Winston Churchill once said “an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
The U.S. has been negotiating a deal that will leave Iran—which the State Department calls the leading sponsor of international terrorism—on the threshold of becoming a nuclear state.
This is not just bad policy. This is deeply dangerous policy. And this with a country whose leaders are masters of diplomatic sleight-of-hand, where procrastination and deception are time-honored tools of diplomacy.
The Iranian foreign minister’s reported “bridging” proposal does not address the most critical American concern because it would leave Iran’s nearly 20,000 centrifuges spinning in place. Incredibly, under the proposal the US and Iran are talking about now, Iran would simply freeze what it has now.
There’s not an iota of dismantling. Zero. Nada. Zilch.
And in return for doing nothing, the Iranians demand total relief from sanctions. “Our nuclear technology is not up for negotiations,” Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani recently declared.
So here is the bottom line of the current proposal: We provide sanctions relief, and Iran does nothing. It doesn’t rewind its nuclear program. It doesn’t stop its program. It puts it on pause. Again. Then in a month, a year, or whenever—it continues where it left off, and the race to the finish line is on.
This is a farce of historic proportions. And it looks like this administration is willing to buy into this farce by extending the talks. If this administration is willing to buy into this sham by extending the talks, it is sliding further down a dangerous path of appeasement. This coming from an administration whose foreign policy across the globe is in a state of total collapse.
As if putting the U.S. and the world in peril by allowing the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism to keep its nuclear program intact were not bad enough, the administration’s handling of the negotiations with Iran has the added side effect of making America look weak. As its neighbors see how Iran is able to buy time, America’s reputation in this dangerous part of the world becomes weaker still. Just when you think it can’t get any lower, it does.
Newsflash to the Obama administration: Appeasement isn’t going to work. It never has.
The author, a Member of Congress from Colorado, is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and co-chairs the bipartisan Congressional Israel Allies Caucus