Iran

There is an age-old dogma in the US foreign policy establishment: when America pulls back, chaos ensues. Like an anti-inflammatory that keeps arthritis under control, Washington’s presence in this or that region keeps enemies cowed, partners reassured, and the barbarians at the gates. Of course, just because an argument is popular doesn’t mean it’s accurate. There are several problems with the “America must be everywhere, at all times” line of thinking, the most poignant of which is that it turns the US military into an agency of global rent-a-cops.

Several sources in the negotiating team in Vienna tell Cockburn we can expect a "new Iran deal" between the Biden administration and the mullahs as early as Thursday morning. For the last few months, Iran has been behaving stubbornly in negotiations, refusing to back down from its “red lines,” including lifting sanctions on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Instead, it's kept to the original timeline on the Iran deal, which would allow it to test ballistic missiles next year and remove all restrictions by 2030. Now, Iran’s resolve seems to have paid off. Sanctions: Cockburn's sources say the Biden team is set to waive virtually all sanctions on Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has revealed what members of his country’s national security elite have been chatting about behind closed doors for quite a while. “The United States has been, and will always be our best friend,” the Israeli PM said in a speech delivered before the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University. Then came the big “but”: “Washington has its own set of interests, which we must honestly admit do not always overlap with ours.” “We are speaking honestly and understand one another,” Bennett elaborated. America’s “interest in the region is dwindling. The United States is currently focused on the Russian-Ukrainian border and it is in a strategic conflict with China.

With diplomats fearing that the Iranian nuclear talks will collapse, minds are inevitably turning to what happens the morning after. In the realm of politics, this has amounted to buck-passing. Last week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told journalists: “None of the things we’re looking at now…would be happening if the former president had not recklessly pulled out of the nuclear deal, with no thoughts about what might come next.” In the real world, meanwhile, with regional peace in the balance, the stakes are rather higher. As the Biden administration’s softly-softly approach plunges towards global humiliation, American negotiators have been waking up to what should have been obvious from the start: you can’t build an effective Iran strategy with carrots.

We were promised a war of nerves in Vienna between Washington and Tehran, a game of chicken. Instead, President Biden has chickened out. He's also blaming Israel. Call it fowl play. Here's how it should be going. The United States wants Iran to re-commit to refreezing its nuclear program. Iran demands in exchange the revoking of the economic sanctions against it. Each side insists that it won't give up on its demands — even if that could lead to the collapse of the negotiations, the demise of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and eventually to a military confrontation. The diplomatic and military tensions between the United States and Russia over Ukraine involve just such an exercise in brinkmanship.

While American and Iranian negotiators continue to clash in Vienna, policymakers back in Washington are debating the right course of action should nuclear diplomacy collapse. Ever since negotiations between the US and Iran resumed in late November after a five-month hiatus, the Biden administration has repeatedly told their Iranian counterparts that Washington’s patience for diplomacy isn’t unlimited. In the ensuing weeks, American officials have grown frustrated by Iran’s hardening stance, including its insistence on verified sanctions relief before Tehran rolls back its own nuclear advances. According to the State Department, the current round of talks, the eighth since April, are making scant progress toward a mutually agreed-upon resolution.

President Joe Biden talks the liberal internationalist talk but walks the realist walk. The recent Summit of Democracies wasn't idealism but part of a strategy to contain China and Russia. Internationalist rhetoric aside, Biden has a dark Realpolitik side — which explains why he was able to survive so many decades in Washington and get elected as president. Some of my friends on the right have criticized me for recommending Biden for the diplomatic move that should have earned him the 2021 Machiavelli Award. Announcing a new military pact with Britain and Australia (AUKUS) to deter China stabbed France in the back — or to put it another way, emulated the modus operandi of traditional French diplomacy.

Was it inevitable that Iran would one day gain nuclear weapons? Identifying causality in human actions is a tricky exercise, especially when it comes to historical events, like the outbreak of World War Two. Was appeasement the cause? Or perhaps a war with Germany was unavoidable as long as Adolf Hitler was in power? It may also be fated that a nation of ninety million people, proud about its history and place in the world — Persia was already an advanced civilization when barbarian tribes roamed the British Isles — would become a nuclear military power. That nuclearization process actually commenced under Mohammad Reza Shah and continued because of concern that, thanks to French assistance, Iran’s adversary Iraq was on its way to developing a nuclear weapon.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me seven times, shame on the United States, whose leaders seem determined to drive it into a decline whose rapidity and extent is unparalleled in the history of great powers. Shame on the Democrats too, for putting domestic vanity over the national interest. Shame on Barack Obama and, should he be aware of what’s going on in Vienna, shame on Joe Biden, for pursuing the diplomacy of disaster. The State Department’s envoys are back in Vienna in the hope of starting a seventh round of negotiations over reviving Obama’s “Iran deal.” But there seems to be nothing left to talk about. Iran is increasingly intransigent, and its latest demands give the US and its allies a choice between surrender or defeat.

Israel has carried out three major operations over the last eighteen months against Iran's nuclear sites. These attacks involved as many as a thousand Mossad personnel and were executed with ruthless precision using high-tech weaponry including drones and a quadcopter — and spies within Tehran's holy of holies, its nuclear program. While Joe Biden’s nuclear negotiators try to snatch catastrophe from the jaws of defeat in Vienna, Israel is taking things more seriously. Last week, Naftali Bennett, the Israeli prime minister, pivoted to a new policy on Tehran: retaliating against aggression from militias backed by Tehran with covert strikes on Iranian soil. This builds on the extensive capabilities that the Mossad has built up in the Islamic Republic in recent years.

Thirty-six years ago, I stepped off a plane and planted my feet firmly on American soil. It’s that day that my mind drifts to as my family of surgeons bickers over who exhibits the most precision in turkey-carving. My journey to the United States was not easy. I was born in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution. Soon after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah, his regime rendered the Jews of Iran powerless. Much of what my family had owned was taken from us. After our home was seized, my parents understood that we had to flee, but the authoritarian rulers restricted our movement. This was in 1985 and the Iran-Iraq war raged throughout the country.

After meeting with his Israeli and Emirati counterparts on October 13, Antony Blinken emerged from behind closed doors with a message for Iran: you are running out of time to negotiate a return to the 2015 nuclear deal. “We are prepared to turn to other options if Iran doesn't change course,” the secretary of state told reporters. US envoy to Iran Robert Malley exhibited similar frustration on October 25, saying US officials, in coordination with its partners in the Middle East and Europe, have “given a lot of thought to what we will do if Iran doesn’t go back to the table.” The Iranian government appears to have gotten the message, at least to a degree. Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, has said talks will resume on November 29.