Bolting from the fight for civilization

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, both the Biden administration  and the European Union are out to lunch.

Senior Iranian, US and European officials arrived in Vienna for talks this week to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, after the European Union presented Iran with a new draft text. 

What this means is that the EU has proposed yet more concessions to Iran. This follows the dismal pattern of Iranian aggression followed by concessions followed by increased aggression.

US president Joe Biden’s obsession with restoring the 2015 deal is astonishing in itself. Whatever its final terms, such an agreement will repeat the original guarantee of an Iranian nuclear bomb sanitised merely by some kind of delay. 

But the degree to which the Biden team has grovelled to Iran to get it to sign up has been astounding. Repeated Iranian aggression against US allies in the region — and even against American facilities — has produced merely further American concessions.  The US even repeatedly lifted sanctions to coax Iran to co-operate. 

In March, the talks broke down over Iran’s demand that America de-list the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation, a demand so unacceptable that not even the Biden administration could agree. 

Since then, the regime has stepped up its aggression yet further.  In May, the IRGC and the Iranian Navy launched a helicopter raid to seize two Greek oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.