Not even Neville Chamberlain paid to underwrite the Nazi war machine. Whoever thought we would look back on Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler as the good old days? Yet President Joe Biden is making us long for the Munich agreement.
Biden’s ransom payment of $6 billion and the release of Iranian nationals serving prison sentences in the United States for violating American sanctions laws, in exchange for five kidnapped Americans held illegally in Iranian prisons, transcends appeasement.
Chamberlain’s plan was to keep Hitler at bay and prevent a war. The Biden deal guarantees Iran will become more militant and dramatically increases the likelihood that a full-scale regional war will break out in the Middle East. That is the difference between Chamberlain’s appeasement and Biden’s tribute payment.
The point of sanctions was to punish Iran for its malign behavior. Biden’s agreement instead rewards Iran’s acts of war, international terrorism and suppression of human rights. It is difficult to imagine a more ill-conceived arrangement.
By signing on to this deal, Biden has achieved the exact opposite of what he claims to want. On the sitcom Seinfeld, George Costanza once found happiness by doing the exact opposite of what all his instincts told him to do. If only Biden subscribed to the Costanza method.
Instead, the president continues to listen to the voice in his head that says, “You know what you’re doing.” Failure has been Biden’s default for his entire foreign policy career. Clearly, he is incapable of learning from his mistakes. But this may be his biggest failure yet.
Indeed, by signing on to this deal, Biden has agreed to finance:
- the completion of Iran’s nuclear program;
- the development of Iran’s ballistic missile system, which is intended to deliver a nuclear warhead;
- the training and arming of terrorist networks in Syria and Iraq as they plot to kill American service members deployed abroad;
- the murder of countless Ukrainians as Iran builds drones to send to Russia that it uses in its illegal invasion of Ukraine;
- the training and arming of Iran’s terrorist network, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, who plot to kill Israelis and destroy Israel;
- the training and arming of Hezbollah in Lebanon as it usurps the authority of the Lebanese government and plots an invasion of Israel;
- the training and arming of the Houthis in Yemen as Iran seeks to overthrow the internationally recognized government in Sana and destabilize the Saudi regime:
- the training and arming of Iran’s morality police as they arrest and murder women for failing to wear headscarves; and
- the plotting and funding of the assassination of former U.S. government officials.
The fact that sanctions will remain in place after the deal is completed is utterly meaningless. As soon as this deal is consummated, Iran will kidnap more Americans in exchange for sanctions relief down the road. There will be further kidnappings committed by Russia and North Korea as they see the benefits of being international outlaws.
All Americans are delighted for the families of our fellow citizens. For these families, the day the hostages are returned home will be a day to rejoice. It is every other American and the rest of the world we should worry about, because for us, the world is getting darker and the winds of war are blowing harder.
This deal is a harbinger of a new Iran nuclear deal to come. Perhaps in that agreement, America will agree to build the bomb for the ayatollah rather than just pay for it.