Biden's Iran nuclear deal sets the stage for a real 'forever war'

Word from Vienna suggests a further American collapse is in progress as Europe tries to broker a renewed Iran nuclear deal. With sanctions lifted and oil sales permitted, Iranian authorities will reap tens of billions of dollars, much of which will flow to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps coffers. While the White House is trying to spin this deal as one that is robust and foolproof, facts suggest otherwise.

The original 2015 Iran nuclear deal reversed decades of counterproliferation precedent; the 2022 analog manages to do even less. Not only will clauses of the deal expire, leaving Iran an industrial-scale program not beholden to many controls, but the Iranian government also claims that the deal on paper closes the file on investigations into Iranian cheating. President Joe Biden’s team may applaud themselves, but they’re not fooling anyone in the region.

The reality is the new Iranian deal is a tacit acknowledgment that Biden has no Plan B. While there are tangible steps that a much more creative administration might take, starting with the renewal of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “maximum pressure” campaign, Biden simply seeks to kick the can down the road and hope that Iranian leaders are polite enough to wait until he leaves office so that his surrogates can blame Iran’s nuclear bombs on his successor.

It’s one thing to craft an illusion and another to deal with reality. The question with which the United States must deal is what it will mean when the Islamic Republic, like North Korea in 2006, declares itself a nuclear state. READ MORE