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March 13th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Whatever happened to the Iran Deal? You know, the historic agreement that the Obama administration negotiated back in 2015, despite Republicans, some fellow Democrats, and Israel trying to torpedo it? The Trump administration violated it, but Biden repeatedly said he wanted to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) if he ended up becoming president.
Well, now he’s president and suddenly things aren’t so clear. David Klion has a great piece at Jewish Currents on growing progressive anxiety over this issue. “Biden’s team has dawdled, insisting that Tehran take the first steps toward complying with the agreement even though the US withdrew when Iran was cooperating,” writes Klion. “In the meantime, the administration has created new obstacles to diplomacy.”
Klion cites the February 26th Syria strike as one of those obstacles. “The Syria strikes were disheartening, to say the least,” Win Without War’s Erica Fein told him. “Syria is not a place that should be used to send messages back and forth between Iranian-backed proxies and the United States. You can’t bomb your way to peace.”
During a four-hour hearing with the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week, Secretary of State Tony Blinken assured its members that Biden wouldn’t be making any concessions, or lifting sanctions, until Iran reverts back to the rules of the original deal. “Iranians have, unfortunately, moved further and further away from their own compliance,” said Blinken at one point.
Let’s step back for a moment. Here’s Iran, which has been the target of U.S. aggression for decades. I don’t have to run through the public record for you. The C.I.A. overthrew their government via a coup in 1953, gave Iraq chemical weapons that were used against them, shot down a civilian Iranian airliner with 66 children on it, among a variety of additional horrors. U.S politicians regularly threaten to pulverize the country with a military strike. The former president did so over Twitter and a former presidential candidate (and late hero of the “Never Trump Republican” clique) even sang a song about doing so. This isn’t even to mention anything that Israel has done to the country through the years, with full assistance from the United States. You know the history.
In 2015, Iran agreed to cut its low-enriched uranium stockpile by 98% in exchange for sanction relief. The United States violated the deal, ramped up sanctions amid a global pandemic, and now Biden is bombing countries in an effort to send the country a message.
“On Iran, negotiation is always best from a position of strength,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) told Blinken during the hearing. “I don’t trust the Ayatollah, I don’t know how you can possibly negotiate with the Ayatollah.”
I don’t know how, indeed.
Dems also try to sink the deal
Once again, a number of Democrats are seemingly working to impede the deal. Back in December, 150 House Democrats sent a letter to Biden calling on him to rejoin the deal without conditions. A new letter comes in direct response to that suggestion.
The new letter (which was signed by 70 Republican and 70 Democratic House members) outlines a number of conditions that Iran should abide by before Biden negotiates. “Despite everything you see, there is bipartisanship going on in DC, even over something as contentious as the Iran deal,” said Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL). “We’re thrilled to have been able to come together on a number of these points… encouraging the administration to encompass all of Iran’s malign behavior.”
Waltz also praised Democrats for taking a more hawkish stand. “The important thing from this letter is that we’re seeing 70 Democrats on the record to the administration saying that we need to have all of these pieces on the table for a future deal,” he explained. “We did not want to leave the only thing out there from Congress — and many Democrats did not want to leave as the only thing out there from the House — the letter in December that just said blindly get back into the JCPOA.”
Now there’s a House resolution (being led primarily by Democrats) to condemn Iranian’s nuclear program. The resolution was introduced by Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA). “Iran is a state-sponsor of terrorism and poses an existential threat to our national security and Israel, America’s strongest ally in the region,” she said in a statement. “Iran cannot be allowed to continue to progress towards a nuclear weapon and the United States must unequivocally condemn their provocations.”
Does the Biden administration agree with this stuff or do they actually hope to reenter the Iran Deal? This remains an open question.
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