Talk of a “grand bargain” with Iran revives a failed playbook of concessions and deception that history shows only strengthens Tehran’s regime.
"Both the president and vice president have thrown out the term “grand bargain” in recent days to describe their aspirations for a deal with the Iranian rump regime.
"It’s a term fraught with past failures that screams Iranian deception, not the interests of America First.
"Bill Clinton was the first to use the phrase toward the end of his second term to describe his aspiration to end a low-intensity conflict that had been simmering for 20 years.
"He appointed David R. Andrews as “Special Negotiator” for the mostly secret talks. Just as today, among the top Iranian demands was for the US to lift economic sanctions, which at the time included a total US trade embargo, secondary sanctions on foreign oil and gas companies investing in Iran, and the release of Iranian funds held by the US Treasury.
"Those Treasury funds were a carefully kept secret. At the time, I was engaged as a consultant to attorneys representing Stephen Flatow, whose daughter Elyssa had been murdered by Iranian-backed terrorists in Israel in 1996.
"We queried the Treasury Department about the existence of Iranian funds frozen since the 1979 revolution to pay for the Shah’s weapons purchases from the US, and were told such a fund did not exist.
"And then, lo and behold, in late 2000, the Justice Department found that the Treasury had simply destroyed all the documents. Clinton eventually released the funds—not to the Iranians, for the talks had by then collapsed—but to the Iranian regime’s US victims.
"Obama later claimed he was releasing the same frozen funds when he sent pallets of cash totaling $1.7 billion to Iran in 2016. And yes, those payments were another attempt at reaching a “grand bargain” with Iran." . . .
. . . "Such a deal must include ironclad guarantees for the Iranian people that the regime will not use violence against peaceful protestors and, if it does, that it will face US military reprisals. After all, Donald Trump is leaving office in January 2029, and we will never have another president like him. We don’t want to have to repeat this war in another 10 years." . . .
Because if Democrats win, relations with terrorist states will be run by the same airheads dealing with them the past few decades, giving preference to those who call for death to allies that have stood by our nation for generations. Israel has been forced to dominate her enemies since we keep replacing competent leaders with feckless Democrats like Biden, Kamala, Obama, and anybody you may see refusing to stand at any Republican SOTU. TD
Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, The Iran House: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, can be ordered here. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 by the former deputy premier of Sweden for his work exposing Iran’s nuclear weapons programs.
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