As you likely know, Democratic President Joe Biden and his team of Obama-era staff members have been near desperate in recent days to rejoin the infamous and utterly disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal that former President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of in 2018. That desperation has led to an embarrassing show of giving into the terror-backing Middle Eastern nation as of late. Of course, it’s all to no avail, as Iran is still refusing to sign the agreement back into existence.
And it looks as though Biden’s time frame and, therefore, opportunity to get back in Iran’s good graces is about up.
You see, on Friday, Iran holds its latest presidential election. And according to the U.K. Guardian, all seven candidates, which are approved and vetted by Iran’s Guardian Council, are what are known as “hardliners,” meaning they are opposed to signing Iran Nuclear Deal.
Iranian journalist and Middle East analyst Saeid Jafari noted in a December piece for Foreign Policy that these hardliners firmly “opposed signing the deal long before outgoing President Donald Trump withdrew from it in May 2018.”
And if they have been opposed to it for that long, they are unlikely to suddenly change their minds on entering into the deal now.
Now, some would say that Iran’s neighbors or surrounding countries with significant sway, such as Israel, might be able to convince such a hardline leader to redirect course and sign the deal. However, that just pretty much became a non-option as well.
In Israel, they too have recently made some national changes to government, mainly for the role of Prime Minister.
On Sunday, Israel’s Knesset, similar to our Congress, voted 60-59 to approve Naftali Bennett to take former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s seat. Bennett, a former top aide to Netanyahu, will hold the position for two years. Then, current Foreign Minister Yair Lapid will take over as Prime Minister and serve out the remaining four-year term.
Many see the move as a sign that the nation could move away from its typical right-wing-led policies, as Lapid is much more of a centrist.
However, as the nation is a democracy, it will not be only Lapid’s voice that matters. And as The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro recently pointed out, the previous divisions that made the Knesset seem as though it might move leftward were really all about Netanyahu himself and not right-wing policy. In fact, a whopping 72 out of 110 Knesset seats are held by the right-wing, leaving a tiny minority to even consider such a thing as encouraging the left veering Iran Nuclear Deal.
Given those numbers, we can’t really expect much of a significant shift in policy on much of anything, let alone the Iran Nuclear Deal.
And even if it were just up to Lapid, recent statements cast considerable doubt on him ever being willing to support the Obama-era agreement.
Lapid pretty much threw the Biden administration a curveball during Monday’s handover ceremony in Israel, both voicing opposition to the deal and encouraging support of policies put in place under Donald Trump.
He said, “We have to work together as we face a new Iran deal. This is a bad deal and we are going to work with the prime minister. Israel will use every option at its disposal in order to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon,” according to the Israel Hayom.
As to the Trump-era peace deals, Lapid said, “We will sign more agreements with additional countries. The Palestinian arena will define to a large extent what the other theaters will look like, and we have a lot to do to improve living conditions of the Palestinians and to improve the dialogue.”
Unfortunately for Biden, it looks as though his best option for getting the Iran Nuclear Deal signed would have been under soon-to-be-replaced and reformist President Hassan Rouhani. But now, it seems that window of opportunity has passed, and Biden’s decision has been made for it.
Not that we fully understand why he wants to put the deal back in the first place. It did little except allow Iran to build up their arsenal and conventional forces while making closed-door plans to obtain nuclear weapons. Getting back into the deal would be a mistake for the U.S., and it seems everyone knows it except for Biden.