Even after the 2015 nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic went into effect, certain sanctions remained in place. The Associated Press reported this week that the Obama White House tried to help Tehran avoid them, until American banks refused to participate. Sohrab Ahmari comments:

[In 2016,] the Obama Treasury Department issued a special license that would have permitted the Tehran regime to convert some $6 billion in assets held in Omani rials into U.S. dollars before eventually trading them for euros. That middle step—the conversion from Omani to American currency—would have violated sanctions that remained in place even after the nuclear accord. . . . The Obama administration, [to make the currency conversion possible], pressed American banks to sidestep rules barring Iran from the U.S. financial system; the only reason the transaction didn’t take place was because the banks had better legal and moral sense than the Obama Treasury. . . .

[At the same time], the Obama administration reassured the public and lawmakers that Tehran would “continue to be denied access to the world’s largest financial and commercial market,” i.e., the U.S., as then-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew testified before Congress in July 2015, shortly after the nuclear deal was signed. That was a lie. And it would be repeated by other Obama officials.

So much for liberals’ supposed Wilsonian commitment to “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at.” A better way to describe subterfuge and secrecy objectively aimed at enriching an enemy of the United States would be to call it—oh, what’s the word?—collusion.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”