In recent weeks, former Obama administration officials have been busy echoing Iranian calls for sanctions relief. They should be forcefully rejected by all those concerned with anything but enriching powerful regime leaders, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Iran’s terror proxies. Sanctions relief will not help the Iranian people. The architects and champions of the failed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action know this, and their thinly veiled justification, COVID-19, is just their latest talking point in the effort to restore a policy of appeasement.
Among the chorus are Ambassador Wendy Sherman and former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. Just as they ignored Iran’s malign behavior during negotiations over the nuclear deal, they ignore evidence today that the COVID-19 pandemic has had no effect on Iran’s belligerence, domestically or internationally.
They also ignore carve-outs in the existing sanctions expressly permitting the sale or transfer of food, medicine, and other humanitarian items. That’s right — nothing in the sanctions is preventing Iranians from getting what they need. Their regime is their only impediment in that regard.
Sherman and Hagel are wearing the same blinders today that they wore when they celebrated a negotiation that resulted in our sending pallets of cash to Tehran. We are still dealing with the repercussions of their failure. The lifeline we sent to Iran strengthened their paramilitary forces throughout the region — Iranian regional proxies such as Hezbollah. Today, Iranian-backed threats are so acute that the United States has deployed Patriot missile launchers and other defense systems at key bases housing American troops in Iraq and offered a $10 million bounty on Hezbollah’s senior military commander in Iraq, Mohammed Kawtharani.
Moreover, in recent days, rockets were fired at an American oilfield service company in Iraq. Iran has also harassed U.S. naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, deployed anti-ship missiles overlooking the strait, and briefly seized a Hong Kong-flagged tanker traveling near that vital waterway.
Advocates of sanctions relief are hoping to sway decision-makers and the public through a bumper-sticker foreign policy strategy which argues that the global pandemic requires we ignore such bad behavior. It’s a bad idea.
If Iran is deserving of sanctions relief, why not North Korea and Venezuela? And if sanctions relief is so important, we should also ask why Iranian President Hassan Rouhani would tell his Cabinet that U.S. sanctions have not curbed Iran’s ability to cope with COVID-19.
Despite this, the Iranians are requesting a $5 billion International Monetary Fund loan. They claim it is to help them fight the virus. What they are neglecting to mention in their campaign to secure this funding (which includes accusing the U.S. of “medical terrorism”) is that an earlier $1 billion in European coronavirus assistance to Iran was stolen by Iranian officials. They are also hoping the world ignores the funds in their sovereign wealth fund and that Iran’s supreme leader controls an empire worth $200 billion.
The problem is not that Iran is short on cash to fight the pandemic. The problem, at least from the regime’s perspective, is that U.S. sanctions are inhibiting the regime’s ability to support terror, advance its nuclear program, and oppress the Iranian people into submission all at once. For the regime, which cares nothing for the Iranian people, the COVID-19 pandemic is their big chance to cash in on Western naivete.
Iran remains led by a theocratic and kleptocratic regime, committed to exporting the Islamic Revolution through violence. Sanctions relief will only aid that tyrannical and murderous regime, which isn’t good for the U.S. It certainly would not benefit the Iranian people.
Sandra Parker is the chairwoman of the Christians United for Israel Action Fund.
