Tag Archives: Biden foreign policy

Asking for a Friend.

Posted on by
2

Countries have foreign policies for their own advantage, not for the advantage of others. Domestic politics can weigh upon foreign policy. Both statements are true. What happens when domestic politics and foreign policy conflict? things can get messy.

Many Americans are–belatedly–appalled by the human cost of Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza. President Joe Biden has been seeking to curb Israel’s war effort. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been turning a deaf ear to Biden’s entreaties and advice and requests. It has been reported that Biden has grown “frustrated” with Netanyahu’s refusal to respond to his master’s voice. (“Angry” or “enraged” or “humiliated” might be better terms.) In particular, the Biden administration has been pushing for a cease-fire, the admission of large amounts of humanitarian aid, and the abandonment of an attack on Rafah. Now Biden has “paused” the delivery to Israel of 3,500 American bombs. These are “offensive” weapons that might be used to attack Hamas troops in an indiscriminate way that leads to awful news stories. At least for the moment, the flow of “defensive” weapons (like air defense weapons) will go on.

At the same time, Netanyahu heads a coalition government that holds a narrow majority in the Knesset. Fourteen Knesset-members have joined with Netanyahu’s party to create that narrow majority. They are all absolutely committed to continuing the fight, invading Rafah, and rejecting any cease-fire. If Netanyahu yields to Biden’s demands, then it is likely that his coalition will disintegrate. Netanyahu may be forced out of office. A more tractable government may come to power.

It’s hard to believe that Biden (or Secretary of State Blinken at least) does not know this. It leads to the question: Is Biden seeking to intervene in the politics of another democracy?

If countries have foreign policies for their own advantage and if a parliamentary majority in Israel thinks it essential to destroy Hamas root and branch, what might Israel do? The obvious answer is “go it alone.” American military aid to Israel is reported to account for 15 percent of its defense budget. It might be difficult over the short-term for Israel to make up this gap.

One possibility–probably far-fetched–is for Israel to turn to China. China is opposing the United States in several parts of the world. Notably, it is supporting the Russian war against Ukraine. It is fending off heavy American pressure to stop this policy. China might be willing to do the same for Israel, at least over the short-term. Obviously, that would strain the China-Iran relationship. But it would also send shocks through the American alliance system. Probably would do the same with American domestic politics. Turn-about is fair play.

MAFA: Make America Feared Again.

Posted on by
Reply

            “What’s clear in the Middle East these days is that Iran has the weather gage.”[1]  Beginning during the Obama Administration, Iran has renewed its effort to make itself a revolutionary force in the region.  Iran is far weaker in economic and military power than is the United States.  Nor does it does it yet possess nuclear weapons.[2]  However, over the course of decades it has developed proxy forces in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine.  Those forces are well-armed, well-trained, and ideologically convergent with Iran.  Moreover, Iran’s focus is uniquely on the Middle East, while the interests of the United States are global.  Iran has created a position from which it can turn on and off regional crises like the burners on a gas stove. 

            The Obama Administration preferred reaching an accommodation with Iran on Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.  Focusing like the proverbial laser beam on the nuclear issue, it chose to ignore other baleful aspects of Iranian policy.[3]  The Biden Administration has mis-stepped itself.  It started off by proclaiming its disdain for the Serpent Prince of Saudi Arabia, only to have to slime up to him over oil prices.  It pledged complete support for Israel after 7 October 2023, only to drag on Banjamin Netanyahu’s coat-tails to no effect as Israel lay waste to Gaza.  It blustered in response to Houthi attacks on shipping, then launched demonstrative warning attacks, before hitting hard only after three American soldiers were killed.  It is talking about recognizing a Palestinian state as evidence mounted that some Democrats are appalled by Israel’s course of action.  It is an election year which threatens the return of Orange Man. 

            The great danger is that Iran will one day soon exploit the advantageous position it has built by unleashing a much larger conflict.  The United States will struggle to master that conflict in a region in which it has worn out its welcome.  Trying to rescue a situation after it has already gone over the edge will divert American attention from other conflicts with China and Russia. 

Walter Russell Mead blames “the “defeatists and Iran apologists” of the Obama and Biden Administrations for the current crisis.  They misjudged the danger and mounted a feeble reply to aggressive actions.  Mead sees “Hamas [as] an ISIS-class terrorist group whose existence threatens regional peace.”  He sees Iran as uninterested in “serious talks with the U.S….” and certainly uninterested in re-starting the Obama-era multilateral agreement. 

The way out, argues Mead, is to make “Iran fear Mr. Biden more than he fears Iran.” 

Questions arise.  What will it take to make Iran fear the United States?  Iran is one thing, but Russia and, especially, China are something else.  How do we make them fear the United States?  Are we even the country that people around the world used to fear? 

The alternative is to give hope to all the bad actors in the world already too troubled. 

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “Make Iran Fear America Again,” WSJ, 6 February 2024.  Mead is referring to the impact of the wind direction on warships in the “Age of Sail.”  The wind filled the sails of the ship “to windward” before it reached the sails of the ship “to leeward” (pr. “looward” just to make things more difficult for us landlubbers.)  The windward ship could rush down to attack the leeward ship, or claw back out of reach to avoid battle. 

[2] How long would it take to move from its current state of nuclear development to possession of nuclear weapons?  On a related issue, the Obama Administration’s agreement on nuclear weapons development did nothing to curtail Iran’s development of missiles. 

[3] What was the alternative to such a course?  Many of the partners in the sanctions campaign had narrower goals than did Washington.  Many people hoped Iranian oil would flow abundantly.  Most importantly, by 2014-2015, the American public was sick as a dog with the “Forever Wars.”  Starting a new one was a non-starter. 

The Present Danger.

Posted on by
Reply

Competition between states provides the fundamental dynamic in international relations.  Economic wealth and –especially–industrial power translate into military, political, and cultural power.  In alliance with other countries, the United States fought a “Fifty Years’ War” (1940-1990) against aggressive tyrannies.  In the end, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union all were laid in the dust.  After 1945, Germany and Japan were reconciled with their foes and became vital pillars of the “West.”  Reconciliation failed with post-Soviet Russia.[1] 

Some countries reacted against the most recent Western victory, and especially against the United States.[2]  China, Russia, and Iran hold pride of place among the “revisionist” states hoping to un-do American leadership (or “hegemony” or “empire”).[3]  China’s headlong drive toward economic power began to pay-off in a dramatic military build-up.  Russia both balked at the American propensity for regime-change and sought to restore much of the territory lost in the break-up of the Soviet Union.  Iran pursued both nuclear weapons and the use of Shi’ite and related groups throughout the Middle East.  Contemporary conservatives tend to blame the Barack Obama administration (2008—2016) for a loss of focus on great-power politics during a critical moment.[4]  However, almost twenty years of botched relations with the “revisionist” states on the part of both the United States and the European Union preceded the arrival in power of this bunch of highly-intelligent, well-educated fools.  Donald Trump then bolted from the multilateral executive agreements crafted in Obama’s second term, leaving both the deal with Iran and the Paris Climate Accord; and alienated America’s European allies. 

The Biden administration seems to have believed that things would snap back into place once the adults regained control in 2021.  Instead, the “revisionist” states doubled-down on their pursuit of national advantage while tightening the bonds between them.  Their bet seems to be that there is something fundamentally wrong with America these days.  That’s a big gamble. 

It took until 2023, but the Biden administration now seems to realize the nature of the situation.  Gone is the open hostility to Saudi Arabia.  India, for all the flaws of its leader Narendra Modi, is being courted.  Engagement with Ukraine deepens, to the point where Americans are increasingly telling Kyiv exactly how to fight the war.  The visit of the Taiwanese leader to the United States, like President Biden’s summit meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea are important steps in opposing Chinese expansionism.[5] 

Could this new conflict spiral out of control into catastrophe?  After 9/11, the danger from “radical Islam” was over-played.  Is this crisis the same or different?  A clear discussion leading to a bi-partisan consensus would support American efforts. 

[1] Why the former Soviet Union did not follow the same path remains an important question for historians.  People who invoke the Marshall Plan analogy don’t know anything about what made the Marshall Plan work. 

[2] Worth a read: James Headley’s essay “Post-Communist Russia and the West: From Crisis to Crisis?” in Steven Fish et al, eds., A Quarter Century of Post-Communism Assessed (2016).  

[3] The future stance of the European Union remains open to question. 

[4] Walter Russell Mead, “Geopolitical Climate Denialism,” WSJ, 10 August 2023. 

[5] Walter Russell Mead, “Power Matters More Than Diplomacy,” WSJ, 22 August 2023. 

The Viper Pit.

Posted on by
Reply

            The post-Cold War “Era of American Hegemony” proved remarkably brief.  The world has entered a new era of competition.  As in previous such eras, wealth and power form both the means and the ends of these struggles.  It is possible to understand the current Middle East policy of the Biden Administration in this light.[1] 

First, the world’s economy still runs on oil and will for a long time to come.  The pricing policies of the Gulf States affect the performance of the global economy, notably that of the United States.  Even as the Biden administration seeks to de-carbonize the United States, China remains a massive consumer of Middle Eastern oil.  Influence (if not control) over Middle East oil gives the US leverage on China. 

Second, the Middle Eastern oil states buy a lot of military hardware from the United States.  Buying hi-tech weapons systems inevitably ties the purchaser to the manufacturing and support sectors of the producing country.  Buy the first iteration of a weapons system and you go on buying parts and up-dates, and paying for the training on how to use the systems.  All this helps the American balance of payments while spreading the enormous development costs. 

Third, as the United States shifts its primary policy toward the struggle with China, it needs partners to take up the slack elsewhere. Europe and the Middle East figure as the two chief “elsewheres.”  In the Middle East, the chief problem that has to be addressed is the Islamic Republic of Iran.[2]  A crisis point approaches in the long-running civil war in the Muslim world between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran.  The agreement reached between Iran and its opponents during the last stage of the Obama administration had opponents in both the United States and Iran.  President Donald Trump abandoned that agreement and returned to open opposition.  The Biden administration seems to have begun by hoping that—Orange Man having left the scene—the previous agreement could be quickly restored.  Alas, the Iranian opponents of the agreement seem to have gained the upper hand. 

Looking for help in the Middle East, the most promising, but also most problematic, states are Israel and Saudi Arabia.  They are promising because of their long-standing ties with the United States, Israel’s military power (including nuclear weapons) combined with a willingness to use it, and Saudi Arabia’s great wealth and influence over lesser Arab states.  The Trump administration pushed Israeli-Saudi cooperation against Iran as the basis for Middle East stability as America shifted its attention to China.  As with other Trump policies, the Biden administration seems to be recognizing the merits. 

They are problematic because their leaders, the Israeli Prime Minister and the Saudi Crown Prince, seem to think that America has gone soft and also seem to personally despise President Biden.   The “America’s gone soft” view is the older, bigger, and more consequential problem.  The United States spends a lot on its military and it has some impressive weapons systems.  It is much less clear that the United States will fight on foreign soil in the near future.  There also exist some doubts about how well-led are American forces.  Doubting America itself, it must seem like a much safer bet than in the past to treat its president with disdain.   

America needs to solve its own problems to be able to step down on the vipers.   

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “Biden’s New Approach to the Middle East,” WSJ, 15 August 2023. 

[2] For previous installments in this long-running “franchise,” see: Iran | Search Results | waroftheworldblog 

Sudan.

Posted on by
Reply

            The once great Ottoman Empire went into a prolonged decline.  Rulers of peripheral territories attempted to make themselves functionally independent.  The most successful of these hustlers was Muhammad Ali, nominally the governor of Egypt.[1]  Among his other ventures, he launched an Egyptian conquest of the neighboring Muslim states south along the Nile.  That territory is called Sudan.  After his death, this “khedivate” went into decline, the British occupied Egypt to safeguard their own interest in the Suez Canal,[2] and an Islamist rebellion in Sudan got out of hand (from the Anglo-Egyptian perspective).[3]  Afterward, things cooked along very unhappily until Britain’s retreat from empire after the Second World War.  Over Egyptian protests, Sudan got its independence in 1956. 

            Independent Sudan has not had a happy history.  For one thing, hardly anyone had any notion of “democracy.”  There have been half a dozen military coups d’etat, but the reality is that two dictators ruled the country, one from 1969 to 1985 and the other from 1989 to 2019.  Army officers have entrenched themselves as the key government institution, raking in wealth along the way.  They aren’t much inclined to surrender their advantages.  Under external pressure they have been willing to make occasional cosmetic gestures toward a “democratic transition.” 

For another thing, British rule had papered over the conflicts between Arabs and non-Arabs, Muslims and non-Muslims, Arab Muslims dominated the North, non-Arabs occupied the western territory of Darfur, and the South is peopled by Christians and Animists.  Between 1955 and 1972, and then again between 1983 and 2005, civil war pitted North against South.  Overlapping this struggle, between 2004 and—to be honest—the present, the Khartoum government has waged war in the western territory of Darfur.  The North-South war ended with the creation of the new country of South Sudan in 2011.  Both conflicts were deadly in an extreme.  Huge numbers of refugees fled the conflict. 

Under very heavy pressure, the Muslim military leaders agreed to surrender territory to rebels as part of “peace processes.”  As is the case with “democratic transition,” the soldiers don’ttake these commitments seriously over the long run.  In both cases, they are just waiting for some other crisis in some other far-away place to divert the attention of foreign meddlers. 

At the end of 2018, an internal economic crisis led to huge demonstrations in the streets of Khartoum.  In April 2019, the soldiers tossed overboard the long-ruling dictator, Omar al-Bashir; in Summer 2019, they struck a deal with civilian opponents of the government.  Since then, Western governments, especially the United States, have been supporting a democratic transition.  Earlier in April 2023, two different factions of the soldiers fell out over who would actually rule. 

Is “Democracy” something that can be established in any culture?[4] The answer to that question rests with the choices of the “men with guns.”  Whether Washington likes it or not. 

[1] On this fascinating, complicated man, see: Muhammad Ali Pasha – Wikipedia 

[2] On their other activities, see: The Perils of Adventure 2 | waroftheworldblog 

[3] The movie “Khartoum” (dir. Basil Dearden, 1966) manages to make the whole thing dull.  The several versions of “The Four Feathers: (dir. Zoltan Korda, 1939; dir. Shekhar Kapur, 2002) are rather better movies without throwing more light on the subject.  See Rudyard Kipling, “Fuzzy Wuzzy.”  Fuzzy-Wuzzy by Rudyard Kipling (poetry.com)

[4] Walter Russell Mead, “In Sudan, Another ‘Democracy’ Push Fails,” WSJ, 25 April 2023, is seething. 

Waiting.

Posted on by
Reply

            Victory in the Cold War left the United States as the sole remaining superpower.  The Western-led open world economy spread into much of the rest of the world.  Western countries claimed their peace dividend by reducing defense spending.  Yet not all were happy with the outcome.  Expanded international economic integration disrupted established industries in Western countries, even as they raised hundreds of millions of people elsewhere out of abject poverty.  Social division strained democratic politics, especially in the United States.  China, Russia, and Islamic radicals declined to be chained to the chariot of American-led “progress.”  They and others sought to increase their own power. 

Until recently, in these efforts they mostly had to contend with the rhetorical disdain of the West.  The leader of the pack, the United States, began to play a less influential role.  In large measure, this change in role can be blamed on the disastrous invasion of Iraq.  The decision to proceed with a “coalition of the willing,” rather than paying attention to what important international partners said by their refusal to participate; the gruesome civil war that the American invasion made possible; and the repercussions throughout the Middle East of the flunked war both diverted American attention from real issues and left the American people disgusted with international relations.  President Donald Trump’s then well-founded disdain for the Continental European allies, his hostility to Iranian adventurism, and his determination to coerce China alarmed both America’s foreign policy elite and many foreign leaders.  From both these adventures, the United States ended up in a very different place than had been the case at the end of the Cold War. 

            Now many in the West are truly alarmed.  In the absence of reliable American leadership, some of the traditional allies are “tightening their relations with the U.S., increasing their defense spending, and intensifying efforts to strengthen the network of alliances that underpin the world order.”[1]  What they are doing, really, is waiting to see if the Americans are going to shake it off and come back to the center of the ring for the next round. 

            What if the Americans don’t shake it off?  What if other countries value the American-created and American-led world order more highly than do the Americans themselves?  In that case, many countries will find themselves confronting a loose and temporary, but momentarily potent, coalition of predators.[2]  What then?  The Serpent Prince of Saudi Arabia seems to think that the question already has been answered.  President Joe Biden has failed to come up with any suitable response to Iran, so Saudi Arabia has been open to Xi Jinping mediating a truce for the moment in the Iran-Saudi Arabia conflict, while also exerting pressure on the world oil market.[3]  He’s an early adopter of the post-American world.  Lots of people are not yet ready to make that jump, and don’t want that jump to become necessary.  Nevertheless, they are watching to see how it shakes out. 

            At the heart of this dilemma is a more fundamental question.  Is American weakness on the international scene only perceived or is it real?  Only Americans can answer that question. 

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “America Shrugs, and the World Makes Plans,” WSJ, 28 March 2023.

[2] For a historian, there are inescapable questions about parallels to the period between the two World Wars.  Analogical thinking can be dangerous.  You have to pick the right analogy, not just the one at hand. 

[3] Which doesn’t do any good for any democratic politician in any country. 

Franco Still Dead.

Posted on by
Reply

            Back in the day, “Saturday Night Live” had a long-running gag about a news anchor reporting that “Spanish dictator Francisco Franco is still dead.”  Wasn’t funny then (unless you were high) and it’s meaningless now.  The reference offers the chance to think about an important issue.  Is the chief objective of American foreign policy to defend American democracy or to create a democratic world? 

            In a straight fight between two countries, allies don’t matter.  The wars of the 20th Century spread far outside such boundaries.  They were most commonly wars of coalitions: the First World War (1914-1918), the Second World War (1939-1945), and the Cold War (1945-1990).  An entire century convulsed over issues of national independence, representative government, and human rights.  In the end, the champions of democracy triumphed over the champions of authoritarianism. 

            Yet it wasn’t that simple.  In the First World War, the parliamentary governments of France and Britain made common cause with Russian autocracy and the Italian and Japanese monarchies.  In the Second World War, the United States and Britain joined with the Soviet Union and Kuomintang China to form a “Grand Alliance.”  During the Cold War, America’s allies included some very undemocratic countries: Greece under occasional dictatorships, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran for a time, South Vietnam, and many African and Latin American countries.  The reasons for these alliances were pragmatic: America needed allies, but many countries were not democratic.[1] 

            Now the Biden Administration is being criticized for taking a more puritanical view.[2]  President Joe Biden talks a lot about a global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism.  Well, the democracy is all on one side in the twilight struggles with China and Russia, but there’s authoritarianism on both sides.  The catalogue of authoritarian states not aligned with Russia or China is long: in Africa there are Angola, Nigeria, and Ethiopia; in Southeast Asia there are Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar; in South Asia there are India, Indonesia, Malaya, and Sri Lanka; and in Central Asia and the Middle East there are a host of unfree countries. 

            Is democratic government a natural and inevitable stage of social, political, and economic development?  If it is, then it can be held back for a time by a dictator or monarch, but it also can be swiftly brought into being by toppling the dictator, provided the country is sufficiently “developed.”[3]  Or is each country or civilization the unique product of historical developments in government and culture?  If it is, then democratic countries will have to tolerate diversity and practice inclusiveness while seeking common ground in shared real interests.  Failing that, a country could wall off sin by aligning with and trading with only real democracies. 

            Conservative “realist” critics of the Biden foreign policy see it pushing an advanced and extended one-size-fits-all view of Democracy.  This alarms or alienates potential allies whose real interest lies in countering the rise of Russian and Chinese power.  Many observers can’t help but notice current American weakness.  So, the old plan may be the best plan. 

[1] “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least find a few kind words to say about the Devil.”—Winston Churchill. 

[2] Walter Russell Mead, “The Cost of Biden’s ‘Democracy’ Fixation,” WSJ, 4 April 2023. 

[3] As in Iraq in 2003. 

Where we are with Iran.

Posted on by
Reply

            The radioactive isotope U-235 can be “enriched” to higher levels of purity by the use of special centrifuges.[1] Enriched to low levels (3.67 percent), U-235 can be used as fuel for nuclear power plants.  Enriched to very high levels (90 percent), U-235 can become the basis for a nuclear weapon.  Enrichment is a slow business in the early stages, but each successive step becomes much faster from higher levels of purity.  According to one expert, it might take a month to enrich U-235 from 20 percent to 60 percent, then a week to go from 60 percent to 90 percent.  However, more centrifuges are required to achieve each higher level of purity.[2] 

            The development of nuclear material is one step.  The development of the technology of making an actual weapon, and the development of ballistic missiles are additional steps.  There is nothing to say that these steps have to be done sequentially, rather than in parallel.    

            Iran had developed a large infrastructure of uranium-enriching centrifuges, along with other elements of nuclear weapons development.  Alarmed, the international community imposed increasingly severe economic sanctions on Iran.  Eventually, the Iranian government agreed to negotiate. 

            The 2015 international agreement limited Iran to possessing 660 pounds of U-235 enriched to 3.67 percent and required the shut-down of many of its centrifuges.  In return, Iran won removal of some—but not all—of the international economic sanctions.  Many other issues regarding Iran’s foreign and military policy were set aside for further negotiations.  Many economic sanctions were retained as leverage for these proposed future talks. 

            President Donald Trump soon abandoned the 2015 agreement and plastered Iran with sanctions.  Iran then began moving away from compliance with the 2015 agreement.[3]  Iran increased its supply of U-235 that had been enriched to 3.67 percent; enriched some of its U-235 to 20 percent; restarted some its centrifuges; and blocked international inspectors from some of their agreed work.  According to a February 2021 report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran now possesses ten times the amount of enriched U-235 allowed under the agreement.  If processed into weapons-grade material, that would be enough for three nuclear weapons.  In addition, Iran has “largely ignored” an agreement on missiles and has allowed an agreement to expire that permits the security cameras to view Iran’s nuclear fuel.[4] 

            There are several ways of interpreting the series of measures taken by Iran.  One way is to see it as slicing the salami, seeing exactly what it can get away with without provoking an attack.  Another way is to see it as a slow ratcheting up of pressure to both force a revival of the 2015 agreement and to improve Iran’s position in negotiations. 

            In the nature of the production process, holding down both the amount of enriched U-235 and the number of centrifuges are key.  In mid-April 2021, Israel caused a major “mishap” at the centrifuge facility at Natanz.  Perhaps several thousand centrifuges were destroyed. 

[1] Rick Gladstone, William J. Broad, and Michael Crowley, “Iran Says It Won’t Make Bombs, But It May Be Inching Closer,” NYT, 18 April 2021. 

[2] Thus it would take 500 centrifuges to move from 20 percent enrichment to 60 percent enrichment, and 600 centrifuges to move from 60 percent to 90 percent enrichment. 

[3] As American bombing in Vietnam showed, this latter strategy doesn’t always work.

[4] David E. Sanger, “On Iran, Biden Walks a Tightrope Between Force and Diplomacy,” NYT, 29 June 2021. 

The Iran Problem.

Posted on by
Reply

            For decades, Shi’ite Iran pursued nuclear weapons, developed ballistic missiles, and supported terrorists around the Middle East as proxies in its war with Sunni Muslims.  With the American people clearly wary of any new war in the Middle East, President Barack Obama’s administration negotiated a multi-national agreement with Iran on part of these issues.  In return for relief from some of the painful international economic sanctions, Iran agreed to limits on its nuclear weapons development program for a limited time.[1]  President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the agreement.[2]  Both Iran and the Democrats bitterly criticized Trump’s action.  The election of President Joe Biden, then, seemed to promise a ready return to the agreement by both parties.  Nevertheless, difficulties arose in completing this restoration.[3] 

            For one thing, Iran’s government now wants more than it got from the Obama administration.  It wants more sanctions relief to allow it access to international financial services.  It wants to keep the nuclear-fuel production capacity it built up after President Trump abandoned the agreement.  To increase pressure on the Americans, it announced that it would raise the cap on enriching uranium from 3.67 percent to 60 percent, cutting the time needed to produce nuclear weapons if talks broke down. 

            For another thing, the United States government now wants more than it got from the Obama administration.  It wants immediate agreement to limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles and its support for proxy terrorism.  Furthermore, the United States wants to push out the duration of the agreement to prevent Iran from building a weapon for much longer than the original agreement.[4] 

            For yet another thing, Israel sees Iran’s government as a deadly enemy.  It sees the nuclear weapons program, the ballistic missiles, and the regime’s constant denunciations of Israel as warnings of a new Holocaust.  Israel has done everything it can—short of a bombing campaign conducted in co-operation with a nearly-as-skittish Saudi Arabia—to slow down Iran’s weapons programs.  Israeli intelligence purports to believe that Iran is much closer to making a weapon than do Americans.  The Israelis disliked the original deal, will really dislike any softer deal, and may see a no-deal as lighting a fuse. 

            The Iranian regime that negotiated the agreement with the Obama administration[5] has passed its sell-by date.  The Biden administration’s negotiations  took place under the shadow of a looming Iranian election likely to be won by “hard-liners”[6] who had criticized the original agreement.  In fact, this is what happened.  In contrast, the recent Israeli elections changed nothing except the prime minister. 

[1] I supported the agreement then and support it now.  That doesn’t mean that the critics of the agreement didn’t have valid points.  It’s just a case of “half a loaf is better than none” when the alternative is to start bombing. 

[2] His administration either re-imposed or created new sanctions for a total of 1,500. 

[3] Steven Erlanger and David E. Sanger, “Two Nations Divided By a Common Goal,” NYT, 10 May 2021. 

[4] Since these seem to have been the major Republican complaints about the original agreement, it would appear that we are actually experiencing Donald Trump’s second term, just without the egregious personal behavior.  See also: China policy, North Korea policy, Afghanistan policy, illegal immigration policy. 

[5] President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. 

[6] “Hard liners” is a term from the Soviet-American Cold War.  American observers often conjectured that a struggle took place within the Kremlin between “hard-liners” and “soft-liners” or “moderates.”  For a time, British diplomats applied the same sort of analysis to understanding the pre-war Nazi regime.  At least in the latter case, the distinction between “hard-liners” and “moderates” was purely wishful thinking.  Probably an example of projection.