – and the suppression of the long-suffering Iranian people, who saw none of these resources spent. for the services they so desperately need.
Furthermore, we cannot have any certainty that the documented aspirations of the supreme leader for nuclear weapons have been appeased.
Thanks to Israel’s disclosure of Iran’s nuclear archives in 2018, we know that the original nuclear deal was based on a lie.
During those talks, the Iranian regime insisted that their nuclear program was peaceful and that they never wanted a bomb. But carefully preserved and guarded plans for nuclear weapons discovered by the Israelis tell a different story.
Instead of handing over these materials to demonstrate their good faith when a deal is reached, the regime has kept them secret so that they can be revived after the sunset of the nuclear deal.
In addition, Noronha said the renewed agreement would not extend previously agreed suspension clauses, which determine how long the provisions on Iran’s nuclear program remain in force.
There were no restrictions in the original 2015 agreement that would prevent Tehran from producing nuclear fuel for a nuclear bomb after 2031.
It is reported that this deadline has not been revised.
Observers of these talks are not completely shocked.
In fact, a key member of the US negotiating team, Richard Nefu, resigned in January over disagreements with Mali over the direction of the talks.
Mali also has a history of working with terrorist groups. He was removed from his role as an informal adviser in Obama’s first presidential campaign when it was revealed that he was negotiating with Hamas.
The only thing that will delay Tehran will be to deprive them of resources and hold them accountable for their crimes against America and our allies, as well as against their own people.
However, the Biden administration insists on doing the opposite and is vying for a deal that will not only legitimize but enrich the Iranians and give them the resources they will use to continue the bombing.
President Biden would do well to look at two awkward episodes of sanctions from his first year in office to assess how badly these new moves could backfire: removing Yemeni Iranian proxies from the FTO list last March and refusing to to maintain sanctions on Putin’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline and then lobby against congressional attempts to re-impose them.
We cannot be sure that the documented aspirations of the Supreme Leader (pictured above) for nuclear weapons have been appeased.
The action of the Hussites was ostensibly taken to facilitate humanitarian aid to Yemen, but it was in fact a concession to their Iranian sponsors to tempt Iran to return to the negotiating table in Vienna.
The lifting of the NS 2 sanctions was ostensibly a sign of respect for Germany, but it was in fact a concession for Russia to retain the Russian delegation’s participation in the Vienna nuclear talks.
Instead of listening to our regional partners and critical ally Israel, the administration is listening to the Russians and Chinese, who are no doubt spinning attractive fabrications about cementing Biden’s legacy as a peacemaker to make a deal they both want: China for cheap gas and Russia for an enriched client country in the Middle East.
Not only will this deal make the world less secure by financing Iranian terrorism, but it will feed Tehran even more dangerously in its race to build a nuclear weapon.
The United States must return to the Trump administration’s campaign of maximum pressure so that we can use leverage, not reassurance, to prevent Iran from getting a bomb.
Ultimately, however, there is no mechanism to ensure that the provisions of this deal survive the Biden presidency unless adopted as a treaty by the US Senate – which will not happen because the American people do not want this deal. with the devil.
As the horror of Ukraine must demonstrate to all of us, reassuring the world’s worst actors will only encourage them to pursue greater power and domination.