Iran’s Islamic revolution erupted in 1979, as religious radicals overthrew the secular government and took 66 Americans hostage, eventually holding 52 of them for 444 days. While our hostages languished in captivity, President Jimmy Carter wrung his hands, unsure of what to do. He eventually approved a military rescue mission, but our helicopters crashed tragically in the desert under no opposing fire. Our hostages were finally released on January 20, 1981, the day that Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.
Against bullies and tyrants, weakness does not work. Only clarity and strength have any demonstrable record of success. History teaches repeatedly that appeasement is provocative, ironically increasing the chances of military conflict. As I have joked, there is a reason nobody studies at the Neville Chamberlain school of foreign policy.
The Ayatollah Khamenei hates America. He is a religious zealot who regularly leads mobs in chanting “Death to America.” Indeed, Iran each year celebrates as a holiday “Death to America” day, commemorating their taking of our hostages in 1979. He routinely refers to Israel as “the little Satan,” and the United States as “the great Satan.”
Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Over the past four decades, they have spent tens of billions of dollars funding jihadists all over the world, in the Middle East, in Africa, in Europe, in South America, and in the United States.
The Obama Iran nuclear deal allowed over $100 billion in frozen offshore assets to flow into Iran, with the promise of hundreds of billions of dollars more in sanctions relief. Additionally $1.7 billion in cash was flown on pallets in the dark of night into Iran as ransom for hostages. Normally, laundering money on secret pallets of unmarked bills is indicative of wrongful conduct, and that was certainly true with this ill-advised deal.
As then-Secretary of State John Kerry later admitted less than a year after the nuclear deal was inked, “some” of the $150 billion in sanctions relief that the deal brought to fruition “will end up in the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists.” Kerry admitted, that is, that the flooding of American dollars into Iran would be used to murder Americans. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every component of that [funding] can be prevented,” Kerry continued.
If history teaches anything, it is that when people tell you they want to kill you, believe them. Or, at a minimum, don’t give them hundreds of billions of dollars to help them accomplish their objective.
But, for whatever reason, Obama desperately wanted a deal with Iran. Indeed, Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor (and, it so happens, the brother of the head of CBS News), described their objective of completing an Iran nuclear deal as “the Obamacare of the second term” (which I think he meant as a compliment).
At the time, much of the rest of the world thought this plan was madness. I recall ambassadors from major European allies sitting in my office, asking for my help to try to stop the deal; the Obama administration was putting the full force of U.S. foreign policy behind it, and they wanted assistance pushing back.
On the face of the deal, there were numerous obvious failings: before any facilities could be inspected to determine if nuclear weapons were being developed, Iran had to receive twenty-four days advance notice (plenty of time to scrub the facility); certain “military” facilities were exempted from inspection (obviously, where Iran would base their nuclear weapon development); for one military facility where Iran had done nuclear weapons work, Iran would be trusted to “self-inspect”; and the deal gutted limitations on Iran’s continuing to develop ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles that would be used to carry a nuclear warhead to the United States). Nor did the deal put any constraints on Iran’s continuing to fund anti-America and anti-Israel jihadists. And, by its own terms and according to even President Obama, as the deal began its “sunset” in a little over a decade, the international world would entirely allow Iran to develop everything it needed for nuclear weapons.
Any rational commander in chief should make clear and unequivocal: under no circumstances will the Ayatollah Khamenei ever be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.
On March 3, 2015, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a powerful—even Churchillian—speech before a joint session of Congress, which, sadly, many Democrats boycotted. He explained: “Iran’s regime is not merely a Jewish problem, any more than the Nazi regime was merely a Jewish problem. The six million Jews murdered by the Nazis were but a fraction of the 60 million people killed in World War II. So, too, Iran’s regime poses a grave threat, not only to Israel, but also the peace of the entire world.”
On September 9, 2015, I helped organize a rally against the Iran deal on the steps of the Capitol. Thousands came out to join us to oppose funding the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. At the time, I was running for president, and I made the unusual decision to invite one of my opponents in the race, Donald J. Trump, to join me at the rally. Generally speaking, you don’t invite your opponents to participate in your political rallies, but I cared passionately about the issue, and I knew that Trump’s attendance would bring TV cameras like rats following the Pied Piper to the Capitol steps.
When Trump was elected president, I began working with him very closely, on a weekly or even a daily basis, on a number of issues, especially concerning foreign policy and national
