Opinion: How the coming deal with Iran helps Russia
Neville Chamberlain was a good man, though vain, and when he died, Winston Churchill — who replaced Chamberlain as British prime minister — eulogized him in the House of Commons. It was a gracious address that gave voice to the fact that Chamberlain was a man of good intentions. But, as Churchill noted: “It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man.” President Biden came to mind as I reviewed Churchill’s eulogy. Appeasement springs from the genuine desire to avoid war.
But, as its comprehensive failure in the 1930s should have proved, it’s impossible to rely on the word of tyrants. Hitler was a tyrant. Stalin was a tyrant. President Xi Jinping of China, who oversees a vast set of concentration camps carrying out the genocide of the Uyghurs — while continuing the destruction of Tibetan culture and the repression of Hong Kong — is a tyrant. Vladimir Putin is an evil tyrant. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has a long record of mayhem and hatred — another tyrant.
That tyrants can be talented in their cruelties doesn’t make them less evil, or more reliable — just more dangerous. But Biden won’t let the facts about Xi, Putin and Khamenei stand in the way of a new “deal” with Iran, even as Iran launched missiles into Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
The religious zealots of Tehran are in league with Putin and Russia’s state-owned Rosatom nuclear agency, which will build two of the reactors Iran will be allowed to construct under the deal. Rosatom will bank $10 billion on that part of the “deal.” We don’t know what Putin’s cut is, but there is always a cut for the tyrant. Xi of China refuses to condemn Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine, abstains on a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the invasion and may yet supply weaponry to the beleaguered Russian military, despite U.S. warnings to the contrary.
The trio has other junior partners around the globe, such as Kim Jong Un in North Korea and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The answer for the West is not to make them stronger. The looming nuclear “deal” with Iran is “mind-boggling,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on my radio show Thursday. “It’ll have absolutely nothing to do with all of Iran’s collateral activities supporting terrorism all over the Middle East.” That’s because the deal will likely lift sanctions on Iran, remove terrorist designations on individuals and organizations, and clears a path for sales of Iranian oil — which would bankroll Iran’s missile development and terrorist proxies around the globe.
“President Trump was right to get out of that deal,” McConnell added. “And look, you know, [a new deal] unsettles our Sunni Arab allies like the Emiratis and the Saudis. They see us cozying up to Iran once again, so it has an adverse impact on our allies, the Sunni Arab states, and Israel’s not going to be too keen on this, either.” McConnell also blamed Biden for signaling to Putin that the invasion of Ukraine would not be met with the stiff Western response that has in fact occurred.
But he said the seeds of the invasion go back to Kabul: “What gave Putin a green light was our precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan last August. It was a bold display of cowardice and an indication that America was in retreat.” Of course, it was Donald Trump who agreed to the original timetable for and terms of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
But both he and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo have repeatedly asserted since then that the Taliban’s violations of that original accord should have rendered it null and void for Team Biden. But it did not. Biden ignored the Taliban’s violations of the agreement; Trump would have punished the Taliban the way he punished Iran’s Gen. Qasem Soleimani in 2020, as he plotted with Iran’s proxies in Iraq. The sanctions Trump imposed on Iran are crushing its economy. Biden is about to remove them. Chamberlain declared “peace for our time” when he returned to England with the meaningless “Munich Agreement” in September 1938. A year later the world had plunged into a cataclysmic war.
The new version of appeasement is belatedly arming Ukraine while empowering Putin (and paying him indirectly) in the deal taking shape with Iran in Vienna. Ukraine can persevere with our help. China can be deterred with commitments to military preparedness and especially expansion of our Navy. Iran should remain a pariah until it ceases its outsourcing of terrorism to the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas. The United States and its allies can invest in the weapons of war so as to deter it. Appeasement did not work for Chamberlain. And it will not work for Biden.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/19/iran-nuclear-deal-helps-russia/