Khamenei, You Have a Friend

Biden is the ayatollahs’ man in Washington. In a new book, former Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif hints that Robert Malley, Biden’s envoy to the negotiations, helped the Iranians in 2015 to market their proposal for a nuclear agreement.

Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who led the negotiations on the nuclear agreement in 2015, recently published a memoir that, according to Iranian human rights activist Heshmat Alavi, contains interesting information. Zarif reveals that in 2014, the regime in Iran formulated a draft nuclear agreement. “We decided to send the draft agreement to the P5+1 [the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, France and Germany] through a source having direct contact with the American delegation and who was an active member of the International Crisis Group. The goal was to pave the way in favor of our draft agreement.”

Zarif claims that the secret process produced the desired results. After receiving Tehran’s draft, the ICG papered a position under the headline, “Iran and the P5+1: To Solve the Nuclear Rubik’s Cube.” Zarif reveals that the ICG paper was based on Iran’s draft agreement; exactly as he hoped, it was adopted by the Americans and became the basis for the nuclear agreement that was achieved in June 2015. The agreement was formulated by Ali Vaz, who served then and now as the head of the ICG’s Iran desk. Until 2009, his boss was Robert Malley, who headed the ICG’s Middle East and North Africa department. In 2014, Malley was a member of Barack Obama’s nuclear negotiations team. He returned to the ICG as the organization’s president in 2017 and remained there with Vaz until President Joe Biden appointed him as the envoy for negotiations with Iran last year.

The ICG denies Zarif’s claim, but the fact is that both Malley and Vaz have for more than a decade supported the removal of economic sanctions on Iran by the U.N. and U.S. They also support the removal of limitations on Iran’s nuclear activities. Last October, Malley said the Biden administration is planning “for a world where there are no limitations on Iran’s nuclear program … [W]e are ready to remove all sanctions placed on Iran by the Trump administration.”

Vaz and Malley have extensive relationships with Hamas and Hezbollah. At one time, the American envoy called these terrorist organizations “authentic and deep-rooted social-political movements.”* According to the Iranian media, Vaz is a mediator (along with Russian Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov) between the Iranian and U.S. delegations at the Vienna talks.

No More Leftist than Biden

When Biden appointed Malley to manage the U.S. return to the nuclear agreement, there were those who claimed he did this to pacify the progressive left in the Democratic Party while he remained moderate. This claim does not square with the historical record.

Since 1979, as a senator, then as vice president and today as president, Biden was and remains one of the clear supporters of the ayatollahs’ regime in Washington. During the American hostage crisis at the embassy in Tehran in 1979, Biden opposed any aggressive operation to free the hostages. His reaction to the 9/11 attacks was to call on the Bush administration to give $200 million to the regime in Tehran as a goodwill gesture.

Biden was the architect of the American withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, something that, in fact, transferred control of the country to Iran. As vice president, he was an ardent supporter of the nuclear agreement, which paved Iran’s path to nuclear weapons by means of canceling sanctions imposed on the country, etc.

When Prime Minister Naftali Bennett refused to meet with Malley during his visit to Israel, Biden reacted angrily and may have used the moment to break contact with Bennett for a number of months. Two weeks ago, three members of the American negotiations team resigned. The three, including Malley’s deputy, Richard Nephew, rejected Malley’s placatory approach with Iran and asserted that, in light of Iran’s nuclear advancement, the 2015 agreement was no longer relevant. According to The Wall Street Journal, the disagreement between Malley and Nephew reached Biden, who supported Malley’s position.

All this leads us to an unpleasant conclusion. The Biden administration is allied with Iran in everything related to its nuclear program. No agreement will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and the Biden administration will not impose any sanctions. On the contrary, the administration is working to defend Iran from all its opponents, as it did by removing the Houthis from the list of terrorist organizations and imposed sanctions on Egypt last week.

Demonstrated Lack of Seriousness

All of this is in contrast to what they sold the public regarding relations between the new government in Israel and the Democratic administration. We get the impression that Bennett and the other ministers have yet to internalize the reality. At the end of his first telephone conversation with Biden since the rift, Bennett told Biden this week that Israel is reserving the option for action against Iranian nuclear facilities. This statement was not directed toward the public in Israel — we inherently understand this – but toward the Biden administration.

Bennett’s statement indicates that he plans to lobby the Biden administration to change its position, just as he intended when he sent National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata to Washington this week. Bennett is not alone. Even Foreign Minister Ya’ir Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz are giving the impression that they don’t understand the Biden administration’s approach and that there’s no one to work with there on matters related to the struggle against Iran.

There are those who say Israel does not have a choice but to appear in harmony with the Biden administration, but there is another side to this claim. Frequent praise and endless efforts to lobby a hostile administration harms Israel’s standing and credibility with our true allies in the struggle against Iran’s nuclear program. These include the principalities in the Gulf and Republicans in Congress. They see the conduct of the Israeli government and its pretense of innocence toward the Biden administration as a demonstration of weakness and a lack of seriousness regarding an existential issue.

The Saudis and Emiratis are reacting to Washington’s betrayal by taking several steps, some of which are contradictory. On the one hand, they are trying to improve relations with Tehran and, along with Egypt, they are drawing closer to China and Russia. On the other hand, they are testing Israel. The visits by Gantz and President Isaac Herzog to the Gulf states in recent weeks were a signal to those Arab states that are depending on Israel to lead an aggressive struggle against Iran.

The Republicans remain strongly opposed to renewing the nuclear agreement and to nullifying sanctions on Iran. Only this week, 32 Republican senators sent a letter to Biden warning that they will block any agreement that is not brought before them for approval.

Israeli policy, which is supposed to be anchored in reality, must focus on allies — the Arabs and Republicans — who see eye-to-eye with us regarding the Iranian threat. As long as Israeli policy turns a blind eye to the Biden administration’s hostile policy, Israel will hurt its ability to act alone and along, along with the aid of its partners, thwart Tehran’s march toward building a nuclear arsenal.

*Editor's Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.