Biden Is Helping the Mullahs

When Joe Biden assumed the presidency one year ago, America had finally achieved energy independence.  Iran was in chaos, fearing that its nuclear ambitions had been dashed. A year later, it’s America’s interests that have been dashed.

Biden campaigned on a pledge to rejoin the Iran nuclear accord and work on its weaknesses later. He seemed to believe that reinstituting deference and tacit assurances of eventual nuclear power status to Shiite Muslims would win concessions from the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. It didn’t work out.

Monitoring for compliance allowed under the treaty was notably lax. Still, at the end of 2020, the United Nations watchdog agency was investigating Iran for cheating on nuclear materials and production with a pending referral to the UN Security Council. Economic sanctions under the treaty had produced an economic crisis with mass protests throughout the country. Iran was reeling.

Biden came to the rescue. Instead of cracking down on Iran’s noncompliance with the treaty, he pressured America’s allies to pull back a censure resolution, sending a clear message to Iran that the US no longer minded that they were hiding nuclear sites and materials, in violation of the treaty and global nonproliferation agreements.

Iran immediately began investigating the new limits of America’s tolerance. The regime refused UN access to nuclear sites and increased uranium enrichment to 60%, far beyond the level required for peaceful nuclear power production.

Meanwhile, Iranians stepped up their violence in the region, including drone and rocket attacks on American forces. Biden not only refused to respond militarily to the terrorist attacks, but he also ended support for a Saudi-led campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis and removed America’s defense missiles from Saudi Arabia.

As Iran accelerated its nuclear program and regional military aggression, Biden inexplicably helped avoid a financial crisis too. He suspended sanctions, giving Iran accessibility to frozen funds and to Chinese oil imports.

Iran is up and running. We better hope that the mullahs are just kidding with their “Death to America” chants.

Biden’s response to America’s energy needs has been similarly woke and pathetic. At the conclusion of the Trump presidency, America had achieved energy independence for the first time in 50 years.

Trump encouraged the shale oil and gas revolution. He lifted restrictions on drilling, especially in remote areas. He permitted vitally needed pipelines. He blocked extreme environmental regulations that intentionally reduced our gas and oil supplies. As a result, America had surplus fuel supplies and no longer had to import oil from Arabs, Russians, Iranians or Mexicans.

Biden promptly, inexplicably (simple Trump hatred?) reversed all the Trump policies when in office. We’re importing again.  The economic cost of losing our energy independence is about $50 billion annually.

Now Biden has to grovel, unsuccessfully, with OPEC to increase production. Once again, we have to be mindful of our energy needs when dealing with foreign actors.

Moreover, even if you believe only massive carbon reduction mandates can keep the planet from burning, none of this affects climate change. The Biden reforms don’t affect which fuels we consume, only whether we buy them from our own producers or overseas, where power plants are often more polluting than ours.

America’s worst enemy could hardly have inflicted more damage than has our own president. In thrall to a tiny faction of far-left ideologues, Biden has suffered multiple other failures, too, including immigration, inflation, urban crime, and school closures.

Unfortunately, here’s where it gets partisan and divisive. The solemn duty of the Republican party is to remove this person and his ilk from office before they do more irreversible harm to the republic. That duty includes nominating the quality candidates most likely to win elections, which may not always be the ones most popular with Republicans.

In 2020, Trump lost an election to an exceptionally weak candidate who hardly campaigned and who was uninspiring even to his own supporters. Considering historical precedent and his record in office, Trump deserved to win in a landslide.

Instead, he lost.  Hard as it may be to accept, many voters wanted somebody, anybody who “wasn’t Trump“.

In service to their country and posterity, Republicans need to be more strategic, starting now. It’s important.

*****

Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.