Appeasing Iran: It Never Ends

A year ago this month, the Obama administration and its allies finalized the terms of their nuclear deal with Iran. Despite the opposition of majorities of both Houses of Congress and what polls consistently said was the majority of the American people, the president was able to block all efforts to defeat it. No loose ends were allowed to halt the swift implementation of the pact—notably the administration’s refusal  to provide Congress with the text of crucial side deals involving Iran’s work on military applications of its nuclear program. The president got his way. And had Tehran been willing to “get right with the world,” as the president claimed during the debate over the deal, it has now had a year to do so.

It hasn’t. The Islamist regime is still behaving as it has always done in terms of confronting the West, conducting illegal missile tests, maintaining its standing as (according to the U.S. State Department) the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and calling for the destruction of Israel. Nor have radical Islamists lost influence. But despite all that, its Western apologists are undaunted and are demanding even more appeasement. The New York Times editorial column claims that the problem is that Iran hasn’t yet been sufficiently rewarded for its goodness in letting President Obama grant international legitimacy to its nuclear program. The editorialists worry that if American maintains its sanctions—as Congress clearly intends to do—or expands them in response to Iranian misbehavior, the “moderates” in Tehran led by President Hassan Rouhani will suffer.

There are no real moderates inside the Iranian theocracy—if by “moderation,” you mean people who want to end the regime’s ideological war on the West and Israel, aren’t interested in pursuing regional hegemony, oppose its support of terrorism, its goal of destroying Israel, or don’t want to build a bomb once a weak and easily evaded nuclear pact expires. There are factions within the Iranian government, but their differences have little to do with those objectives. While Rouhani may want more engagement and business with the West, that only means he thinks it is wise—as it certainly is—for Iran to take advantage of the foolishness of the West and the venal nature of the business world in order to save the country’s economy and make a hostile terrorist state even wealthier and therefore more of a threat to the region and the world.

In addition, Iran has no reason to complain about the benefits it has already derived from the nuclear deal. By the end of 2015, Washington moved to unfreeze billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets ahead of schedule. Soon after that, a veritable gold rush had begun as European companies headed to Tehran hoping to profit from the collapse of international sanctions.

The conclusion of a deal between the Boeing Company and Iran for the sale of commercial airliners and related goods and services has also empowered Iran. It not only created a new constituency for commerce with the regime but also set a precedent by which a U.S. firm would do business either directly or indirectly with companies that are controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the entity that runs the regime’s terrorist network. If Congress doesn’t intervene to prevent the Boeing deal, the implications of that precedent will be far reaching.

It’s absurd to think that more appeasement of Iran—whether silence about the consequences of the Boeing deal, the stripping away of Treasury Department restrictions on those doing business with Iran using American dollars, or the repeal of existing sanctions—will make the regime more moderate or less willing to eventually build a bomb.

Though Iran has complied with the terms of the agreement, it has been able to hold onto the most advanced elements of its nuclear infrastructure. It continues its research and can move swiftly to build a bomb when the deal expires in a decade. But the far richer and more powerful regime that will emerge from the post-deal collapse of sanctions will be no less radical or interested in its aggressive goals. To the contrary, the more secure it feels and the richer it becomes, the hard-line Islamists who are already in firm control of the reins of power in Tehran will be more rather than less likely to push the envelope with the West, Israel, or the moderate Arab states that are also threatened by Iran.

The dynamic of appeasement is such is that its advocates always refuse to see violent aggressors as they are. They think of them, as the president does, tepid supporters of change who merely lack encouragement. But doubling down on the rewards being showered on this rogue government will only make things worse. Whoever it is that succeeds President Obama must be prepared to face facts about the danger Iran poses. It is too late to undo the enormous damage. Given the profits to be made, it’s hard to imagine reconstituting international sanctions no matter what Iran does. But the task facing the U.S. in the years to come is preparing for the dire consequences of the mistakes that have already been made, not adding to the problem with more rewards for Tehran.