The Patriot Post® · Biden's Iran Policy Is Turning Back the Clock

It used to be a matter of simple politics to witness a president reverse certain policies established by his predecessor, particularly if that predecessor was from the opposing party. President Joe Biden, however, seems resolutely determined to wipe away the entire presidency of Donald Trump and pretend that America magically leapt from January 19, 2017, to January 21, 2021, without skipping a beat.

Take, for instance, Biden’s recent actions in trying to restart the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. This gem from Barack Obama’s long list of foreign policy failures was a multilateral agreement with Germany, France, the UK, Russia, and China to get Iran to abandon its program developing nuclear weapons. Anyone with a day’s worth of foreign policy experience knew it was the sum of all lies, but Obama and his feckless Secretary of State John Kerry declared it as peace in our time.

Thanks to pallets of cash and other perks from the Obama administration that allowed Iran and its terrorist proxies to run roughshod throughout the Middle East, the deal didn’t live up to its promise. Iran continued to spin its centrifuges, enrich weapons-grade uranium, and flout the agreement. And the Obama administration continued to pretend all was well. Shocking, we know. Trump rightly pulled the United States out of the toothless agreement and was predictably lambasted in the Leftmedia. How dare he challenge Obama’s infinite wisdom!

Trump didn’t stop there, though. He went on to foster a series of peace agreements in the Middle East known as the Abraham Accords that many of his predecessors couldn’t have dreamed of pulling off. Dealing directly with Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, Trump helped cement bilateral agreements between the Jewish State and four Arab countries to normalize relations for the first time in history. Trump was also working on a fifth agreement between Israel and Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, when he left office. It was work worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize that Trump will never get. That’s okay, though, because the Nobel Peace Prize has long since lost its relevance or value and is now merely a foreign policy participation trophy for the leftist crowd.

Trump’s foreign policy successes were muted by the Trump-hating media. His own mouth also frequently got in the way of his accomplishments. Nonetheless, his work in the Middle East could have changed the face of international politics and business and brought a new level of peaceful engagement in the world’s most volatile region.

But not if Biden has anything to say about it. With little apparent reason other than to simply undo everything Trump has done, the Biden administration has systematically stymied all these existing agreements and essentially torpedoed the unfinished Israel-Indonesia agreement. Why? For one reason, to erase Trump’s accomplishments. For another, to placate Iran.

Biden appeared tough when he launched a retaliatory strike on an Iran-backed militia in Syria in February after repeated attacks on American military personnel. But it wasn’t a very effective strike, and it could hardly be categorized as a full retaliatory response. If one looks deeper into Biden’s dealings with Iran thus far, he seems to be walking on eggshells with the regime in hopes of getting the JCPOA up and running again.

If the president truly cares about “restoring alliances,” then he should build on the work Trump did with Israel and its Arab neighbors. These nations have proven they can work together, and such an alliance would be a great counterweight to Iran’s plans for regional hegemony. And those plans are much more likely to come to fruition if Biden insists on returning to the nuclear deal. The mullahs are already playing him like a harp, rejecting offers of direct talks and holding out for concessions that the U.S. signals it is prepared to make, even at the expense of our allies in the region.

Joe Biden was never much of a thinker, and now that he is president, and an addled president at that, his singular pursuit of getting back in bed with Iran on a nuclear deal spells nothing but trouble. The Pentagon all but acknowledges that Iran will have nuclear weapons within the next decade. But Biden appears committed to preserving his former boss’s legacy, even though the world has changed too much in four years to go back to those bad old days.