Iran’s Trap for Biden
Iran is preparing for the Biden presidency by acting out, in hopes the new administration will rush to appease it.
Tehran marked the first anniversary of the US airstrike that killed terror-master Gen. Qassem Soleimani with a week-long commemoration that culminated in a request to Interpol to arrest President Trump and 47 other US officials for Soleimani’s death.
On Monday, it seized a South Korean oil tanker in the Gulf, even as Seoul announced it’s negotiating the release of billions of dollars in Iranian assets frozen in compliance with US sanctions.
Next, Tehran announced that President Hassan Rouhani had OK’d a 20 percent boost in uranium refinement, inching closer to the 80 to 90 percent purity required for nuclear weapons. That’s a blatant violation of the Obama nuclear deal, which the European Union and other nations still honor.
Yet the EU decided to address the breach by doing . . . nothing. Its spokesman called Iran’s infractions serious but claimed that it is “highly important” to uphold the agreement. Why, when Tehran isn’t holding up its side?
Iran’s foreign minister said that the uranium decision is “fully reversible” if other nations comply with the agreement — a clear sign that it wants the United States to pay a hefty added price if Team Biden moves to undo Trump’s exit from the deal.
In response, Trump slapped sanctions on 17 more Iran-based companies. The prez has also kept a US aircraft-carrier group in the Gulf to guard against Iranian mischief in his final days in office.
In another blow to the Islamic Republic, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner negotiated a deal to end the bitter feud between Saudi Arabia and Qatar that has benefited Tehran for years.
That’s just the latest piece of the new Middle East that Team Trump has fostered, with multiple Arab states making peace with Israel in a broad anti-Iran alliance. The question remains: What will a President Joe Biden do with it?
Biden has made it clear he wants to re-enter the Iran deal — but he has recently hedged about actually doing it. In reality, the accord has already done most of any good it can; it frees Iran from nearly all its obligations during Biden’s term, even allowing it to “legally” go nuclear. And America’s allies in the region — the nations most at risk from Tehran’s ambitions — are united against any further appeasement of the Iranian regime. Tehran’s behavior since the deal was reached in 2015 proves that the regime will never abandon its terror-promoting bellicosity.
At the very least, Biden should let Iran keep suffering under existing sanctions — and wait for it to offer a deal that actually serves the interests of America, its allies and peace.