The devastation done by the Biden administration will take a decade or
more to repair.

'How The Biden/Harris Admin Helped Iran Get To The Brink Of A Nuclear
Bomb'

<https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4270632/posts>

<https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/11/how-the-biden-harris-admin-helped-iran-get-to-the-brink-of-a-nuclear-bomb/>

'America and the world desperately need a strong and decisive U.S.
president to undo the damage done to American and global security by the
Biden/Harris administration’s disastrous Iran policies.

By Fred Fleitz
October 11, 2024
Iran has made enormous progress in its nuclear weapons program during
the Biden/Harris administration and reportedly can now enrich enough
weapons-grade uranium to fuel nine nuclear bombs in one month. Although
Iran may be nine months to a year away from having an operational
nuclear weapon, recent attacks by Iran and Israel against each other’s
territory have raised concerns that Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear
program could lead to a nuclear war in the Middle East.

Biden/Harris administration officials have tried to blame President
Trump for the advances in Iran’s nuclear program because he withdrew
from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the JCPOA. Democratic Governor Tim
Walz made this claim during the October 1 vice presidential debate when
he said, “There had been a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran’s
nuclear program in . . . Donald Trump pulled that program and put
nothing else in its place.”

This is absolutely false. The huge advances in Iran’s nuclear weapons
program are the result of major flaws in the JCPOA and a series of
terrible national security policy decisions, including repeated attempts
to appease Iran, by the Obama and Biden administrations.

The first of these bad policy decisions was when the Obama
administration conceded to Iran the “right” to enrich uranium for
peaceful purposes, such as nuclear medicine and nuclear reactor fuel.

This decision reversed the positions of prior Republican and Democratic
administrations who believed Iran could not be trusted to enrich uranium
for peaceful purposes because of covert Iranian efforts to establish a
nuclear weapons program and because it is easy to reconfigure uranium
centrifuges supposedly constructed for peaceful purposes to produce
weapons-grade nuclear fuel.

Allowing Iran to enrich its own uranium for peaceful purposes has never
made economic sense due to a glut of reactor fuel and nuclear medicine
on the world market. Iran also does not need nuclear power due to its
vast oil and natural gas reserves. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu explained this to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell in an October 2014
interview when he said Iran’s centrifuges “are only good for one thing:
to make bomb-grade material.”

The JCPOA Was a Dangerous Fraud

The Obama administration’s dangerous uranium enrichment concession to
Iran was enshrined in the flawed 2015 JCPOA agreement which, allowed
Iran to enrich uranium to reactor-grade and develop advanced
centrifuges. In effect, this gave Iran the world’s blessing to continue
to develop a uranium enrichment program whose only practical purpose was
to make nuclear weapons fuel.

But it gets worse. The JCPOA lifted sanctions on Iran and provided it
with $150 billion in sanctions relief. This included $1.7 billion in
“pallets of cash” that the U.S. secretly flew to Iran in small planes as
ransom to release five innocent Americans being held in Iranian prisons.
A related UN resolution imposed limited, short-lived sanctions against
Iranian conventional arms transfers, which expired in 2020, and missile
transfers, which expired in 2023.

The JCPOA has a weak inspection regime that Iran did not cooperate with.
This inspection regime was further weakened by secret side deals,
discovered by then-Rep. Mike Pompeo and Senator Tom Cotton, that allowed
Iran to evade inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA). Obama officials reportedly wrote the secret side deals and
refused to share them with Congress.

And to top off this all off, there was substantial cheating on the JCPOA
by Iran. This included clandestine efforts to acquire illicit nuclear
technology and equipment, violating JCPOA restrictions on advanced
centrifuge development, and excess production of heavy water.

In 2018, a huge cache of documents on Iran’s nuclear weapons program
stolen by Israel provided evidence of massive Iranian cheating on the
JCPOA, including several undeclared sites where nuclear weapons work had
been conducted since 2015. IAEA inspection of two of these sites found
evidence of enriched uranium particles, which proved covert nuclear
weapons work had occurred at these locations.

In addition, Iran quietly worked to develop advanced centrifuge designs
and parts in violation of the JCPOA between 2015 and 2020. This allowed
Iran to start deploying advanced centrifuges in 2021. This included
completing a factory in July 2018 to make carbon fiber rotors for
advanced centrifuge machines.

These and other extremely serious weaknesses of the JCPOA are why Donald
Trump justifiably called it “the worst deal ever” and why he withdrew
the United States from this agreement in 2018.

Iran said it would no longer honor its JCPOA commitments after Trump
withdrew from the agreement and began to slowly back out of JCPOA limits
in 2019 and 2020. However, Iran did little to ramp up its uranium
enrichment program until January 2021—weeks before Joe Biden’s
inauguration.

The reason why there was not a surge in Iran’s nuclear weapons program
during President Trump’s term after he withdrew from the JCPOA was
because Iranian leaders were afraid of how Trump would respond. The
global American deterrence Trump established helped keep Iran and other
U.S. adversaries in check during his presidency.

Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program Takes Off Under Biden/Harris
Administration

It is clear that Iran’s leaders were not afraid of Joe Biden. They saw a
new American president desperate to revive the JCPOA and who would
resume the Obama administration’s appeasement policies. The results have
been a catastrophe for global security, with huge advances in Iran’s
nuclear weapons program. Iran also gained at least $100 billion in
additional revenue during the Biden administration because it refused to
enforce U.S. oil sanctions. Most of this oil has been sold to China.
Iran spent this windfall on its military, nuclear, and missile programs
as well as to fund its terrorist proxy groups: Hamas, Hezbollah, the
Houthis, and Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq.

The Biden administration took office in January 2021 determined to
renegotiate the JCPOA to make it “longer and stronger.” Iranian
officials repeatedly said they would not agree to changes to the JCPOA,
but they participated in fruitless talks in Vienna to restore the JCPOA
until March 2022. Not only did Iran refuse to negotiate in good faith in
these talks, a Russian ambassador, with the assistance of a Chinese
ambassador, ran the Vienna talks because Iranian diplomats refused to
meet in the same room with their U.S. counterparts.

Iran significantly stepped up its nuclear weapons program while
multilateral talks to revive the JCPOA were underway between April 2021
and March 2022. This included deploying advanced centrifuges in
February and April 2021 and producing uranium metal in February 2021.

The most serious development was when Iran announced in November 2021
that it had enriched uranium to the 60% U-235 level for the first time.
60%-enriched uranium can be further enriched to 90% (weapons-grade) in
about a week.

Biden officials worked hard to convince Iran to agree to a new nuclear
deal by offering a series of dangerous concessions. This included
proposing to take Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps off the U.S. list of
terrorist organizations. Several members of the U.S. negotiating team
resigned in late 2021 because they believed the concessions being
offered to Iran were excessive and would lead to a bad nuclear
agreement.

Multilateral talks with Iran to revive the JCPOA broke down in March
2022 after Russia threatened to block a new nuclear deal unless its
trade with Iran was exempted from U.S. and European sanctions imposed on
Russia due to its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

After the multilateral talks broke down, the Biden/Harris administration
used Oman as an intermediary to negotiate a secret, oral, and unwritten
agreement with Iran. Biden Administration critics claimed this was done
to evade Congress’s oversight of this agreement.

The secret deal was described as an interim agreement with major U.S.
concessions. These reportedly included freezing Iran’s enrichment of
uranium to 60%. This concession meant the Biden/Harris administration
agreed to accept Iran enriching to the dangerous 60% level. Iran was
also allowed to keep its nuclear infrastructure, including advanced
uranium centrifuges, and permitted to continue to develop this
technology.

Iran reportedly agreed under the deal to stop its proxy groups from
attacking U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq and to cooperate with IAEA
investigations of its nuclear program. Iran never abided by either of
these provisions.

In exchange for agreeing to the above requirements, Iran was to receive
over $20 billion in sanctions relief. The U.S. also reportedly agreed
not to impose new sanctions on Iran.

In addition, this agreement included a U.S.-Iran prisoner exchange and a
U.S. ransom payment to Iran of $5 billion. This payment was frozen in
October 2023 after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel.

Meanwhile, Iran engaged in other malign activities during the
Biden/Harris administration, such as selling attack drones and missiles
to Russia for its use in the Ukraine War and working with Russia, China,
and North Korea to form a new anti-West “axis.”

There also were significant advances in Iran’s missile program,
including a possible hypersonic missile launch, advanced cruise
missiles, space launches (which were believed to be ICBM test launches),
and new missiles designed to evade missile defenses. It is unclear
whether Iran fired its newest missiles during two missile attacks on
Israel this year.

The Biden/Harris Administration’s Appeasement of Iran Caused the Middle
East to Explode

The breakdown in security and stability in the Middle East since the
October 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis by Hamas is a consequence of the
Biden/Harris administration’s incompetent Iran policies. Their
appeasement of Iran emboldened Iran and its terrorist proxies to attack
Israel and U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria. Iran also attacked Israel
twice in 2024 with missiles and drones.

There have been conflicting press reports of Iran’s involvement in the
October 7 Hamas terrorist attack. The Wall Street Journal reported on
October 8, 2023, that Iran helped develop and fund the Hamas attack and
gave Hamas the green light to launch it. A Hamas spokesman told the BBC
on October 8 that Hamas had direct support from Iran. However, although
Iranian leaders praised the attack, they claimed that Iran was
uninvolved in it. A senior Hamas official backed up this claim on
October 9 by saying that Iran and Hezbollah were not involved in the
Hamas terrorist attack.

Although Iran’s exact role in the horrendous October 7 Hamas terrorist
attack is unclear, I also believe it will at least be proved that Hamas
could not have conducted the attack without arms and funding from Iran.

Iran is Much Closer to Becoming a Nuclear Weapons State Because of the
Biden/Harris Administration’s Incompetent Iran Policies

This article provides a summary of the profoundly incompetent and naïve
Iran policies by the Biden/Harris administration that did enormous
damage to Middle East and global security. Because of these deeply
flawed policies, Iran today is enriching uranium at the 60% level, just
below weapons-grade. It can enrich enough uranium to fuel nine nuclear
weapons a month. Iran has installed advanced centrifuges that will
significantly increase the amount and speed of the production of
weapons-grade uranium if Iran’s leaders decide to do so.

Iran is at least $100 billion richer today than it was when President
Trump left office because of unwise concessions by the Biden
administration, especially its failure to enforce U.S. oil sanctions.
Iran used this additional revenue to fund its military, nuclear, and
missile programs, terrorist proxies, and meddle in regional conflicts.

There is no question that the Biden/Harris administration’s Iran
policies have been a spectacular failure.

Obviously, attempts by Biden/Harris officials and their allies to blame
the surge in Iran’s nuclear program and its belligerent behavior on
President Trump are absurd. The greatly increased threat from Iran
occurred during the Biden/Harris administration due to their weakness
and incompetence. The JCPOA has also been proven to be a deeply flawed
agreement that actually facilitated Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
President Trump made the right decision to withdraw from this terrible
deal and kept Iran in check with enhanced American deterrence and his
maximum pressure policy, which almost bankrupted Iran.

America and the world desperately need a strong and decisive U.S.
president to undo the enormous damage done to American and global
security by the Biden/Harris administration’s disastrous Iran policies.
Although there is a lot of damage to repair, I am confident that if
Donald Trump wins the 2024 U.S. presidential election, he will quickly
do this with a capable and experienced national security team that will
halt Iran’s belligerence by restoring American deterrence and peace
through strength