Appeasement 101

The big news today out of Washington is the rumor that the Iranians have been working on a plot to assassinate Ambassador Bolton. That is shocking enough. Even more shocking is the talk that the Biden administration has been holding off on an indictment of Iranians involved in the scheme so as not to disrupt the negotiations with Iran in Vienna on the articles of appeasement over its atomic bomb program. We understand that none of the rumors — first reported in a scoop by the Washington Examiner — has yet been substantiated, so it’s too soon to say how accurate they are. And the Justice Department denies that politics would influence a charging decision. Yet it’s not too soon to say that if any of the rumors swirling around Mr. Bolton are true, it should spell the abrupt end of these talks with the Iranian administration.In the Examiner’s telling, the Bolton plotters are members of Iran’s covert Quds Force and the scheme featured efforts to recruit an assassin here in America. Discovery of the plot led to a “protective detail being assigned to Bolton.” And on January 9, security adviser Jacob Sullivan warned Iran that America would “protect and defend its citizens,” including “those serving the United States now and those who formerly served.”Mr. Sullivan’s warning followed an Iranian announcement that it was placing sanctions on 51 officials, including Mr. Bolton, in response to the 2020 assassination of the head of the Quds Force, General Qassem Soleimani. Iran called that an example of “state terrorism perpetrated by the United States.” Other American officials are also being targeted by Iran, the Examiner reports, including State Secretary Pompeo.Even before the Bolton assassination rumors came up we were reflecting in respect of the Vienna talks and the role played in them by the Russians. It turns out America is being represented by Vladimir Putin — the most startling diplomatic arrangement of which we’ve ever heard. It’s almost as bad as America being represented by Senator Kerry, as it was when the agreement with the Iranians was originally struck by the Obama administration.President Biden’s envoy in Vienna, our Benny Avni has reported, “has no direct contact” with his “Iranian counterparts,” so America relies on intermediaries, like the Russians, “to relay messages.” Mr. Putin’s man in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, says he exploits that role “to extract favors for Tehran.” Mr. Ulyanov praises Iran’s negotiating prowess, noting their “clerics are fighting for Iranian nuclear — national interests like lions.”If only Mr. Biden were to adopt a similarly assertive stance in defense of America’s interests. If he did, of course, the talks in Vienna would never have been undertaken to begin with. We can also anticipate the caviling that the only reason we need to be represented by anybody other than an American in Vienna is because, back in 2018, President Trump withdrew from the articles of appeasement. Yet events have vindicated Mr. Trump.As it stands now, Mr. Ulyanov’s game of “phone-tag” at Vienna appears to have irked Tehran. Iran’s top negotiator flew home and even the European Union’s envoy is suggesting the time has come “to end the Vienna Talks.” The point may be moot by now anyway, the Wall Street Journal reports, as the Iranians’ “nuclear work had advanced so far” that it was too late to keep them from generating “enough nuclear fuel for a bomb.”That itself is a development even more worrisome than the disclosures of a conspiracy to murder Mr. Bolton, who is one of America’s — if not the world’s — most clear-eyed critics of the Tehran regime. It speaks to the fecklessness of Mr. Biden’s foreign policy that his Justice Department might be willing to turn a blind eye to an affront of that magnitude in Mr. Biden’s desperation to strike a deal with the ayatollahs at Tehran.

Appeasement 101

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