In Iran nuclear negotiations, dollar could succeed where dialogue has failed

OPINION:

There is no precise definition of an exercise in futility, but a decade of fruitless effort might serve as a rule of thumb. Next month will mark 10 years since Iran and American diplomats sat down in Oman to begin secret negotiations over scrapping the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Despite the passage of time, the mullahs are still on course in their quest for a bomb, and the U.S. is still trying to dissuade them with halfhearted tugs at their clerical coats.

Iran has managed to produce 70 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%, as Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently announced. If further enriched to 90%, the supply would be sufficient to build several nuclear weapons, he said. The news is disturbing but not unexpected. Even during the period in which Iran was supposedly restricted by the terms of the now-moribund Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, international inspectors turned up evidence that the work was proceeding in secret.

As the mullahcracy moves closer to its goal, the Biden administration is foolishly assisting it by renewing waivers on economic sanctions that allow Iran and Russia to collaborate at nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran. The waivers, reportedly reauthorized by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Jan. 31, constitute a continuation of lucrative concessions contained in the original 2015 nuclear agreement.

The Biden team is, in effect, quietly blowing on the dying embers of that deal, hoping to reignite it. The assessment is there is time for talk: Because Iran lacks both the expertise to assemble a functional bomb and a missile capable of delivering one, CIA Director William Burns says, the nuclear threat is not imminent.

Such a reckoning is little comfort to Israel, though, where miscalculation of nearby danger could mean utter destruction. After all, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called for the annihilation of “the Zionist regime.”

Accordingly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to prevent the Islamic regime from finishing its bomb. A recent drone attack that caused significant damage to an Iranian military-industrial factory may have been an Israeli operation, but such speculation remains unconfirmed.   

Thankfully, the United States does not face the same immediate danger that Israel suffers. That should not serve as an excuse for tolerating — much less facilitating — Iran’s nuclear tyranny. Rather than granting waivers that facilitate the regime’s nuclear program, Biden officials should ratchet up the economic pressure.

Toward that end, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has introduced legislation that would prohibit the administration from providing the Islamic Republic with sanctions relief. “There is absolutely no reason to continue issuing these waivers, which allow Iran and Russia to cooperate on building up Iran’s nuclear program,” Mr. Cruz wrote in an accompanying statement.

“To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war” is sage advice often credited to Winston Churchill. Between these two extremes of human interaction, though, lies the considerable power of economic persuasion. America should not begin another decade of futile nuclear negotiations without deploying the powerful dollar to its full effect.