In 2012, then-president Barack Obama announced new U.S. sanctions against foreign banks that helped Iran sell its oil.  He said the sanctions would increase pressure on Iran for failing to meet its international nuclear obligations.  “If the Iranian government continues its defiance, there should be no doubt that the United States and our partners will continue to impose increasing consequences.”

Sanctions on Iran played well in the MSM.

In 2013 in Jerusalem, Obama spoke about Israel’s security.  He told Israelis, “Strong and principled diplomacy is the best way to ensure that the Iranian government forsakes nuclear weapons. ... And I have made the position of the United States of America clear: Iran must not get a nuclear weapon. ... America will do what we must to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.”  Obama had said in 2012 that the U.S. will “always have Israel’s back” and called Israel one of America’s “greatest allies,” saying the bond between the two nations was “unbreakable.”

However, Obama spewed empty words.  Disregarding what he said about Israeli security and having its back, Obama “implemented” (he circumvented the U.S. Constitution to do so) in 2015 the Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).  Under it, the U.S. suspended sanctions on the sale of oil and trade, and other financial sanctions, which had crippled Iran’s economy.  In return, Iran agreed to scale back its nuclear program (it did not).  The JCPOA’s critics said it was flawed because it didn’t halt all Iranian nuclear activity.  Iran also got relief from E.U. and U.N. sanctions and was granted access to frozen assets.  The JCPOA infused Iran with cash.  By lifting oil and financial sanctions on Iran, billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets, mostly revenues from oil sales, were unfrozen.  Its central bank gained control over more than $120 billion in foreign exchange reserves.  Besides, Iran never fully complied with the JCPOA and repeatedly reneged on nuclear nonproliferation obligations it agreed upon.

The JCPOA was Obama’s primary foreign policy initiative.

In what has to be two of Obama’s most severe slaps in Israel’s face, he refused in December 2016 to sign a renewal of sanctions against Iran.  Perhaps he knew that the sanctions would become law anyway, but the symbolism of what he didn’t do was unforgivable.

Then, with his 2012 election behind him, with a month to go as president, no longer needing to fool Jews or Gentiles again, despite what he had said about always having Israel’s back, Obama slipped a knife into Israel’s back.  He abstained (via his ambassador) from voting and thus allowed a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned Israel over settlements to pass.  He pretended the resolution was simply a restatement of longstanding U.S. opposition to Israeli settlements.

These are only two of a string of insults Obama foisted on one of America’s closest allies.

As if Obama’s insults weren’t bad enough, the U.S. government, in 2018, traced some of the $1.7 billion Iran had gained access to, courtesy of the Obama administration, to Iranian-backed terrorists.  Iran used the cash to pay its primary proxies, the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezb’allah and the Quds Force, Iran’s main foreign intelligence and covert action arm and part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Alex Titus wrote in 2018 about Obama’s Iran policy: “America’s failed policy of appeasing the Iranian regime is over.”  It seems Titus was incorrect.  Obama’s keen iterest in achieving an understanding  with Iran wasn’t over.  The bumbling idiot who currently occupies the Bully Pulpit has seized Obama’s Iran baton.  What Joe Biden has essentially done is created Obama’s “third term,” extending Obama’s appeasement of Iran.

Under Trump’s sanctions, Iran’s funds had fallen to below $8 billion.  The nation could barely keep its economy afloat.  Iran was essentially broke and couldn’t finance terrorist groups.  Once Joe Biden took office, Iran’s funds increased to at least $80 billion.  Most of the money came from selling oil to China.  Larry Kudlow wrote, “In 2020 Iran sold China roughly $6.5 billion worth of oil.  Next year in 2021, that mysteriously jumped to $23 billion.  Then last year, in 2022, that oil sale mysteriously leaped to $30 billion. ... If we didn’t lift the sanctions, how come they’re producing and selling all that oil?” 

Talks to salvage the JCPOA convened in Vienna in 2022.  Biden’s negotiating team, led by Robert Malley, U.S. special envoy for Iran, had negotiated an even weaker nuclear agreement with Iran than the one that Obama’s team achieved.  Has the agreement been effective?  No!  Despite appeasement from Biden designed to get the Iranians to behave, Iran has continued to test missiles, manufacture drones, pursue near-weapons-grade uranium, and pump money and weapons to its “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Hamas, Hezb’allah, and Islamic Jihad.  Three other U.S. negotiators resigned in protest at those talks over concessions made by Malley.  The resignations should have triggered a recall of Malley by Biden or secretary of state Antony Blinken.  But they didn’t.  They gave Malley freedom to negotiate whatever he wanted as long as he got Iran to sign.  They let Malley concede issue after issue to the detriment of U.S. national security.  Russian negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov said Iran got much more than it could have expected and bragged about how Russia, China, and Iran got dozens of wins over the United States.

Those talks were suspended because they had “reached a phase that requires ‘political decisions’ to be made quickly.”  That caused the Biden administration to restore sanctions waivers for Iran.  Biden pledged to try to bring the U.S. back to the talks.  Blinken told Congress that restoring the waivers would help the talks.  The State Department assured us that the sanctions waivers “is not a concession to Iran.”  However, JCPOA revival talks are all but dead despite sanction waivers.  The net result is that sanction waivers are funding terrorists. 

Can anyone say, “Iran is taking advantage of Joe Biden”?  John Bolton has.  And since Biden is an extension of Obama, Iran’s taking advantage of Obama as well.

Obama continues to appease.  He wrote on his Medium page a pseudo-intellectual, equivocating statement about Hamas’s attacks on Israel and its response.  The statement was saturated with his characteristic condescending miasma of narcissism, egoism, and self-congratulating.  Within the statement was his prescription for peace: “while the prospects of future peace may seem more distant than ever, we should call on all of the key actors in the region to engage [spelled n-e-g-o-t-i-a-t-e] with those Palestinian leaders ... because that is the best and perhaps only way to achieve the lasting peace and security most Israeli and Palestinian families yearn for.”

Bottom line: The Mideast has been a tangled mess for decades, but things got much worse under Obama.  One reason is that the JCPOA didn’t make anyone in the Mideast, Europe, or the U.S. safer.   But it did empower the mullahs in Tehran, who funded terrorism on Israel’s borders.  They patiently bided their time until they got another anti-Israel president in the White House.  They got one!

Image: Chickenonline via Pixabay, Pixabay License.