Joe Biden is still holding out hope that Iran will come back to the table and that he can take credit for renegotiating the nuclear agreement that his old Boss Barack Obama signed off on. It's a useless gesture, and Biden knows it. If Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon by now, it soon will with or without the agreement.
But Biden would see re-signing the nuclear deal as the crowning achievement of his presidency.
That's my theory, anyway. How else can you explain Biden giving Iran access to a $10 billion account in an Omani bank to buy "humanitarian" goods?
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed an extension to a 120-day waiver that allows Iraq to buy electricity from Iran. The money is in an escrow account in Oman, and Blinken says that the U.S. has the final say in how the money is disbursed.
This is the same gambit Blinken tried with the $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds that were kept in South Korea, transferred to Qatar, and then supposedly disbursed with U.S. approval. Except there was no guarantee that Qatar would prevent Iran from accessing the money, especially after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said his government would decide "how it will spend $6 billion in previously frozen funds."
Very quietly, Blinken refroze the cash after Congress made a bipartisan stink.
Now, we have a similar situation with the Oman cash. And again, Congress is questioning the "gift" to Iran.
"It is absolutely outrageous the Biden Administration continues to find ways to send Iran money — especially from Iraq, where the same Iranian-backed militias who are targeting American forces increasingly run the show and are helping keep Iraq addicted to Iranian energy," Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) told Fox News Digital.
The waiver allows the payments so long as they go through Oman, where a portion is converted to euros or other widely-traded currencies for Iran to buy non-sanctioned products such as humanitarian aid. The State Department has insisted, as it did with the $6 billion held in Qatar, that the money can only be spent with U.S. approval. The department ended up quietly refreezing the Qatar-held funds.
A senior State Department official told reporters that the waiver "isn’t a free pass for all this money to move," arguing it is a "layered" and "cumbersome" process with "significant reputational risk." The 120-day waiver, extended in July and again Tuesday, continues a program of 21 waivers started in 2018 under the Trump administration to provide Iraq access to the roughly 40% of energy it imports from Iran.
The waiver was never justified. Any assistance given to Iraq ends up helping Iran as well. And, in case Biden forgot, Iran has been standing by while militias (most of which are under the influence of the Revolutionary Guards) are firing missiles and flying drones at U.S. bases.
Not acknowledging the changing circumstances of war is perplexing. Why not insist that Iraq support U.S. policy before giving it access to the money to purchase energy? Why not insist that Iraq control its own territory and prevent these terrorist militias from operating on their soil?
Iraq is already a failed state well within the orbit of Iran. Helping Iraq helps Iran. Perhaps a few days in the dark would change their minds.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member