Threat Analyst Ken Abramowitz is the author of “The Multifront War”
Editor: Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, President, American Center for Democracy (ACD)
The U.S. “remains committed as a matter of policy that Iran will not have a fielded nuclear weapon”, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on March 23, 2023. Two days later, he corrected that statement, saying the U.S. policy is that Iran “never obtains a nuclear weapon”.
On March 24, Admiral John Kirby, the National Security Coordinator for Strategic Communications, declared: “Diplomacy is the best path forward with Iran”. He also stated that the U.S. “is not looking for armed conflict with Iran and does not seek war with Iran”, although we should note that very soon thereafter the U.S. Navy announced the deployment of a nuclear-powered guided missile submarine to the Persian Gulf.
Milley’s and Kirby’s statements confirm the Biden Administration’s appeasement of the enemy that for the past 44 years has been at war with the U.S. This policy ignores the fact that Iran continuously calls for “Death To America” and supports killing as many Americans around the world as they can, including assassinating them in America.
Iran, designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984 by the U.S. State Department, uses several hundred thousand terror operatives globally to carry out physical attacks, narco-terrorism, and cultural terrorism. Most importantly, it has been working doggedly to develop nuclear weapons. But the Biden Administration, like Obama’s Administration before it, ignores this irrefutable and inconvenient fact. Instead, it has been courting Iran to re-negotiate the very bad nuclear deal (JCPOA) that had been negotiated by the Obama’s team.
Iran is reportedly only weeks away from enriching enough uranium to assemble nuclear weapons. So, what is the Administration’s strategy?
Is the Biden Administration serious in its quest to save America from the existential threat of an Iranian nuclear attack on our homeland or on U.S. allies? Does the Biden Administration have a strategy for protecting us from nuclear blackmail in the future? Or does the Administration secretly accept Iran’s intention to develop nuclear weapons?
We at Citizens For National Security are not privy to the Biden Administration’s thinking. So we offer seven plausible reasons for this ineffectual and dangerous policy toward Iran’s nuclear goals:
1) The Administration’s national security team is politically bent on appeasement.
2) The Federal government is full of siloed bureaucracies that do not understand the full scope of the Iranian threat.
3) Many American officials perceive Iran as Israel’s problem, even though Iran has publicly called for the destruction of both the United States and its ally Israel.
4) America has dwindling military forces and weapons in the Middle East due to the “China pivot”, the Ukraine-Russia war, and soldiers’ recruitment deficiencies that are 25-50% below quota.
5) The Department of Defense has been starved for resources due to flat allocated budgets for ten years, adjusted for inflation. And the Central Command has been materially downsized during the past five years, since the ill-advised China pivot.
6) The Administration’s employment of anti-Israel, pro-Iran sympathizers indicates it would not mind if Iran obtained nuclear weapons.
7) The American public has been purposely misinformed about the existential threat posed by Iran, thus minimizing political pressure on the Administration to address this problem.
Alas, it seems the Biden Administration is hell-bent on greenlighting Iranian nuclear weapons, which Teheran’s mullahs would readily use directly through war or indirectly through blackmail.
