Barack Obama realigned the position of the United States in the Middle East with the regime whose motto is “Death to America” rotating with “Death to Israel.” When it came to the regime’s nuclear program, Obama sought to extend the timeline while extending generous financial support. Why would he do that? The mullahs never even offered a timeout from the “Death to America” routine.
I think the simplest hypothesis explaining Obama’s policy is that he somehow supports the regime’s aims. The second most plausible theory is that postulated by Michael Doran in his 2015 Tablet essay “Obama’s secret Iran strategy.” My theory, I believe, has Occam’s razor going for it. Doran’s has other advantages.
From Biden’s Secretary of State on down, as with the appointment of Iran envoy Robert Malley, the Biden administration is poised to pick up where Obama left off. We shall see. Nevertheless, the only policy that makes sense is one that aims for regime change. With the likes of Malley on board, we can be sure that Biden has something else entirely in mind.
Let us turn to the news that “[o]n February 4, 2021, a court in Antwerp, Belgium delivered a guilty verdict with 20 years of imprisonment in the case of Assadollah Assadi, a career Iranian diplomat who plotted a bombing attack against a major gathering of Iranian opposition members in France. The attack was thwarted by authorities across multiple countries, resulting in Assadi’s arrest, along with his co-conspirators.”
The link goes to Hamid Enayat’s American Thinker post drawing on Steven Erlanger’s New York Times story along with other sources and background. Enayat includes this salient point:
“We know that the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the regime President Hassan Rouhani, and the always-smiling Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, all three knew about the attack, all three agreed to the attack, and all three ordered it. If you reflect on this, you can imagine the scope of this attack,” said Alejo Vidal-Quadras, former Vice-President of the European Parliament.
Enayat makes this key point: “Much of this activity throughout Europe is based around the regime’s need to suppress any attempts to create a pro-democratic government in Iran.”
Whole thing here.
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