Biden’s appeasement of Tehran has to end

Among the many consequences of Iran’s onslaught on Israel, one should be finally to convince Joe Biden that negotiating with the ayatollahs is a waste of time. When he arrived in the White House, the president talked about reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed in 2015 by America, the EU and others to monitor Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.

It was unilaterally abandoned by Donald Trump, who said that it had handed the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism billions of dollars to expand its influence throughout the Middle East. Although Mr Biden said he would rejoin the JCPOA, he has not done so because Iran would not agree to de-escalation conditions. Israel was also opposed.

However, Washington still considers the JCPOA to have been a good thing and has argued that engaging with Tehran might be a better approach. Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, called Mr Trump’s withdrawal a terrible mistake “because we had Iran’s nuclear programme in a box. It’s now... gotten out.”

The fact is that nothing has stopped Iran continuing its enrichment programme. Israel, threatened with extinction by the ayatollahs, simply cannot allow them to have a nuclear weapon. Was not Mr Trump right to identify Iran as an intransigent and malign force that would never respond to efforts to accommodate it because its ambitions cannot be negotiated?

Mr Trump decided to put greater diplomatic effort into the Abraham Accords and normalising Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbours. This had succeeded to such an extent that Iran encouraged its proxy terrorist groups in Gaza to attack Israel, judging that Jerusalem’s response would discomfit its allies, as proved to be the case.

However, by firing more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel, Tehran illustrated precisely the fears that the politicians and military commanders of the Jewish state have been voicing for years. Mr Biden and other Western leaders are urging restraint on Israel and, insofar as US and European air defences were crucial in shooting down the Iranian barrage, they have leverage.

But on the diplomatic front, there can be no more talk of halfway-house engagement with Tehran. If war is to be avoided, a strategy of maximum pressure exerted through the toughest sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and a total clampdown on the activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is now required.