5-30-22

Special envoy confirms revival of canceled Obama plan 'tenuous'

Sky-high inflation, including that $5-a-gallon gasoline price, has shown the failure of the Joe Biden economic policies.

The disaster at the southern border has revealed his failings regarding national security.

Predictions for a return of COVID shows what he's done on the medical front.

Democrats also apparently have given up entirely on his agenda of taking over all elections in the country.

TRENDING: Elizabeth Warren cooks up insane new plan to make inflation problems so much worse

And now his foreign policy has proven a bust.

That's according to a report from Gatestone Institute Senior Fellow Soeren Kern.

He reports that Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley recently confirmed to the Senate that Biden's attempts to revive the Iran nuclear deal – created under Barack Obama and canceled by President Trump for having no benefit to the U.S. – is not likely.

"We do not have a deal with Iran, and prospects for reaching one are, at best, tenuous," Malley told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a hearing on May 25, Kern confirmed.

And if anything does come, the deal would be "shorter" and "weaker" than the original, despite Secretary of State Antony Blinken's assurances during his confirmation hearing that Biden would insist on something "longer" and "stronger."

Malley explained that Iran hid its prior nuclear work from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and lied about it, "That's the reason why prior administrations imposed such crushing sanctions on Iran."

And for a Plan B? wondered Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey.

There isn't one, Malley said.

The deal was hoped to prevent the rogue government in Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, as they've already promised their goal is to eliminate Israel.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action came about when Obama turned over billions of dollars to the terror-sponsoring regime in 2015. Then Trump killed it, and despite Biden's allegiance revival talks have been stalled for months now.

"The main stumbling block to a final deal is Iran's demand that the Biden administration delist the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an elite branch of the Iranian military, as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO)," Kern reported.

It was Trump's administration that pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. Then his administration designated the IRGC and its Quds attack force as terrorists.

Kern reported Biden already has lifted multiple sanctions to try to persuade Iran back into the deal and, "Political observers say there is no reason to believe Biden would not make more concessions if it meant saving the deal — and President Barack Obama's foreign policy legacy."

Malley even appeared to say that terror designation could be lifted.

"We've made clear to Iran that if they wanted any concession on something that was unrelated to the JCPOA like the FTO designation, we need something reciprocal from them that would address our concerns. I think Iran has made the decision that it's not prepared to take the reciprocal steps," Kern explained.

The Senate already has publicly opposed any effort by Biden to revoke the terror designation, in part because Biden has failed to fix the original deal's flaws, especially sunset provisions that would have lifted restrictions on Iran's nuclear enrichment program by 2031 or sooner, Kern reported.

It also ignores Iran's human rights abuses.

That means, according to some analysts, that the original – and revised – deal is "primarily about legitimizing Iran's nuclear program. The deal, they say, is designed to strengthen, not weaken, the Islamic Republic," Kern reported.

He explained, "Statements by Obama and his senior foreign policy advisors, the same people who are now advising President Biden, reflect a belief — a naïve one, many say — that if Iran were stronger, and traditional American allies — Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — were weaker, the Middle East could achieve a new balance of power that would result in more peaceful region."

Kern cited a number of comments over the years appearing to support that idea, including a 2014 New York interview where Obama expressed a desire for a "new equilibrium" in the Middle East.

Shortly after, Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed, "A nuclear deal would also more fairly rebalance American influence."

Obama's former Middle East Advisor Philip Gordon even suggested that Israel and the Sunni Muslim world would have to learn to live with a more aggressive Iran.

Malley wrote several years ago that Obama's goal was to reach a "stable balance of power" in the Middle East, in a diatribe against President Trump's support for America's longtime allies there, like Israel.

Kern noted Iran nuclear deal has been described as a "cornerstone" of Obama's legacy, and author Toby Harden, in a Sunday Times article claimed Obama wanted the deal to "secure" his legacy as a giant of global diplomacy.

Kern explained this is why Obama, on leaving office, "smeared" Michael Flynn.

But that was because, Kern documented, Obama saw Flynn, an opponent of the JCPOA, as a threat to his "legacy."

Kern quotes Lee Smith explaining, "Flynn had said long before he signed on with the Trump campaign that it was a catastrophe to realign American interests with those of a terror state. And now that the candidate he'd advised was the new president-elect, Flynn was in a position to help undo the deal. To stop Flynn, the outgoing White House ran the same offense it used to sell the Iran deal — they smeared Flynn through the press as an agent of a foreign power, spied on him, and leaked classified intercepts of his conversations to reliable echo chamber allies...."

The analysis found: "For Obama the purpose of Russiagate was simple and direct: to protect the Iran deal, and secure his legacy.... The nature of the agreement was made plain in its 'sunset clauses.' The fact that parts of the deal restricting Iran's activities were due to expire beginning in 2020 until all restrictions were gone and the regime's nuclear program was legal, showed that it was a phony deal. Obama was simply bribing the Iranians with hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief and hundreds of billions more in investment to refrain from building a bomb until he was safely gone from the White House, when the Iranian bomb would become someone else's problem."

Middle East analysts Tony Badran and Michael Doran, in Kern's report, suggested, "By disguising the JCPOA as a nonproliferation agreement ... the deal was a sneak attack on a traditional American foreign policy. It was and remains a Trojan horse designed to recast America's position and role in the Middle East. Sullivan and Blinken's task is to wheel the Trojan horse into the central square of American foreign policy and, by brandishing their 'centrist' political credentials, sell it as an imperfect but valuable vehicle of containment."

That, however, they point out, ignores the facts that Iran's "major export item" is terrorism.

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https://www.wnd.com/2022/05/bidens-iran-deal-hopes-going-smoke/