President Biden’s strategy of de-escalation and containment to cope with the Islamic Republic of Iran has failed, warns experts in the U.S. and Israel. The planet’s greatest state-sponsor of terrorism is frighteningly close to producing its very own nuclear device, they’ve said, and deterrence against Tehran must be re-established as U.S. policy.
According to Fox News Digital, “Alarming reports about Iran moving at an astonishingly fast pace to possess a nuclear weapon have emerged since last month.”
A confidential IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] report released to member states revealed that Iran had “increased its production of highly enriched uranium, reversing a previous output reduction from mid-2023.” Reuters also said in its report “that Iran is enriching to up to 60%, close to the roughly 90% that is weapons grade, at its Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) in its sprawling Natanz complex and at its Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP), which is dug into a mountain,” Reuters reported in December.
David Albright, a physicist and founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, cautioned earlier this month that “The long pole in the tent of building nuclear weapons is essentially complete.”
Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, wrote in his report — titled, “How quickly could Iran Make nuclear weapons today?” — that “Iran can quickly make enough weapon-grade uranium for many nuclear weapons, something it could not do in 2003.”
Prior to 2003, Iran had a “crash nuclear weapons program,” Albright said. After that, Iran switched to a “more dispersed nuclear weapons effort.”
“Today, it would need only about a week to produce enough for its first nuclear weapon,” he said. “It could have enough weapon-grade uranium for six weapons in one month, and after five months of producing weapon-grade uranium, it could have enough for 12.”
That will never happen, according to a spokesperson for the State Department.
“As the President and the Secretary have made clear, the United States will ensure one way or another that Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon,” the spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “We continue to use a variety of tools in pursuit of that goal, and all options remain on the table. As the Secretary has said, we always prefer diplomacy to achieve that goal, but given Iran’s nuclear escalations and its failure to cooperate with the IAEA, unfortunately we are far away from anything like that right now.”
President Biden, a former U.S. State Department adviser on Iran said, is relying on bribery to convince the America-hating nation to back off its nuclear ambitions.
“Biden’s hope has been to bribe Iran not to advance its nuclear program through economic concessions and non-enforcement of sanctions,” Gabriel Noronha told Fox News Digital. “Iran advanced its nuclear program anyway and pocketed the extra revenue from oil sales to increase funding to its terror proxies. We have had zero wins on the Iran file in the past three years, but seen their strength return from their weakened state during the policy of maximum pressure.”
Critics are also concerned about the chaos Iran’s proxies could cause to the global economy.
Experts argue that the “lack of counterattacks against the regime has compounded the dangers for international navigation in the vital Red Sea passage, which is linked to Israel’s port of Eilat and Egypt’s Suez Canal,” according to Fox.
As BizPac Review reported, Biden has received harsh criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for failing to go to Congress before launching with the U.K. attacks against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Jayapal blasts Biden for Yemen strikes, demands Congressional approval https://t.co/sDHVLBoc8Q via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) January 14, 2024
Funded by Iran, the Houthis’ slogan states, “Allah is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam.”
“The United States needs to restart a diplomatic pressure campaign to have nations around the world place terror sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as its proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis,” Noronha said. “Dozens of countries in the West have not sanctioned these groups and are, accordingly, places where these terror groups can fundraise and conduct activities without appropriate scrutiny.”
Under former President Donald Trump’s leadership, the Houthis were listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Upon his ascension to the White House, Biden delisted them in February 2021.
Asked last week if the Houthis are a terrorist group, Biden replied, ‘”I think they are.” He didn’t mention if he planned on putting them back on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
“The United States needs to reinstate a campaign of maximum economic pressure against the Iranian regime to cut off its ability to finance and support its terror proxies,” Noronha said. “Oil sales are the lifeblood of the regime’s terror funding, and the U.S. should start enforcing sanctions aggressively as the U.S. did from 2018-2020.”
“Instead,” he added, “the Biden administration has admitted it is looking the other way in the misplaced hope that it will help ‘de-escalate’ the tensions in the Middle East.”
Israeli intelligence and security expert Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior researcher at the Israeli Defense Security Forum, agrees.
The Biden administration “should realize that this war is about their national security and global status as it is about the safety of American and Western citizens, and that sticking to the old strategy will eventually tempt Iran to break out for a nuclear weapon,” he told Fox News Digital. “Therefore, they should force Iran and its proxies to stop their violence and charge them with a much heavier price.”
“We take the Iranian threat very seriously overall, as a total package, and we are committed to confronting the full range of Iran’s problematic behaviors, from its human rights abuses to its advancement of its nuclear program, to its support for terrorism and lethal plotting,” the State Department spokesperson assured Fox News Digital.
“Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and a serial human rights abuser. We are joined by a broad cross-section of like-minded partners in confronting all the threats and challenges to security emanating from Iran. And our policy is focused on practical ways to counter these threats,” the spokesperson insisted. “That said, we are constantly evaluating our approach to Iran and finding additional ways to add pressure.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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