Joe Biden is in the Middle East this week, looking to twist the arm of Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman to increase the Saudis’ output of crude oil — something that would have been totally unnecessary if Biden hadn’t declared war on America’s domestic energy industry in the first week of his presidency.
His first stop was our ally Israel, who is more concerned with stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon than in slowing them down, as Biden is. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Biden inked a U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration pledging that Iran will never acquire nuclear weapons.
“Ensuring Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon is of vital security interest to Israel and the United States and for the rest of the world as well,” said Biden in a press conference following the signing. “I continue to believe that diplomacy is the best way to achieve this outcome, and we’ll continue to work with Israel to counter other threats from Iran throughout the region.”
But Lapid has his own ideas of how to deal with Iran. “The only thing that will stop Iran is knowing that if they continue to develop their nuclear program the free world will use force,” he said during the press conference, adding, “The only way to stop them is to put a credible military threat on the table.”
But Biden’s change in rhetoric may be window dressing. He said during the press conference that the United States is “not going to wait forever” for Iran to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal.
At a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid following private talks about Iran’s rapidly progressing nuclear program, Biden said the U.S. had laid out for the Iranian leadership a path to return to the nuclear deal and was still waiting for a response.
“When that will come, I’m not certain,” Biden said. “But we’re not going to wait forever.”
Even as he suggested that his patience with Iran was running low, Biden held out hope that Iran can be persuaded to rejoin the agreement. “I continue to believe that diplomacy is the best way to achieve this outcome,” he said.
If Iran wants to blow up the negotiations to rejoin the nuclear agreement, they will have to try much harder. Biden’s patience in waiting to surrender can be nearly infinite. If Biden hasn’t shut down the negotiations by now, he never will.
Iran doesn’t need to detonate a bomb to show that it has crossed the nuclear threshold and have become a nuclear power. Simulations can tell the Iranians if they have a workable bomb design. Israel wants to attack now before Iran can cross that threshold.
Biden wants to wait until there’s ironclad proof that Iran has built a bomb. That makes that “Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration” they signed a worthless piece of paper. That kind of “proof” would come to Israel after Tel Aviv has been reduced to ashes.
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