Yet so far, Iran is continuing its hostile policy more than a year after the deal was announced. Iran has been getting worse, fomenting unrest in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.
They've captured more of our people and had their sock puppets fire at American warships in the Red Sea. In the Persian Gulf, they've fired near our ships, carried out mock attack runs, and captured two of our vessels that broke down in the Gulf--humiliating our crews in the process.
So that magical reset has not occurred yet despite supposedly clearing the decks for restoring American-Iranian relations.
Clearly, Iran still views us as hostile.
Yet they agreed to the nuclear deal. Why?
If Iran sees America as a threat, why would Iran agree to even suspend nuclear work for a decade? Doesn't that just lock in a period of Iranian vulnerability to an American attack on Iran? That's why many leftists in the West say Iran needs nuclear weapons. Remember? The Iraq War proved why enemies need nukes. That's how the left excused Iran's nuclear ambitions (even as Iran denied having such ambitions).
And no, it doesn't work to say only factions of the Iranian government are attacking us. If the government that agreed to the deal can't control all the state organs, why did we bother with a deal?
Would America get away with signing a deal with Iran and then say that Air Force bombing runs on Iranian targets don't nullify our agreement because the fly boys are just a faction of the government?
But we're supposed to ignore the hostility of factions by maintaining the deal so we don't undermine so-called moderates and interfere with the healing balms of hope and change as they do their work to reset Iran as a non-nutball country?
Couldn't mere factions in Iran continue nuclear work in critical areas, too?
And might not this faction believe we'll look away from violations absent a flashing and smoking gun given how we've looked the other way in regard to ballistic missile development despite saying that would be limited too outside the nuclear agreement?
The revelation of recent days that, back in January, President Obama agreed that the United Nations should lift its sanctions against two Iranian state banks which financed Iran's ballistic missile development puts the lie to Washington's claims – stubbornly maintained for more than a year – that it was determined to rein in the Islamic Republic's expanding missile program.
In fact, the president's decision reflects a larger pattern of U.S. backtracking over Iran's ballistic missiles – one that dates back to well before the landmark U.S.-led global agreement with Iran over its nuclear program in July of 2015.
Maybe the Iranians agreed to a nuclear deal that would help protect them from attack by America because they don't see the deal as stopping Iran from pursuing their nuclear goals in any significant fashion--any more than our opposition to missiles is real.
Indeed, the deal may be a better shield against American attack than nukes in the short run, as Iran ramps up their aggressive actions fueled by deal-released cash while America refuses to do anything to stop Iran that might prompt Iran to walk away from the deal.
Heck, the deal may not have strengthened so-called "moderates" at all in Iran:
Iran’s supreme leader implemented a dramatic overhaul of Iranian military leadership in June 2016, and in so doing, effectively consolidated control of the Iranian military into the hands of a small network of senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commanders. This same network of IRGC commanders have been the driving force behind Iran’s recent provocations in the Strait of Hormuz, and they are likely to use their increased influence to further institutionalize this behavior in Iranian military doctrine.
Huh. Iran gets a nuclear deal that at worst (from Iran's point of view) delays Iran's indigenous nuclear drive by perhaps a decade, grants Iran lots of money to foment unrest and perhaps purchase nukes from North Korea, and ties America's hands in the face of increased Iranian actions to dominate the Middle East.
Why would that record of achievement discredit the Shia Islamist hardliners and put non-nutball Iranians on the road to running Iran?
