The Biden Administration’s Iran Policy: All Carrots, No Stick

by Majid Rafizadeh, GATESTONE INSTITUTE  •  June 19, 2021 at 5:00 am

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken… stated at his inauguration hearing that he had “deep concern about the designation” of the Houthis as a terrorist organization, in that “at least on its surface it seems to achieve nothing particularly practical in advancing the efforts against the Houthis and to bring them back to the negotiating table….” One wonders if the same thinking would apply to Al Qaeda or Islamic State.
• In yet an additional form of appeasement, the Biden administration has been strenuously ignoring the Iranian regime’s aggression and destabilizing behavior….. now, [Iran] is sending a destroyer… and a support vessel… to Venezuela.
• “If the boats [seven Iranian high-speed missile-attack craft] are delivered, they may form the core of an asymmetrical warfare force within Venezuela’s armed forces. This could be focused on disrupting shipping as a means of countering superior naval forces. Shipping routes to and from the Panama Canal are near the Venezuelan coast.” — H I Sutton and Sam LaGrone, USNI News, U.S. Naval Institute, June 1, 2021.
• Tehran has not only been using Venezuela for military cooperation, but also, it seems, to advance its nuclear program…. Iran’s ruling mullahs, in fact, appear to have been using Venezuela as part of a larger agenda for increasing Iran’s influence and the presence of its proxies in Latin and North America.
• Instead of confronting Iran’s predatory regime, the Biden administration, has been forging ahead with the failed 2015 “nuclear deal” — which permits Iran to become a legitimate, full-blown nuclear power in just a few years. The Biden administration is also turning a blind eye to the regime’s alarming and increasing human rights violations.

Since the Biden administration assumed office, it has been increasingly appeasing the Iranian regime, which in return, is further emboldening and empowering the mullahs.

The first appeasement came when the administration changed the previous administration’s policy of maximum pressure to a policy of appeasement toward the Iran’s proxy militia group, the Houthis. Even as evidence — including a report by the United Nations — showed that the Iranian regime is delivering sophisticated weapons to the Houthi militia group in Yemen, the Biden administration suspended some of the sanctions against terrorism that the previous administration imposed on the Houthis. The previous US administration had designated Iran’s proxies, the Houthis, a terrorist group.

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