Another Very Bad Deal with Iran Is on the Horizon

On August 15, Iranian proxy forces in Iraq launched a drone attack on a U.S. base in Syria. There also appears to have been an attempted drone attack on American forces in the region by Iranian affiliates on Tuesday. Despite responding to these provocations with force, Washington still appears on track to approve a revived version of the 2015 nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Danielle Pletka comments:

Per official Iranian news sources, . . . the Biden administration agreed to specific measures to propitiate the Tehran regime. Among them: lifting sanctions on most (if not all) Iranian banks; release of at least $7 billion in Iranian funds now frozen in South Korean banks; across-the-board sanctions relief for organizations including the supreme leader’s massive slush fund; . . . rapid oil sales for a mass cash infusion (about $4 billion); and an exemption to sanctions on foreign companies should the U.S. once again pull out of the JCPOA.

The curious may wonder what it is that the United States, the Europeans, Russia, and China will get out of this deal. For the United States and those European countries concerned about Iran’s malign intentions, a “return” to “compliance” with the JCPOA will be nearly moot, as the agreement’s vaunted restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities will begin to expire in a mere year and a half, and almost all will lapse by the end of this decade. At that point Iran will be fully within its rights under the agreement to do all the things that the Biden administration tells us today it is too risky to permit Iran to do.

There will supposedly be an exchange of hostages. There will not be any end to Iranian efforts to “avenge” the killing of Quds Force leader Qassem Suleimani, which means no end of efforts to murder former President Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and other former senior officials.

For the Russians and the Chinese, there is another story entirely. These two adversaries of the United States stand to gain a great deal.

Read more at Dispatch

More about: Iran nuclear deal, Joseph Biden, U.S. Foreign policy

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF