Supporters of a nuclear deal with Iran frequently contend that the subsequent benefits to the Iranian economy will strengthen the hand of moderates within the Iranian government. Reuel Marc Gerecht contends that although there are indeed a more pragmatic faction (led by current president Hassan Rouhani) and a more extreme faction associated with the Revolutionary Guards, the pragmatists are equally enthusiastic about terrorism:

It is entirely conceivable that Barack Obama will engineer what has been unthinkable in Iranian politics: a sustainable alignment between the technocrats and the Revolutionary Guards. In foreign policy, [however,] this will likely translate into more, and more skillful, Iranian adventurism. . . . .

[The] odds are high that the Iranian president hasn’t become, as President Obama wants to believe, a robed, white-turbaned, non-revolutionary, economic pragmatist who must deliver the goods to his constituents. When Obama looks at the relationship between the [Iranian] regime and Hizballah and sees that the regime will send missiles to its proxy even “when [its] economy is in the tank,” he unwittingly alights upon the truth: money doesn’t make the Iranian world go ’round. It’s striking that such an intellectual politician, who can quickly list the great minds who’ve shaped him, downplays or ignores the formative intellectual forces that have guided the Islamic Republic’s ruling clergy for four decades.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.