Sometimes, there are mild caves. Sometimes, there are moderate caves. And sometimes, there are full-on capitulations. This is the latter-most.
By reportedly preparing — yet again — to issue waivers for foreign nations to collaborate in the solidification of Iran’s ostensibly “civil” nuclear program, the Trump administration is now set to fully capitulate to the forces of fundamentalist, genocidal jihadist evil. Deep state lackeys within the infamously anti-Israel/pro-Arabist Foggy Bottom bureaucracy have apparently teamed up with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to deny National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a signature victory — and, in so doing, have laid the groundwork for the Trump administration to catastrophically walk back its erstwhile hardline anti-waiver rhetoric and embarrass the White House’s counter-jihadism deterrence credibility. The result of the continuation of nuclear waivers for Iran, over a year after the United States “exited” President Obama’s harrowing Iran nuclear deal, is the de facto continuation of that deal for all intents and purposes. That is truly not an exaggeration.
Opposing a nuclear Iran was once a unifying issue on the Right — in March 2015, even more dovish senators such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) signed onto Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) infamous letter to Ayatollah Khamenei that warned about the non-binding nature of Obama’s nuclear accord. Now, barely over four years later, a Republican president is set to de facto continue the Iran deal and, for the time being, only one U.S. senator has thus far exhibited the courage to call out the administration’s perfidy.
Why do Republicans even bother to win elections? At this point, is the sole purpose of the Republican Party — and the conservative movement, at-large — to confirm black-robed denizens to the “least dangerous” branch in a hopeless attempt to win the Left’s rigged judicial supremacist con?
The Trump administration’s addiction to the continual doling out of “civil” nuclear waivers is utterly indefensible. Iran has one of the most abundant hydrocarbon reserves of any nation in the world. It is gullible in the extreme to believe, as the terrorist Iranian mullocracy has posited, that the regime needs “civil” nuclear power to supply domestic energy for the beleaguered Iranian populace. Instead, as Sen. Cruz laudably notes in his condemnatory press release today, “[t]hese waivers … allow the Ayatollahs to build up their nuclear program, including at Fordow, a bunker they dug into the side of a mountain so they could build nuclear weapons.” The entire existence of Iran’s menacing facility at Fordow, in addition to its infamous heavy water reactor facility at Arak, belie the notion that Iran’s nuclear program is anything other than violent, hegemonic, and (ultimately) genocidal in its jihadist-inspired aims.
Proponents of extending the waivers further argue that the need for diplomatic niceties with the sycophantic pro-Iran Europeans, coupled with the fear of imposing sanctions on European, Russian, and Chinese firms for their cooperation with Iran on its “civil” nuclear program, ought to caution in favor of at least one additional round of a 90-day waiver extension. But this is sophistry hiding itself under a thin veneer of pragmatism. Did the Trump administration actually extricate itself from Obama’s Iranian nuclear accord? Does the Trump administration wish to affirmatively, beyond any doubt, ensure that the Iranian ayatollahs do not acquire the most lethal forms of weapons known to humanity? If the answers to these questions are “yes,” then this is not a particularly close call. Stop empowering jihadist-inspired Shiite fundamentalists hellbent on committing a second Holocaust. Bolton and Pompeo are right. Mnuchin and the subversive State Department underlings are wrong.
A U.S. official with knowledge of the administration’s internal Iran battle provided the following comment to The Daily Wire: “The president and Pompeo got left high and dry by their own staffs. For the last month, they’ve been saying that Iran doesn’t have any right to nuclear technology — then, the people around them flipped the script at the very last minute. Now they look like they don’t know what they’re talking about and aren’t in control. It’d be funnier if it weren’t about Iran building a nuke.”
The reality is that the Trump administration actually does seem to listen to the voices of conservatives and conservative activists when we raise our voices and attempt to steer the administration in the right direction. Here, the administration’s reported intention to capitulate yet again to Iran is one perfect example of when a unified and focused conservative movement would be extraordinarily helpful to help keep the White House in line.
But for now, if the reports are true, then shame on the Trump administration.