President Joe Biden says he’s ready to resuscitate the Iran deal former President Barack Obama disastrously gave us if Iran quits its advanced uranium enrichment, the kind that could ultimately deliver nuclear bombs. Bullying Iran says in reply that it will do no such thing unless Biden first ends the sanctions former President Donald Trump inflicted through getting out of the deal.
Biden has said no, he won’t lift the sanctions first, and shouldn’t. He should instead make them tougher by trying to get the other signatories still in the deal to add their own sanctions despite the profitable losses in trade. They won’t like that, and many would object to Biden renewing the last-moment military option that Obama once believed in but hung up on. That did not fit in with Obama’s appeasement schedule, but Biden needs to be strong.
A major way would be to use the deal as a guide, not by replicating it but by reversing it, by trying to prevent what it now promotes, namely a nuclear-armed Iran conceivably wiping out Israel, instigating nuclear proliferation, hegemonic ambitions and threatening the United States.
Here are some of the things to change.
* One: Take away the means necessary for Iran to create nuclear weapons. That would mean taking away all the centrifuges it now says it wants just to generate nuclear power. The deal says it can use the centrifuges only at low rates sufficient for that purpose, but that hardly means it can’t break the rules.