(Heritage Foundation) Lt.-Col. (ret.) James Jay Carafano - Iran is a terror-sponsoring state that aspires to become a nuclear power. The prospects of Washington pivoting to happy days with the Iranian regime were already quite slim. It is easy to campaign on promises to time-travel back to the Iran nuclear deal. It is a lot harder in practice. It was claimed that the Iranian regime would act more responsibly after the nuclear deal. It didn't. Iran fueled insurgencies, wars and terrorism in Syria, Yemen, Israel and Iraq. How can Washington rejoin the Iran nuclear deal with a straight face and not demand an accounting of the regime's cheating? Is the U.S. really going to remove sanctions on arms transfers? What about Iran's appalling human rights record? What about its ballistic missile program? Washington also has to consider what the rest of the region would think about the U.S. allowing money and resources to pour into the Tehran regime. Wouldn't they see an about-face by Washington as a sellout? Let's be honest. If Israel is poking Iran and that makes it harder for Washington to abandon sensible policies that are constraining the Tehran regime, we should all be thankful for that. The writer is vice president at the Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy of the Heritage Foundation.
2020-12-10 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive