Unfair Exchange with Tehran

National Review Online

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

The release of four American prisoners from Iranian custody is a cause for celebration — but not for gratitude. Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, pastor Saeed Abedini, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari have been languishing in an Iranian prison since as early as 2011, accused of crimes they didn’t commit; their release should have been a sine qua non of any negotiations. Instead, the regime in Tehran used them to extort further concessions — and the Obama administration used their release to distract attention from the implementation of a bad and unpopular deal.

In July, the Obama administration and Tehran put the finishing touches on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which promised Iran a relaxation of sanctions and the unfreezing of some $150 billion in assets provided the regime complied with certain terms. In October, then again in November, Iran test-fired nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Later in November, it threatened to walk away from the agreement unless a U.N. probe into allegations of past weapons research was terminated. (It was.) In December, Iran fired unguided rockets near a U.S. aircraft carrier passing through the Strait of Hormuz, then announced that it would be expanding its ballistic-missile program. And finally, last week the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps seized two U.S. vessels and ten sailors that they claimed had violated Iranian waters — then paraded pictures of the sailors’ surrender on Iranian television, in explicit violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Yet, speaking from the White House on Sunday morning, President Obama announced that “Iran has fulfilled key commitments under the nuclear deal” and would “begin to receive relief,” starting with $1.7 billion wired to Tehran from the U.S. And he is correct. None of Iran’s saber-rattling violates the narrowly drawn JCPOA, which shunted key concerns into multiple secret side deals. The administration made it as easy as possible for Iran to fulfill its side of the bargain — then announced the prisoner release on Implementation Day to kick up a cloud of glory that would obscure any lingering concerns.

Meanwhile, the failure of the administration to demand the Americans’ release as a starting point for negotiations enabled Iran to extract even more favorable terms for itself, securing not only its frozen assets and sanctions relief, but seven Iranians imprisoned in the United States — who, unlike their American counterparts, were justly imprisoned for a variety of crimes, including stealing U.S. technology for the Iranian military and hacking the U.S. power-grid database. That is a precedent that other hostile regimes are sure to exploit. Furthermore, the regime still holds at least one American, businessman Siamak Namazi, and is sure to use him as a bargaining chip in the future. (The regime claims to know nothing about CIA contractor Robert Levinson, missing in Iran since 2007.)

This is the pattern clear-eyed observers have come to expect: Iranian provocation followed by American capitulation. In the six months since the JCPOA was released, Iran has only grown bolder and more belligerent, and it is not clear if there is any provocation, short of a direct military assault on American forces, that would occasion from the White House more than its customary finger-wagging. Iranian leaders know that Barack Obama and John Kerry are far more invested in this deal than they are — and, once again, they have taken full advantage of that fact.