Don’t throw Iran a lifeline

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Amid President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Tehran, a group of policymakers is seeking to undermine his efforts altogether and instead appease the leading state sponsor of terrorism.

Some politicians, such as Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, continue to assert, wrongly, that it was a mistake to pull out of the Iran agreement. They condemn the Trump administration for killing Qassem Soleimani, and they seek to tie Trump’s hands in his efforts to protect the United States and our allies. Most importantly, they have been categorically wrong about the president’s interest in going to war.

Other politicians, such as Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, have been equally mistaken about Trump and his Iran policy but have gone further out of their way to undermine U.S. national security. Murphy accomplished this by his recent get together with the sanctioned foreign minister of Iran, Javad Zarif. Only after it was disclosed by the media did Murphy come clean about his secret meeting with Zarif. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said upon hearing the news, “I hope they were reinforcing America’s foreign policy and not their own.”

Murphy, in his own words, made clear that such sensitive meetings should be left to the administration and not “just a rank and file U.S. senator” who “cannot conduct diplomacy on behalf of the whole U.S. government.”

But the worst yet is a new effort by Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, among others, basically to ensure that Iran comes under a no-pressure campaign. Their legislation, the recently introduced Iran Diplomacy Act, would restore the Obama administration’s deal with Iran at no extra cost to Iran and with all of the benefits to the regime still intact.

Of course, these very same senators who now want to move this legislation forward voted against allowing the Senate to take up a resolution of disapproval of the Iran deal in 2015. The Obama administration did not have the votes to stop the resolution from passing and instead used the filibuster to stop a final vote from occurring. The deal was opposed by a bipartisan group of senators, and a bipartisan group of senators would likely once again oppose reentering an agreement whose provisions start to sunset later this year.

Efforts to undermine America’s current Iran policy only play into the hands of the regime in Tehran, which lawmakers are leading to believe that it may be able to wait out the current administration.

No meaningful agreement with Iran is possible unless it includes permanent and verifiable denuclearization, ends Tehran’s ballistic missile program, and deals with the regime’s support for terrorism and regionally destabilizing actions. The Trump administration has made clear that any such deal should be submitted to the Senate as a treaty so that an agreement of such immense consequence is voted upon.

One only has to look at the recent announcement by the Financial Action Task Force to blacklist Iran to see that the maximum pressure campaign, one way or another, is bringing the international community along with the administration’s efforts to isolate the regime. The world anti-terror monitoring group blacklisted Iran for its continued terrorism-financing schemes, putting further economic pressure on Tehran and diminishing the avenues through which European countries could do business with the regime.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the administration’s decision to exit the Iran deal, time has moved on. The realities of the maximum pressure campaign, coupled with the approaching timelines within the old deal, make reentry irresponsible if not implausible anyway. People of good faith can and should debate what a potential new deal could look like, but the old one should not be the starting point for that discussion.

Boris Zilberman is director of public policy and strategy at the Christians United for Israel Action Fund.

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