Iran deal opponents make last-ditch effort to sway Biden administration

As President Joe Biden’s administration looks to be set on rejoining the Iran nuclear deal, a coalition of Tehran hawks is rising to urge him to halt his course.

Negotiations are continuing in Vienna as the US and Iran inch closer to an agreement. But some, especially DC’s conservative-leaning foreign policy establishment, are worried that the president has lost focus on the main goal: Preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.

The organising against Mr Biden’s efforts to rejoin the deal coalesced on Wednesday in Washington DC. A handful of US experts joined members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and discussed both diplomatic and military alternatives to the 2015 agreement aimed at preventing Iran from enriching uranium at a high-enough quality for weapons use, which Democrats aligned with the Obama administration has celebrated as a success. Republicans, especially the Trump-aligned wing of the GOP, have long maligned the deal as ineffective, short-sighted and insufficient to deal with Iran’s other activities across the Middle East.

The panel’s members, which included former Senator Joe Lieberman, ex-national security adviser John Bolton and undersecretary of State for disarmament Robert Joseph, agreed on one thing: It was on Mr Biden’s shoulders to ensure that Tehran understands the seriousness of the US threat to disarm it by military force. The group hosting the event, the NCRI, supports a maximum-pressure campaign against Tehran in terms of economic sanctions and other political measures like holding the government accountable for hostage-taking.

And part of that battle, they agreed, involves rebuilding US credibility after both the quagmire in Iraq as well as the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.

“I don’t think we have in the eyes of the Ayatollah, in the eyes of the mullahs, a credible military option. This administration, this administration is, I think, known for indecision and weakness, and with regime like the one that we have in Tehran, that is an invitation. It’s an invitation for them to continue to move forward with their nuclear program,” said Mr Joseph.

General Chuck Wald, former head of US European Command, concurred.

“I think the worst military thing that has happened to us since the 2002 is the debacle of the departure in Afghanistan,” he said flatly. “That’s a credibility issue for the military, because it wasn’t executed well.”

“That gives people the thought that maybe the military isn’t quite that capable, as well as the decision making process. I’m telling you right now, the military has the capability to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities today and put them back probably years,” he said.

The group’s members also took umbrage with how the Biden administration appears, to their minds, to be treating Tehran with kid gloves. The evidence for that, they said, comes from the so-far non-response of the White House to reports that Iranian agents have plotted recently to kill several specific Americans on US soil, including Mr Bolton who was thanked by moderator James Rosen for appearing given that circumstance.

Mr Bolton commented specifically on the issue in a press gaggle after the event. He blamed the Biden administration for staying quiet, supposedly in the hopes of not blowing up a deal.

“I’d like to hear the administration say with a straight face that they were afraid if they unsealed the document earlier it would tank the negotiations [for] going back into the nuclear deal [with Iran],” he told a group of reporters.

“Any government of the United States has a tradeoff from time to time between law enforcement activities and international political activities; those have to be reconciled. But there’s no doubt here that this ongoing terrorist threat to Americans on American soil ... was affected by the nuclear negotiations,” Mr Bolton continued.

At a minimum, the panel’s members said, the US should halt negotiations until those plots are addressed.

“Listen, to threaten to try to kill John Bolton and the others... It’s an act of war,” warned Mr Lieberman.

“I mean, we’ll make clear to the Iranian government that if they continue to do that kind of thing to our citizens, they’re gonna feel the strength and force of the American military on them in their country,” he predicted.

The Biden administration has offered little comment on the negotiations in recent weeks; focus of the administration has been tied largely to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and other domestic priorities. Time is quickly running out for DC’s conservatives to convince the administration to abandon what they see as an ineffective agreement that will inevitably lead to Iran becoming a nuclear power. Some, like Mr Bolton, have taken to warning that any deal must be entered with the understanding that a Republican will rip it up in 2025 if Joe Biden loses reelection.

That includes Donald Trump, the presumed 2024 GOP frontrunner, whose name was barely mentioned at Wednesday’s summit.

Those less political members of the panel, like Mr Joseph, warned that Iran was now "weeks" and merely one political decision away from a nuclear weapon.

The time it would take for Iran to develop a nuclear missile, “it’s measured in weeks by the Biden administration,” said Mr Joseph.

“My view is that Iran today is a virtual nuclear weapon state. It has progressed from our position of no enrichment to enrichment to enrichment by advanced centrifuges, centrifuges that within days, can raise the level from 60 per cent enrichment, to weapons regulation,” he said.

Mr Bolton added: “Time spent in fruitless negotiations is time that allows the proliferator to overcome the enormous scientific and technological difficulties to perfect nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.”

As is often the case in conservative foreign policy circles, regime change was left firmly on the table as an option. Members of the panel stressed that while the US certainly has the military capability to successfully strike Iran’s nuclear program, “regime change” in Iran would likely need to mean the collapse of the Tehran regime and seizing of power by a popular domestic alternative, not a US invasion.

On that front, the panel turned to their hosts, the NCRI, who they pointed to as a credible alternative to the Ayatollah’s government.

The NCRI delegate on the panel, its Washington office deputy director, painted a picture of a regime on thin ice with its own people and “dashing toward the nuclear bomb to guarantee its survival”, pointing to the recent appointment of Ebrahim Raisi as evidence.

“[I]nstead of ineffective nuclear negotiations, the United States should support the people’s uprisings and the organized resistance seeking regime change in Iran”, said Alireza Jafarzadeh.

Mr Bolton was asked about that issue at his gaggle, and cryptically declined to comment with a knowing laugh when asked directly whether he was in contact with Iranian resistance agents on the ground in the country during his tenure at the White House.

The panelists agreed that the time for that strategy, or any strategy other than the Biden administration’s current course, to prevent Iran from achieving development of a weapon was close. The policy of the Iranian regime, they argued, is not changing, and will end with nuclear arms unless a significant paradigm shift occurs in Tehran.

“Just listen to what they say and look at what they do, trying to kill prominent American public servants,” said Mr Lieberman, the furthest-left member of the center-right group.

“So what’s the answer? Support the people of Iran. Try to change the regime and make it crystal clear in the meantime, to the government of Iran, that we are paired with our allies in the Middle East, [and will] use military power to stop their nuclear development program and their programs of supportive terrorism.

“So in other words, we’ve tried carrots for 20 years, they haven’t worked. It’s time to go to the sticks.”