“Iran will never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.” Thus spake President Biden, with the outgoing president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, by his side at the White House.

Let’s see. If Mr. Biden runs for, and wins reelection (two big ifs), he would be out of office by January 2029. According to the 2015 Iran deal that his negotiators are eager to revive, Iran will be free to legally possess as many nukes as it wants by early. 2031.

Iran, then, is set to become the world’s most menacing nuclear-armed country in a decade (and a de facto nuclear power much earlier.) So obtaining a nuclear weapon would, were the ayatollahs to abide by the articles of appeasement, happen after Mr. Biden, on some other president’s watch.

Vow kept, but danger remains intact.

The once-stated American goal — return to the original 2015 deal and later negotiate a “wider and longer” sequel — has almost completely disappeared from the administration’s talking points. Those later negotiations would have extended or removed the JCPOA sunset clauses, limited missile development, and curbed regional aggression.

No dice, says the incoming Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, who makes clear Tehran would reject anything beyond a complete return to the appeasement pact. And no, he adds, he’d meet no official of America, the Big Satan.

For the Islamic Republic, a return to the deal means nothing beyond removal of sanctions and a stream of millions in new cash to replenish its dwindling coffers. Washington insists the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action would slow Iran, including by rigorous UN inspections.

Yet the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, warns that a “linear return” to the 2015 deal wouldn’t suffice to monitor the nuclear program. Even so Tehran is yet to commit to full resumption of an expired deal to allow rigorous IAEA inspections.

Meanwhile advanced centrifuges, once temporarily banned by the JCPOA, are spinning unabated as 60% enrichment gets Iran ever closer to weapons grade enrichment. There’ll be no scaling back until the mullahs say so. Tehran feels it’s in the driver’s seat. So why compromise?

To feign a dynamic change, Mr. Biden over the weekend ordered an air attack on Iranian-backed militias stationed at the Iraqi-Syrian border. It inflicted unknown damage on desert camps and killed a few operatives.

The American attack was immediately answered by the Kataeb Sayyid al Shuadaa militia, which launched rockets on an American-controlled oil field near Deir A Zour, Syria. There were no American casualties.

Washington’s military response to endless Iranian-inspired attacks on American and allied targets in Syria, Iraq, and at sea is quite sporadic. Apart from this weekend, the last air raid happened five months ago.

An anemic show of force is unlikely to impress the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is tasked with exporting the Islamic Revolution to the Mideast and beyond. Worse, these attacks are conducted while American negotiators in Vienna eagerly beg Tehran for a deal.

JCPOA supporters in Washington and Europe now argue that Mr. Raisi could do the kind of maneuver that Richard Nixon did in respect of his long-time nemesis Communist China. Only such a “hardliner,” they say, could ink a deal with the Americans that “moderate” predecessors were unable to.

In reality, Mr. Raisi, handpicked by Ali Khamenei to become president and succeed him as Supreme Leader, doesn’t call the shots. Not yet. The 81-year old Mr. Khamenei will continue to call the shots on national security issues until he dies. At that point, Mr. Raisi, his successor and protege, is unlikely to change course.

The State Department ignored Mr. Raisi’s rejectionist stance. Despite fast-expiring provisions of the nuclear deal, Mr. Biden urges its renewal. But weren’t we promised that from now on America would put human rights at the center of our foreign policies?

Mr. Raisi, a former judicial bigwig, is responsible for thousands of mass executions in 1988 and numerous atrocities since. Even so, Washington is more eager to negotiate than highlight the regime’s show of horrors.

On Monday President Rivlin said that on some issues (such as the Iran deal) America and Israel will “agree to disagree.” As the White House plans a meeting soon between Mr. Biden and Prime Minister Bennett, it will be up to Israel to deliver, via its covert methods, the setbacks to the Iranian nuclear program.

Sure, Tehran’s allies in Moscow and Beijing are likely to frown, and the Europeans will quietly seethe, fearing harm to the JCPOA and the prospects for the removal of sanctions, which they so eagerly crave.

To counter that, America’s best course isn’t ineffectual attacks on dusty camps in Syria and Iraq. It is to fully back Israel’s clandestine fight against a nuclear Iran, and point at Mr. Raisi, the killer of thousands of Iranians, a more pronounced hater of the West and Jews than all his recent predecessors. What would be the point of rewarding him for soon-to-expire empty promises on nukes?

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Twitter @bennyavni