Sunday, May 18, 2025

USA Falling for Iran's Tricks Again

  • Iran appears to be using diplomacy to stall, deceive and advance its nuclear capabilities behind closed doors, while securing financial and geopolitical concessions from the West.
  • The disturbing part is not that Iran's mullahs are following their usual tactics. The horror is that American officials and Western leaders appear to be falling for this shell-game all over again.
  • The problem with enriching hostile regimes to "buy quiet" is that this is the money they use to build nuclear weapons with which to attack us.
  • An additional problem, unfortunately, is that the Iranian regime has a well-documented history of lying.
  • No deal that permits any level of enrichment or allows Iran to keep its centrifuges intact will prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.
  • We are trying to "deal" with theocrats who believe it is their divine duty to destroy Israel and America, and take over the oil-rich states in the Persian Gulf.
  • What makes the current situation even more exasperating is that despite decades of talks, deals and diplomatic theater with North Korea, Russia, China and Iran, we have watched them exploit Western weakness and lack of resolve time and again right under our noses. Yet, like Charlie Brown and the football, the West insists on accepting the same failed, bogus guarantees. We do not need another Swiss-cheese agreement filled with loopholes. We do not need photo-ops and press conferences proclaiming bogus triumphs.
(Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, born in Iran, a political scientist, human rights defender, and journalist, is president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated. )

No comments: