Reports have come out this week, that world powers and the Iranians may be inching closer to a renewed Iran nuclear accord. Troublingly, a senior Iranian official said in a recent interview, “The achievements of the Islamic Republic in the nuclear talks in the past one month were exceptional.” This comes on the heels of Iran’s top nuclear negotiator providing local reporters with a list of “concessions,” Tehran has extracted from Washington. Diplomacy involves compromise, but if these
reports are to be believed – and we’ve seen no evidence since President Biden took office that they should be discounted - it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Biden administration’s Iran negotiators are simply bad at their jobs. The American people were promised a longer and stronger agreement, yet today, Iran is boasting about the “concessions” to which Team Biden has acquiesced. Founded on HatredNone of the above is terribly surprising. Hatred of the west is central to the Islamic Republic’s ethos. As far back as 1963, over a decade before the regime came to power, Iran’s founding Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, expressed a deep and abiding hatred for the Jewish people. Antisemitism was a core part of his philosophy. And throughout the regime’s existence, hating Jews, Americans, Brits, and the rest of the western world has been a central and consistent theme. This hatred has been matched by the regime’s brutality. Over 1 million people died in the Iran-Iraq war, where Iran used human waves of
child soldiers to attack Iraqi positions. In the late 1980s, as many as 30,000 Iranians were executed for their political beliefs by a special commission overseen by now President of Iran Ebrahim Raisi. Today, the Iranian people live under the crushing weight of the regime’s theocracy, as Tehran spends its time, effort, and money, brutalizing Iranian citizens at home and supporting terrorists abroad. This is with whom the United States is indirectly negotiating. This is the regime that has extracted concessions from the President of the United States. These are the people that if a new nuclear deal is signed will receive a massive
financial windfall of hundreds of billions enabling them to commit yet more atrocities. It should be no surprise that Israeli Prime Minister Lapid has made his country’s opposition to the unfolding agreement clear and that Jerusalem is not beholden to it. Enter the GermansWe often focus on the American role in negotiations with Iran because, we are, after all, an American organization. But the Europeans play an important part in this as well. And the Germans, who boast the largest economy in Europe and whose dark history brings with it both burdens and unique knowledge, are in the room with the Iranians and have both the power and responsibility to ensure Iran does not achieve the means to commit a second Holocaust. In many respects, Germany is a true ally to both the U.S. and Israel. This isn’t to say they are perfect. In fact, the CUFI Action Fund, among many others including the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A, recently condemned a German antisemitism commissioner, Michael Blume, for being an antisemite. So, things aren’t all roses and unicorns in Germany, but that doesn’t mean the Germans should be discounted. Israel is Germany’s fourth largest trading partner in the Middle East. And the German-Israeli relationship extends to military cooperation as well, with the Israelis, for example, having purchased highly sophisticated German-made submarines and the Germans employing the Israeli Spike Anti-Tank Missile system. This
cooperation even extends to the nuclear realm with Germany and Israel having secretly jointly developed a nuclear warning system in the late 2000s. When we were discussing this week’s Action Update, there was a bit of debate around the office as to whether we should highlight the potential role Germany can and should play in taking a harder line against Iran. As one staffer noted, “It’s not a good day if the Germans are your last best hope.” And we realize that at the end of the day, the only nation upon which the Israelis can rely is their own. So, we’re not even cautiously optimistic about what the Germans might do in the context of negotiations with Iran, but we do feel there’s an opening here, and we hope Berlin has the courage to acknowledge and act on that reality. To that end, we hope each of the European countries within the P5+1 (France, United Kingdom, and Germany) remembers what happens when an antisemitic and revisionist nation such as Iran is empowered. Back when President Obama signed the first Iran nuclear deal, a CUFI staffer authored an op-ed in the Washington Examiner with the headline
“This Deal Leads to War.” We hope he was wrong. But if the Biden administration continues its weak approach to Iran, and the Germans are indeed our last, best hope, then the author of that bleak op-ed was probably right. And if he is, in the years to come we will witness a horrible and completely avoidable tragedy. Sincerely,
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