Biden Could Make the World Safer, but He’s Too Afraid of the Politics

Mr. Beinart is a journalist and commentator who writes frequently about American foreign policy.

President Biden has the chance to avert a nuclear crisis that could push the United States to the brink of war and threaten the coalition he’s built to counter Russia. But he isn’t seizing it for one overriding reason: He fears the political blowback.

Since taking office, Mr. Biden has pledged to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal that Barack Obama signed and Donald Trump junked. That’s vital, since Tehran, freed from the deal’s constraints, has been racing toward the ability to build a nuclear bomb. Now, according to numerous press reports, the United States and Iran have largely agreed on how to revive the agreement.

But there’s one major obstacle left: The Trump administration’s designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — a branch of the Iranian military charged with defending Iran’s theocratic political system — as a foreign terrorist organization. Tehran wants the designation lifted. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in late April that the United States wouldn’t do that, at least not without unspecified conditions that Tehran appears disinclined to meet. He also warned the senators that failing to reach a deal that arrests Iran’s nuclear progress would have grave consequences. The Islamic republic, he estimated, is only a “matter of weeks” from being able to construct a nuclear weapon.

Given all of that, something else Mr. Blinken said is even more shocking. He said the terrorist designation doesn’t matter. “As a practical matter,” he explained, “the designation does not really gain you much because there are myriad other sanctions on the I.R.G.C.” By its own admission, the Biden administration is risking the Iran nuclear deal for nothing.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/09/opinion/iran-deal-irgc-biden.html