In 2015, when then-President Barack Obama was on the verge of signing the Iran nuclear deal, Israel tried to undo Obama’s impending blunder by publicly denouncing the deal. Israel’s prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, went so far as to use an invitation to address a joint session of Congress to all but appeal to the people’s representatives to stop Obama’s concessions to the Islamic Republic. Despite the majority of US senators opposing the deal, the Iran deal was signed – and Tehran was immediately enriched and empowered with billions of dollars and access to global markets. In the years that followed, Iran never fully complied with the deal, but the regime reaped the benefits of the deal nonetheless.
More than a year after taking office, then-President Donald Trump pulled out of the Iran deal and engaged in a campaign of maximum diplomatic and economic pressure aimed at bringing the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism to its feet. The Trump administration’s actions have had a significant impact on Iran’s economy, dramatically reducing Iran’s leverage in any future negotiations over its illegal nuclear program, support for terrorism around the world, and countless human rights abuses. Unfortunately, President Joe Biden squandered the strong position left to him by his predecessor. And despite Biden’s former promises of a “longer and stronger” deal, the president is now poised to repeat Obama’s mistakes.
President Biden appears to have resigned himself to Iran acquiring a nuclear weapons capability — albeit after he leaves office. The deal he is nearing to sign is shorter and weaker than the one negotiated by President Obama, immediately freeing billions of dollars in frozen assets, changing non-nuclear terrorist designations, lifting certain secondary sanctions and lifting the conventional arms embargo against the Islamic Republic in less than six months. Because of all this, Iran is making temporary and incomplete concessions and will release the American hostages—but will make no guarantees that other hostages will not be taken, or that other Americans will not be targeted by Iranian-backed terrorists. Nor will Iran give up its state sponsorship of terrorism around the world.
It is, in short, an almost complete victory for Iran over the United States.
As unfathomable as it may be, this is only the opening act of the tragedy to come. Without expanding the arbitrary limitation clauses of the original agreement, the provision allowing retroactive sanctions will die in 2025. In the years to come, restrictions on Iran’s development of advanced centrifuges will disappear. And in 2030, the deal will expire entirely, freeing Iran to complete its decades-long quest for nuclear weapons with impunity.
So it’s no surprise that there is widespread bipartisan concern about the path the Biden administration is taking. Congress, long sidelined by the White House, must be vindicated. The influence of the legislature can be enormous, but only if it acts.
In May, a large majority of senators voted down a non-binding provision calling on President Biden to address Iran’s support for terror in talks with the exiled country, while also opposing Iranian demands that the US lift its terrorist designation from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has been responsible for killing hundreds of Americans. military personnel. The Biden administration ignored the first concern and conceded the latter point. Later that month, Biden’s lead negotiator on Iran, Robert Malley, assured the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that any deal with Iran would be submitted to Congress for consideration. That vetting, and the actions policymakers are taking to strengthen the capabilities of our allies, is very likely our last hope to avoid disaster.
Failure to stop this deal consigns generations of Americans to a life in which an emboldened Iranian regime has an internationally legitimized turnkey nuclear weapons capability, or a demonstrated nuclear weapons program, that allows it to operate confidently on US soil and against US allies. The constant threat of Iranian terror, nuclear blackmail or catastrophic war will hang over all of our heads – forever.
Members of Congress therefore face one of the most important decisions of their lives. For some, it might be politically beneficial to support President Biden’s capitulation. For others, it might be politically useful to simply put the president on a pedestal. Neither approach is correct. Our elected officials must rise above our current hyper-partisan environment and ask themselves one simple question: Will they allow a new evil empire to rise before them – one that the idea of ”mutually assured destruction” does not fear, but relishes?
I sincerely hope for America, Israel and the rest of the free world that the answer is “no”.
Pastor John Hagee is the founder and president of Christians United for Israel.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s.
