Biden Envoy Tips His Hand

Iran

The Biden regime does not have a feasible military option to eliminate the nuclear program of Iran, according to  Joe Biden’s point man for nuclear negotiations with the rogue regime. The envoy glaringly tipped his hand during a US Senate hearing in an admission that surely delighted the hardliners in Tehran.

“By far the best option is a diplomatic one, and [the] military option cannot resolve this issue,” State Department special envoy Rob Malley said Wednesday during a Senate hearing. “It could set it back, and we’re happy to talk about it more in a classified setting, but there is no military response. … The only real solution is a diplomatic one.”

That statement helped explain Malley’s continued involvement in a sluggish negotiation over the recovery of the 2015 Iran nuclear bargain, a process that has drawn-out despite multiple assertions from the US that the window of possibility would shut if Iran rejected ahead to a contract. Yet Malley’s assessment did little to make clear the management’s  “Plan B” in the event that the talks fail, as he acknowledged they are likely to do, when faced with bipartisan stress to go on from the talks.

“Let me ask you this: Why is it that we are still keeping the door open?” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) asked Malley. “Because I get no sense of what that plan is. … What is the plan?”

Malley bragged about a range of sanctions enforcement maneuvers carried out by the administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s announcement throughout the hearing of the suppression of an “oil smuggling and money laundering network led by” a senior official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force, to say that the administration has not enabled the other threats positioned by the routine to smolder throughout the nuclear talks.

“We’re not waiting to see what happens with the negotiations to take action on all of the issues that you raised,” he said. “But all of these problems would be much worse and much more difficult and much more interesting if Iran were a threshold state on the verge of acquiring a nuclear bomb.”

That response fell short to satisfy Menendez, that had actually recalled in his opening up statement Blinken’s assessment in January that “if a deal is not reached in the next few weeks, Iran’s ongoing nuclear advances will make it impossible to return to the JCPOA,” as the 2015 nuclear bargain is known.

“In short, Iran has dragged out this process, driving up its demands and exerting its leverage, convincing the world that the United States wants the JCPOA more than the Iranian regime does,” Menendez said in his opening statement. “After months of negotiations, this is the Iran we must contend with, not the Iran you hoped would be driven by practical considerations at the bargaining table.”

Sen. James Risch (R-ID), the elderly Republican on the board, echoed Menendez’s grievance regarding the extension of the talks.

“Talks remain stalled, and it’s clear the Iranian regime is negotiating in bad faith as it always does,” he said in his own opening statement. “And while it continues to levy unreasonable demands to re-enter the nuclear deal, instead of prolonging this period of uncertainty, it’s long past time the administration end negotiations and implement a more holistic Iran policy. We’d like to hear about that holistic policy today.”

Malley acknowledged, in his exchange with Risch, that the administration had allowed Iran to extend the talks beyond the time frame set by senior U.S. officials.

“I apologize — it’s true that we’ve said things in the past,” he replied when Risch pressed to know when the U.S. could abandon the negotiations. “What has always been our guiding star is what are the nonproliferation benefits that our experts tell us and the intelligence community tells us. But again, being at the table doesn’t mean we’re waiting.”

H/T The Washington Examiner

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