The Islamic Republic of Iran, despite Biden’s handlers’ endless courtship in Vienna, makes no secret of its hostility to the United States. Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency reported on Feb. 11 that during nationwide rallies celebrating the 43rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, rallygoers “carried placards reading ‘Death to America’, ‘Death to Israel’, ‘Death to Britain’, and a number of other slogans in support of the Supreme Leader, and the Islamic establishment.” Charming. Iran’s Supreme Leader has accused the U.S. of racism and claimed that “human rights are trampled upon” here. Now Biden’s handlers have come up with a novel way to respond to Khamenei: show none other than Kamala Harris agreeing with him. Why, that’ll fix everything.
The Virtual Embassy for Iran on Wednesday tweeted a quote from Harris translated into Farsi, accompanied by a photo of her trying her level best to look stern, impassioned, and commanding. The State Department had tweeted the same quote from Harris in English on Jan. 17: “Here’s the truth: Racism exists in America. Xenophobia exists in America. Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, it all exists. The work to address injustice wherever it exists remains the work ahead.”
The Harris quote came from remarks she made in May 2021 as Old Joe signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, but it was easy to get the impression that Iran’s Supreme Leader was Harris’ ghostwriter. Her statement sounded a great deal like Khamenei, who has never shied away from detailing what he sees as America’s evils. He tweeted on Dec. 10, 2018: “Human values are trampled upon in U.S. There’s racial discrimination there. US Pres. said during his campaigns: as people of color, walking on the streets you can’t be sure if you’ll live the next minute. This is said by a man who would later run White House. This is US’s racism.”
Jerusalem Post columnist Emily Schrader called the Virtual Embassy’s tweet the “insanity of the day,” and observed that “it seems at every step the Biden admin is self sabotaging when it comes to #Iran.” Indeed. It’s hard to fathom what the State Department thought it was accomplishing by publishing words of the vice president of the United States criticizing her own country in the language of a nation that repeatedly and regularly swears that it wants to bring about the destruction of the United States.
Newt Gingrich asked: “Why would VP Kamala Harris tweet this to Iran? What level of hating America does it take for the Vice President to attack her own country?” Why indeed? Did Biden’s State wonks think that if the U.S. acknowledged its alleged evils, Iran would see our good faith and meet us halfway in the nuke talks in Vienna? Did they think that Iran would see Harris’ words as a signal that the United States was ready to negotiate in a manner that would be favorable to Iranian interests (which may actually be the case)? Ron Nehring, former chairman of the California Republican Party, injected a dose of reality when he tweeted: “Kamala Harris tweeting in Iran’s official language that the US has a long list of problems. She thinks this makes her look enlightened. In that part of the world it will be seen as projecting overwhelming weakness.”
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That is true. The mullahs in Tehran see the world in terms of strength and weakness. They will not see Harris’ statement as a gesture of goodwill that should be reciprocated by their own acknowledgment of their regime’s extensive human rights violations. Rather, they will see her words as a sign that now is the time to get everything they want from the United States, as Biden’s administration has already repeatedly signaled that it will do essentially anything to get a new nuclear deal with Iran.
Whatever may be the reasoning or lack thereof behind the Virtual Embassy’s use of the Harris quote, it undermines any American critique of the Iranian regime’s sorry human rights record. What leg does the racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, homophobic United States have to stand on to criticize any other country’s mistreatment of its own people? Kamala Harris has not only cast unwarranted aspersions on the country she is supposed to be representing on the world stage; she has also severely undermined our own negotiating position vis-à-vis not just Iran, but any other country. Why should any nation take direction from a country that is so riddled with injustice as Harris characterizes the U.S. as being?
But the real question is: why does the vice president of the United States have so little regard for her own country, in which she has enjoyed so much favor and success?
