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original photo credit: clicamericana.com

Joe Biden, or whoever is handling him, proved their incompetence and malice with the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle.  There is little doubt we needed to get out of Afghanistan; that’s not the issue.  Biden did it backward.  He did what the greenest private in our military would know to be ass-backward.

Biden began by abandoning the only secure air base in the country.  He compounded that disastrous error by withdrawing our troops in the dead of night and without telling our Afghan allies, leaving Americans and our allies behind and without protection.  He left tens of billions in American arms, including the most advanced night vision equipment—the terrorists didn’t have that before—behind.  To get a few Americans out, he rushed troops back and 13 died in a suicide bombing.  We now know, he left at least 9000 Americans, and others we promised to protect, behind.  To date, about 6000 have somehow made it out, despite the State Department’s best efforts to foil their escapes.

And now, in trying to get Iran to reinstate the utterly failed 2015 JCPOA “deal,” he has freed nearly 30 billion for the Iranians to use in their regional terror campaigns.  Why would he do that?  Because he hopes they’ll see we’re being nice and they’ll return to the negotiating table to reenter a deal they never honored, nor had any intention of honoring.  So that’s how it’s done; give your enemies billions before they agree to even meet and talk?  Ass-backward.

How do we know the Iranians can’t be trusted?  It’s an issue I addressed back in 2019’s Iran: The Art Of Surrender:

Who are the Iranians? On one hand, Iran is comprised of the youngest, most educated population in the Middle East. Most are friendly toward America, are generally pro-western, oppose their government and are not jihadists. Unfortunately, the Iranian leaders, who routinely imprison, torture and murder their own people, are none of these things. Iran is acknowledged–even by the Obama government–as the primary, foremost state sponsor of terror in the world. Iranian operatives and proxies bathe their hands in rivers of American blood and continue to kill Americans around the world.

To understand Iran and Iranians, it will be useful to read Azar Nafisi’s memoir Reading Lolita In Tehran.  Iranians are foremost, Persians, but secondarily, Shi’ite Muslims. Understanding this is the key to understanding why what President Obama is doing in sending the execrable John Kerry to negotiate a ‘deal’ with the Iranians is no different than guaranteeing that the Iranians will not only obtain nuclear weapons, but use them on Israel and America. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch explains: 

‘If that [an Iranian nuclear attack] happens, it will also be because of the Shi’ite belief in the return of the Twelfth Imam. According to Islamic tradition, the dispute between the majority Sunnis and the Shiat Ali (Party of Ali) began upon the death of Muhammad in 632. The Sunnis contended that the prophet of Islam had made no provision for a successor as political, military, and spiritual leader of the Muslim community, and that therefore the Muslims should choose the best man among them as their leader. The nascent Party of Ali, on the contrary, claimed that Muhammad had designated his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor, and that the successor of Muhammad had to be a member of the prophet’s household.

What’s more, far from being a mere functionary, this successor would bear some of Muhammad’s prophetic spirit, as well as infallibility in deciding disputed questions. Ali was finally chosen as the fourth caliph in 656, but in 661 was assassinated. Hassan, his eldest son (and successor, as far as the Shi’ites are concerned), was murdered in 670 on the orders of the Sunni caliph Muawiya. Then the Sunni/Shi’ite split became definitive and permanent when Ali’s younger son, Husayn, was killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680.’

What, in a world of iPhones, government handouts, reality television and hope and change does this have to do with anything? Read on:

‘The Shi’ites were, thus, founded in loss and defeat, and these became the ongoing distinguishing features of Shi’ite history and piety. After the beheading of Husayn, the Shi’ites continued a succession of Imams, members of Muhammad’s household and his prophetic heirs. Each one in turn, over two centuries, was poisoned on orders of the Sunni caliph. According to the traditions of Twelver Shi’ism, the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the twelfth of these Imams, a boy of five years old, disappeared under mysterious and disputed circumstances in the year 874 – but remained alive. After his disappearance, he communicated to the world through four agents, the last of whom died in 941. At that point the Twelfth Imam went silent, entering the period of ‘Great Occultation.’

In his last communiqué to the world, via one of these messengers in 941, this mysterious figure consoled his followers with prophecies regarding his eventual reappearance. The circumstances of that reappearance could, in the hands of Iran’s mad mullahs, visit upon the world calamities of a scale never before seen. And Israel and America will bear the brunt.

‘Hearts,’ warned Mohammad al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, in his last message, ‘will become inaccessible to compassion. The earth will be filled with tyranny and violence.’ He was speaking of the time of his reappearance, explaining that he would only come back to the world when the evil that Muslims were suffering was at its absolute apex. In this he echoed a Shi’ite tradition of the words of the prophet of Islam himself, Muhammad, who prophesied that the Twelfth Imam would be ‘the Resurrector’ and explained: ‘He will fill the world with peace and justice as today it is filled with violence and tyranny.’

What this means is Iran’s mullahs believe it is their religious duty, their destiny, to spark a conflagration in the Middle East that will fulfill the prophetic conditions for the return of the 12th Imam.  They are, in contemporary terms, Twelvers, and their method of choice is nuclear warfare.  Even if they have a single bomb, they believe that will be enough.

 Edward Olshaker reports: 

‘…in a speech urging the Muslim world to destroy Israel, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani issued a nuclear threat, sadistically taunting that ‘application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.’

The mad mullahs are more than content to see millions of Iranians disintegrate in the nuclear fire an attack on Israel would surely provoke.  Most of their countrymen hate them and would be delighted to see them dead.  They intend to return the sentiment.  Absent hatred, they justify this by the Islamic notion the dead will be holy martyrs on the path of Jihad.  Richard Goldberg, writing at The Foundation For The Defense Of Democracy, further explains:

 

Just a few short months since his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Biden is barreling toward another foreign policy disaster of his own making: a stunning yet predictable ‘agreement’ to let Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, remain just steps away from the nuclear threshold while lifting U.S. terrorism sanctions without any cessation of the regime’s support for terrorists.

Calling this an agreement, of course, would be kind. What is likely to emerge from Vienna, where Biden’s special envoy for Iran is making indirect overtures to Tehran through a Russian intermediary, can best be described as a surrender.

That’s right gentle readers.  Our brilliant State Department isn’t even speaking directly with the Iranians.  The Iranians have demanded the Russians(?!) mediate, and they refuse to speak directly to Americans.  In sane diplomatic circles this is known as “bad faith.”  In common terminology it means “up yours, Infidel!”  What better reason to give the Iranians every possible concession?  It must be remembered that for D/S/Cs, merely talking with an enemy is an enormous diplomatic accomplishment quite apart from any possible deal that might, in some small way, benefit America.  The Biden State Department hasn’t managed to accomplish even that.

The 2015 Obama/Biden JCPOA was a farce.  It wasn’t a treaty, and actually guaranteed the mullahs would get nuclear weapons, if they followed the agreement, which had no enforceable verification procedures.  If they didn’t follow the agreement, they’d get nuclear weapons even faster.  This, to D/S/Cs, is how one prevents Islamist madmen from getting nuclear weapons: by ensuring they will get nuclear weapons.  Of course, the Mullahs didn’t follow the JCPOA, and never had any intention of following it.

Under the impending arrangement, details of which are slowly emerging, Iran may be allowed to produce high-enriched uranium, stockpile more of that enriched uranium, advance its centrifuge program to hasten a future nuclear breakout, accelerate its development of longer-range nuclear-capable missiles, and stonewall the International Atomic Energy Agency’s investigation into undeclared nuclear sites and materials discovered over the last three years. In exchange, the United States would suspend terrorism and missile sanctions on Iran, not just nuclear sanctions—providing an economic bailout to Tehran while flooding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with cash.

Best intelligence estimates are the mullahs will have sufficient nuclear materials for at least one bomb within weeks, and a functional weapon within a year.  Well done, Biden!

The travesty of this agreement is painfully compounded by one of its prime beneficiaries: Ebrahim Raisi, the newly installed Iranian president described by experts as a gruesome and unapologetic killer. Gone is the illusion of coming to terms with a so-called moderate or reformer. This will be a blood pact delivered to mass murderers and terrorists. And it will be a poke in the eye to the 1,200 Gold Star family members who asked the Biden administration not to release funds to the regime until all federal judgments were paid to American victims of Iran-sponsored terrorism.

The turnabout for Iran is breathtaking. A regime that was under more pressure one year ago than it was before the JCPOA is being handed better terms than it received under the prior deal. Despite being warned time and again to abandon its carrot-filled, stickless negotiating strategy, the Biden administration is poised to conclude an agreement precisely as bad as Biden’s critics predicted.

Actually, it will be a deal better for Iran and worse for America than the original horrible-for-America-and-Israel deal.  Biden is giving everything away, giving Iran billions with which to conduct global terror operations, and getting absolutely nothing in return.

The administration claimed it was preparing a Plan B if Iran refused to return to the JCPOA. Plan B apparently did not include the obvious option of restoring economic pressure and threatening the use of military force. Instead, it consists of giving Tehran whatever it wants.

Do we miss him yet?

Reportedly, the White House wants to lay the blame for its bad deal at the feet of Donald Trump, who withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018. But it is a direct result of Joe Biden’s policy choices. He decided to relax sanctions on Iran. He decided not to respond militarily to attacks on U.S. forces, including the death of a U.S. contractor. He decided not to hold Iran accountable before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He decided to rescind America’s attempted snapback of U.N. sanctions.

Well sure.  Why in the world would any US President not want Islamic madmen to have nuclear weapons?  Why would any POTUS maintain sanctions against such murderers or credibly threaten them with military force?  Why that would be—shudder—positively Trumpian!

By all means, take the link and read the rest of Goldberg’s article.  He rightly points out Biden intends to blame Trump for his failures, and to resurrect the Obama/Biden “it’s the JCPOA or war” lie.  Nothing Biden apparently has planned will in any way deter Iran from developing and using nuclear weapons against Israel and America. Despite Biden’s weak threats to the contrary, it’s highly unlikely he will use military force to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb, or avenge the detonation of one.

Should Iran become a nuclear power, it would inevitably set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and destabilize the world.  Let’s Go Brandon!

PRE-POSTING UPDATE: A dispatch from the religion of peace:

Obviously not everyone in Iran is pro-American, nor is Islam compatible with our representative republic.  There might be a lesson in there somewhere about strong immigration laws and enforcement, perhaps even sane foreign policy, but the current Administration certainly isn’t open to learning it.  They’re too busy destroying our national sovereignty and enabling the Mad Mullahs.