On the second night of the virtual Democratic convention, the former secretary of state John Kerry gave a speech touting the supposed foreign-policy accomplishments of the Obama administration. In his remarks, the one-time Massachusetts senator made clear that he still maintains the beliefs about the Middle East—especially those involving the nuclear deal with Iran—that informed his diplomatic career, and that have been proved so damaging to regional order, to the lives of millions of people who live there, and to American prestige. David Harsanyi comments:

Kerry himself acknowledged [during his tenure] that sanctions relief would likely end up in the coffers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard—now a designated terror group. Surely, then, he knew that the pallets of euros and Swiss francs he was shipping to Tehran in an unmarked cargo plane would also find their way to the groups triggering conflicts across the Middle East—not to mention subjugating people at home. [All the while], Kerry was placating Russia and allowing a humanitarian disaster to unfold in Syria in an effort to save the [nuclear] deal with Iran.

Obama-administration officials—led by Kerry—long peddled this false choice: the Iran deal or war. Well, the U.S. is no longer a party to the Iran deal, and there is no war. Meanwhile, there is a highly weakened Iran, and there are growing alliances between our Sunni allies and Israel.

Kerry would continue to entertain Iranian officials even after he was out of government. When President Trump ordered the drone strike that killed the terrorist Qassem Suleimani, a man who masterminded the killing of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi civilians, Kerry said the world was in “no way at all” safer, and claimed that Trump was risking an “outright war.” All Iran did was launch a performative counterstrike.

Kerry was wrong about Iran. Kerry was also wrong about Israel—a nation he doesn’t ever seem to consider an “ally” in his speeches about Obama’s alleged foreign-policy successes. And when the U.S. embassy was about to be moved to Jerusalem, Kerry warned it would lead to “an explosion” in the Middle East—more specifically, “an absolute explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank and perhaps even in Israel itself, but throughout the region.” Moreover, Kerry declared, it would have a serious and negative repercussions on relations between Israel and the Arab world, making peace far less likely. . . . Of course, outside of some typical Palestinian noise, the opposite has happened.

On Wednesday, Elliott Abrams testified before Congress about the Taylor Force Act, passed in 2018 to withhold U.S. funds from the Palestinian Authority (PA) so long as it continues to reward terrorists and their families with cash. Abrams cites several factors explaining the sharp increase in Palestinian terrorism this year, among them Iran’s attempt to wage proxy war on Israel; another is the “Palestinian Authority’s continuing refusal to fight terrorism.” (Video is available at the link below.)

As long as the “pay for slay” system continues, the message to Palestinians is that terrorists should be honored and rewarded. And indeed year after year, the PA honors individuals who have committed acts of terror by naming plazas or schools after them or announcing what heroes they are or were.

There are clear alternatives to “pay to slay.” It would be reasonable for the PA to say that, whatever the crime committed, the criminal’s family and children should not suffer for it. The PA could have implemented a welfare-based system, a system of family allowances based on the number of children—as one example. It has steadfastly refused to do so, precisely because such a system would no longer honor and reward terrorists based on the seriousness of their crimes.

These efforts, like the act itself, are not at all meant to diminish assistance to the Palestinian people. Rather, they are efforts to direct aid to the Palestinian people rather than to convicted terrorists. . . . [T]he Taylor Force Act does not stop U.S. assistance to Palestinians, but keeps it out of hands in the PA that are channels for paying rewards for terror.

[S]hould the United States continue to aid the Palestinian security forces? My answer is yes, and I note that it is also the answer of Israel and Jordan. As I’ve noted, PA efforts against Hamas or other groups may be self-interested—fights among rivals, not principled fights against terrorism. Yet they can have the same effect of lessening the Iranian-backed terrorism committed by Palestinian groups that Iran supports.