How badly does Joe Biden want a new Iran nuclear agreement?
So badly that he’s willing to blow up his own sanctions regime on Russia in order to get it signed.
The problem arises because one of the key—in fact, the most important — stipulations in the deal is Russia being able to continue aiding Iran in building $10 billion worth of its nuclear infrastructure. Iran won’t sign otherwise. And the U.S. desperately wants Russia to “import” Iran’s highly enriched nuclear stockpile. The problem with that, as we saw with the last deal, is that Russia can return that nuclear material to Iran any time Iran asks for it — no questions asked.
So Russia is the key to any new deal Biden wants to sign. But Russia is under sanctions and needs those sanctions waived so its giant, state-owned nuclear companies can finish the work they started. This includes work at the underground Fordow nuclear facility that was constructed specifically to build a nuclear weapon.
The removal of nuclear sanctions on Iran will hand Russia’s Rosatom a financial lifeline, even as the United States and European nations seek to isolate Moscow for its ongoing assault in Ukraine. Republicans and Democrats are sounding the alarm on these concessions, criticizing the Biden administration for undermining its own pressure campaign on Moscow to ensure that a nuclear deal is inked. Critics of the deal have in recent days seized on the carveouts for Russia following a series of Free Beacon reports outlining how sanctions relief would turn Iran into a “sanctions evasion hub” for Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“Russian state-owned firms stand to gain billions of dollars under a revived Iran nuclear deal and would be exempted from U.S. sanctions,” said Andrea Stricker, a veteran nuclear proliferation expert who has closely tracked Iran’s program as a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. “Washington should be working to close every one of the Kremlin’s revenue streams, not letting Moscow enrich itself while it is committing mass atrocities.”
Most of these firms are run by Putin cronies and will give Russia access to essential hard currency as Iran pays for the nuclear projects in dollars.
Information disclosed in the U.S. government document seen by the Free Beacon shows that four Rosatom subsidiaries—Rusatom Energy International, Atomstroyexport, TVEL Fuel Company, and Techsnabexport—will be given the green light on their nuclear projects at Tehran’s Bushehr nuclear plant. This includes supplying Iran with reactor fuel, removing spent fuel, overseeing plant operations, and carrying out new construction on the site.
Nothing in the new nuclear agreement will delay Iran’s push to build a nuclear weapon. Iran is not going to dismantle its highly advanced centrifuges that can spin up uranium hex into highly enriched uranium at a much faster speed than their old machines. There is no ban on Iranian missile development. In short, the deal is political cover for Biden to make the existential threat to the United States of an Iranian nuclear weapon disappear.
And it will give him a “foreign policy win” he desperately needs to help turn around his political fortunes.
What kind of a president would play politics with the security and safety of the United States? The same kind of president who is continuing to blunder his way into World War III unless he’s stopped.
