XPost: alt.politics.international, talk.politics.guns, talk.politics.misc   
   XPost: alt.society.liberalism, alt.politics.democrats, sac.politics   
   From: remailer@domain.invalid   
      
   Biden guessed wrong. As the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas attack on   
   Israel demonstrates, Iran remains a virulent and murderous presence   
   in the Middle East. The level of Iran’s direct involvement in the   
   attack remains unclear, but Iran is the Hamas group’s primary backer   
   and strategic overlord. “It is inconceivable that Hamas undertook an   
   attack of this magnitude and complexity without some foreknowledge   
   and affirmative support from Iran’s leadership,” Suzanne Maloney,   
   director of the Brookings Institution’s foreign policy program,   
   wrote in Foreign Affairs on Oct. 10.   
      
   Iran and the escalating war between Israel, Hamas, and perhaps other   
   Palestinian groups will now dominate the months leading up to the   
   2024 presidential election. Biden first has to answer critics who   
   say he went soft on Iran and indirectly enabled the Hamas attack.   
   There could also be new upward pressure on oil prices as the United   
   States faces inevitable calls to reverse recent engagement efforts   
   with Iran — the world’s seventh-largest oil producer — and apply   
   maximum sanctions. And Iran’s willingness to ignite a new Middle   
   East war will now draw attention away from other Biden priorities   
   and suck more US resources into a region Biden was trying to pivot   
   away from.   
      
   Trumpers and other Biden critics should can any schadenfreude. Iran   
   has bedeviled nearly every US president since its Islamic Revolution   
   in 1979, and anybody peddling simple-sounding ways to contain the   
   so-called Islamist republic is playing video games, not practicing   
   geopolitics. Bombing or invading Iran would produce a horrifying   
   conflagration. Aggressive sanctions always disappoint. Trying to   
   foment a coup would be folly.   
      
   The short history of the current standoff with Iran dates to 2002,   
   when it became publicly known that Iran was developing a nuclear   
   weapons program. A variety of US and international sanctions   
   followed, many of them focused on punishing Iran by curtailing oil   
   exports and the development of Iran’s oil deposits, which are the   
   third largest in the world.   
      
      
   President Trump, opposed to basically everything Obama did, revoked   
   US involvement in the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, while reimposing   
   many of the sanctions Obama eased. Iran adopted a "resistance   
   economy" meant to find ways around US sanctions, and resumed work on   
   its nuclear program. Experts now think Iran has enough bomb-grade   
   nuclear material to assemble a nuke within a couple of weeks if it   
   chooses to do so. Trump’s contention that tougher sanctions would   
   disrupt Iran’s nuclear program was wrong.   
      
   When Biden took office in 2021, he tried to restart the Obama-era   
   nuclear deal. But the genie was out of the bottle and it didn’t   
   work. After Russia invaded Ukraine early in 2022, the Biden team   
   undertook some sly diplomacy with Iran. “The Biden administration   
   has been engaged in implementing a series of understandings with   
   Tehran to keep the Iran file off the president’s desk ahead of his   
   campaign for reelection,” Jason Brodsky of the Middle East Institute   
   wrote on Oct. 10.   
      
   Iran, under this arrangement, would do its part by discouraging its   
   various proxy militias from attacking US troops in Syria and Iraq.   
   It would also slow-roll its nuclear program, a bit. The United   
   States, in return, would overlook some Iranian oil sales, otherwise   
   subject to sanctions, which would have the added benefit of   
   increasing global supplies and tamping down oil and gasoline prices.   
      
   https://news.yahoo.com/finance/news/how-biden-miscalculated-on-   
   iran-151553510.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)