Biden Rewards Failure

As for that Iran Nuclear Deal, the incoming Biden administration is dying to reinstate it. That is, it is dying to rejoin the agreement.

We note, in passing, that our so-called European allies, that is, Great Britain, France and Germany remained within the deal. They imagined that they could influence Iran with tough talk, backed by the wind. Just recently, they chastised the mullahs for failing to respect the terms of the deal. In truth, these idiots should have chastised themselves, for refusing to crack down harder on the Iranian regime.

As for blaming Trump for our frayed alliances, one notes, yet again, that when countries want to be treated like allies they should act like allies.

Speaking of the Iran deal, Henry Kissinger-- remember him?-- offered some sensible remarks a few days ago. The New York Post reports Kissinger’s view, namely that Biden’s re-entry into the deal will set off a scramble throughout the region, to acquire nuclear weapons. Way to go, Joe!

At a conference for the Jewish People Policy Institute on Monday, Kissinger argued that Biden should by no means reverse President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the accord.

Biden has said he means to return to it as long as Iran agrees to comply with the restrictions on its actions. But Kissinger notes that the deal’s time limits on key restrictions and “so many escape clauses” render it effectively useless in stopping Iran’s nuclear development.

Plus, the accord leaves Iran’s enrichment capabilities intact while banning US economic sanctions — when the ones Trump imposed are hitting the regime hard.

Iran’s neighbors know all this, and have no intention of being helpless against Tehran’s nuclear weapons. If Biden sticks with his plans, everyone else in the region will rush to get their own nukes.

And now there is the return of one Wendy Sherman. Not only has Sherman manifested her incompetence while negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, deal that guaranteed Iran the legitimate right to have nuclear weapons within several years, but she was also a member of the Clinton administration negotiating team that helped North Korea gain nuclear weapons. You might recall that Bubba announced breathlessly that the deal with North Korea guaranteed that the hermit kingdom would not get nuclear weapons. Of course, it was nonsense. It guaranteed nothing.

And yet, no one recalls this catastrophic failure, and no one much cares about the awful Iran nuclear deal. As for the latter, it was signed during the Obama administration, and anything that was enacted during the Obama administration is, ipso facto, good. 

The modern American left, the supposedly moderate American left, does not admit of failure. It does not allow reality to judge its projects. If Obama did it, it is good. Even if Wendy Sherman is one of the worst negotiators in American history, the incoming Biden administration will reward her with the job of deputy secretary of state.

How about that for failing upward. Apparently, her other major qualification is that she has the right kind of chromosomes. So says Robert Spencer:

AFP reported Saturday that Biden has appointed Wendy Sherman, whose chief claim to fame is negotiating the notorious Iran nuclear deal, to be deputy secretary of state. It’s a classic example of failing up.

Biden said of Sherman and anti-Russia career diplomat Victoria Nuland, whom he named undersecretary for political affairs, that they “have secured some of the most defining national security and diplomatic achievements in recent memory. I am confident that they will use their diplomatic experience and skill to restore America’s global and moral leadership. America is back.”

As for Nuland, presumably she was working on Russia policy when the Obama administration stood idly by while Russia did what it wanted in Syria. She must have been there when Russia annexed Crimea. And she might have had a hand in the Obama administration’s refusal to send defensive missiles to Ukraine.

Why did they not send the missiles-- which Donald Trump did send? Because Putin did not want them to. And let’s not forget that the Obama administration canceled a contract to send defensive missiles to Poland and the Czech Republic-- because Putin did not want them to do so. Obviously, this tells us that Trump was Putin’s stooge.

When you have no sense of reality and when you believe that you can simply make it up as you go along, people can garner outsized reputations based on failure. Then again, the primary Biden criterion is diversity, not competence.

Spencer presents the case against Sherman:

Well, that may be overstating the case, but there is no doubt that the disastrous State Department “experts” are back. Sherman is getting her promotion nearly two years after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled 55,000 pages of documents and 183 cds demonstrating that “Iran did not come clean about its nuclear program,” and that it pursued a program “to design, produce and test five warheads with 10 kiloton of TNT yield for integration on missiles.”

When Iran’s leaders denied that they intended to construct nuclear weapons, Netanyahu said, they were “blatantly lying.” He charged that “Iran lied about never having a secret nuclear program. Secondly, even after the deal, it continued to expand its nuclear program for future use. Thirdly, Iran lied by not coming clean to the IAEA.”

Wendy Sherman’s Iran nuclear deal was, according to Netanyahu, “based on lies based on Iranian deception.” The Islamic Republic’s Fordow nuclear plant was, he said, “designed from the get-go for nuclear weapons for project Amad…We can now prove that project Amad was a comprehensive program to design, build and test nuclear weapons. We can also prove that Iran is secretly storing project Amad material to use at a time of its choice to develop nuclear weapons.”

The head of project Amad was a nuclear scientist named Mohsen Fakhrizdeh.

So, Kerry and Sherman were the dupes of the Iranian regime. Naturally, the American left has derided the Israeli presentation, because, you know, it was not sufficiently diverse. 

So, failing up is precisely the right term:

In the two intervening years, Netanyahu’s presentation has been mocked, derided, or ignored altogether, but it has never been disproven. Even aside from it, as The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran shows, the deal was foredoomed in the first place, and had no chance of being effective to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The deal runs out in 2025. What about after that? Nothing. Apparently, at that point, Iran would be free to build nuclear weapons with no objections from anyone.

Even worse were the deal’s provisions for verification. It contained the provision that Iran could delay requested International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections for up to 24 days — ample time to clean up for the inspectors. The return to the deal will also be accompanied by a removal of sanctions that will get Western cash flowing once again into the Islamic Republic. What did Iran’s mullahs do with the billions Barack Obama showered upon them? They financed jihad terror groups around the world. What will they do now with their Biden money? Almost certainly the same thing.

What’s more, the deal, in its 159 pages, went into tremendous detail about the Iranian nuclear program and how it was to be temporarily restricted in various ways. It also expatiated at length on exactly which sanctions were to be removed. But it was conspicuously lacking in specifying penalties for Iran’s not holding to the agreement. There was vague talk about the sanctions being reimposed, but no concrete guidelines about how that was to be done, and nothing said about recovering money given to Iran in the interim.