Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett obviously had the deep thinkers of the Biden administration in mind when he asserted that Iran’s presidential election was a sign for world powers to “wake up” before returning to a nuclear agreement with Tehran. The winner of Iran’s presidential election this past Friday was one Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi won with 62 percent of the vote.
Iran’s president-elect is sanctioned by the United States in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Raisi has been dubbed the “hangman” as a result of his work as deputy prosecutor for Revolutionary Court in Tehran. The Revolutionary Court is perhaps better known as the Death Commission.
Bennett observed in Jerusalem yesterday that “of all the people that [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei could have chosen, he chose the hangman of Tehran, the man infamous among Iranians and across the world for leading the death committees that executed thousands of innocent Iranian citizens throughout the years.”
I think that Bennett correctly reads the tea leaves indicating that Khameni cleared the path to Raisi’s election as president and his possible successor as Supreme Leader. See, for example, Lazar Berman’s Times of Israel backgrounder here.
Bennett to the contrary notwithstanding, President Biden and his servitors have no intention of waking up. They are resolved to remain asleep. They will reenter the Iran nuclear deal whatever it takes.
That is my takeaway from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s comments on Fox News Sunday yesterday (video below). Whether or not you take what Sullivan has to say at face value, he is a fool. The open question is whether he believes what he is saying or is lying on behalf of his boss, also a fool.
Sullivan’s comments on the coming deal with Iran were the headline message to come out of the interview. However, Fox News plays up Sullivan’s comments on China in Evie Fordham’s story “China will face international ‘isolation’ if no cooperation on coronavirus origin probe.”
Oh no, not that! In truth, not even that.
Sullivan praised President Biden for inducing his fellow G-7 leaders to put “pressure” on China to allow a transparent investigation of the pandemic’s origins: “What Joe Biden did in Europe this week was rally the democratic world to speak with a common voice on this issue for the first time since Covid broke out. President Trump wasn’t able to do it. President Biden was. He got the G-7 to endorse a statement saying in unison that China must allow an investigation to proceed within its territory,” Sullivan said.
“It is that diplomatic spadework – rallying the nations of the world, imposing political and diplomatic pressure on China, that is a core part of the effort we are undertaking to ultimately face China with a stark choice: Either they will allow, in a responsible way, investigators in to do the real work of figuring out where this came from, or they will face isolation in the international community,” he continued.
And that’s not all! The U.S. won’t rely solely on China, Sullivan said: “The president reserves the right through our own analysis, our own intelligence community’s efforts that he has directed and through other work that we will do with allies and partners to continue pressing on every front until we get to the bottom of how this virus came into the world.”
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