By Richard
Goldberg
Tuesday, August 03, 2021
When Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
selected Ebrahim Raisi to be the next president of the Islamic Republic of
Iran, Khamenei was sending Washington a message akin to Nikita Khrushchev’s
infamous 1956 pronouncement: “We will bury you.” But don’t tell that to the
unflappable advocates of appeasement in Washington who insist it is always the
right time for rapprochement with Iran.
Raisi is a hanging judge who sentenced
thousands of political prisoners to die, and he remains ideologically devoted
to the Islamic Revolution. Yet somehow, the appeasers believe his inauguration
this week will magically open the door to peace for our time.
Back in 2013, this same group was
promoting a completely different narrative. After the supreme leader selected
the supposedly moderate Hassan Rouhani to be president following eight years of
threats and bluster from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Western newspapers and analysts
hailed Rouhani’s elevation as a sure sign that Iran was passing
into Thermidor.
“Iranians took a step toward ending their
country’s isolation by voting overwhelmingly in weekend presidential elections
for a moderate reformer who promised a clean break from policies that put Iran
on a collision course with the West,” wrote the Washington
Post. “Rouhani will have a powerful mandate to
improve Iran’s international relations and attempt to negotiate a settlement of
Iran’s nuclear activities.”
An article in the New York
Times, headlined “President-Elect Stirs
Optimism in Iran and West,” noted that “there is growing optimism in Iran and
in the West that Mr. Rouhani, 64, is ready to restart serious talks on the
nuclear issue.”
Rouhani, of course, was no moderate, nor even a reformer. Those who looked more closely saw he was
a loyal servant of the supreme leader. He was a member of the Supreme National
Security Council’s special operations committee during the high-water mark of
Iranian terrorism abroad — including the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina, the 1992
assassination of four dissidents at a Berlin restaurant, the 1994 bombing of the
Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that left 85 people dead, and the 1996
bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. airmen.
But the pro-engagement narrative at least
made sense. Iran faced significant economic pressure after Congress imposed
sanctions on the regime’s central bank and forced the SWIFT financial-messaging
system to cut off Iranian banks. Compared to Ahmadinejad and his calls for
wiping Israel off the map, Khamenei’s other lieutenants came off as
superficially moderate at least. This gave the Obama White House the political
room to bring secret talks with the regime into the public domain — and press
forward with what would become the Iran nuclear deal.
Eight years later, no amount of spin or
massage can cast the man hand-picked by the supreme leader to be the next
president as a moderate. In 1988, as a zealous young prosecutor, Raisi sat on
Iran’s death commission, ordering the execution of so-called “apostates” and
“denigrators of Islam” every hour for
months. The Hangman of Tehran called these murders “one of the proudest achievements of the system.” He
would keep sending Iranians to their death for several decades: as chief
prosecutor in Tehran, first deputy head of Iran’s judiciary, and, most
recently, as judiciary chief. That is why the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Raisi in 2019.
If the selection of a “moderate” cleared
the way for diplomacy in 2013, wouldn’t a return to a fire-breathing
“hardliner” like Raisi spell its demise? Not at all, argue the nuclear-deal
die-hards.
“Why Raisi Is the West’s Best Hope for a
Deal with Iran,” suggested the headline on a column from Johns Hopkins’s Vali Nasr.
“Hard-liners would never accept an agreement signed by a moderate — but they’ll
fall into line if it comes from one of their own.”
“For Biden, Iranian Hard-liner May Be Best
Path to Restoring Nuclear Deal,” added the New York Times. On the Times opinion
page, Ali Vaez and Dina Esfandiary added to the chorus: “The Hard-Liners Won in Iran. That’s Not All Bad
News.”
When asked if Raisi’s selection would
complicate the administration’s drive to rejoin the nuclear deal and lift U.S.
sanctions on the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Biden
national-security adviser Jake Sullivan said only one person mattered in Iran: the supreme leader. How funny —
that’s exactly what opponents of the nuclear deal said back in 2013 when the
Obama administration was selling America on the need to embrace a flawed nuclear deal to empower
“Rouhani the moderate.”
Of course, Sullivan is correct — and the
selection of Raisi is only one of many signals the supreme leader has sent
Biden this year, making clear that Khamenei fully intends to pocket any
sanctions relief he receives from Washington to fuel the Islamic Republic’s war
on the United States and its allies.
The Justice Department revealed last month that Iran attempted to carry out a terrorist attack on
American soil, kidnapping a U.S. citizen from New York. Iran-backed proxies in
Iraq have attacked U.S. forces for months with little to no response from
Biden. Iran-sponsored terror groups such as Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in
Yemen have lobbed missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia. And the supreme leader
has vastly escalated his nuclear provocations — enriching uranium up to 60
percent purity, producing uranium metal, and limiting monitoring by
international inspectors.
In every way that matters, Khamenei is
telling Biden, “We will bury you.” Biden’s response has been to offer cash.
After all, the nuclear deal is fundamentally an appeasement pact masquerading
as a nonproliferation deal; it offers Iran money for temporary nuclear
restraint, and no restraint at all on the development of nuclear-capable
missiles and the regime’s pursuit of regional hegemony.
In his first press conference as
president-select, Raisi made
clear that Iran would never negotiate the longer, stronger deal Biden said
he could achieve by first returning to the old one. Khamenei reaffirmed
as much last week. Biden should take “no” for an answer and leave a bad deal
where it belongs — in the past.
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