Iran Hawks Are Terrified When Diplomacy Works

There is nothing more alarming to hardliners that want war and regime change than the prospect of successful diplomacy that lowers the temperature a little between our government and Iran’s.

Eldar Mamedov responds to the hawkish screeching about the deal that the administration reached to get the Iranian government to free five American prisoners that it had been unjustly detaining:

The outcry is clearly politically motivated, as it seeks to depict Biden as weak and soft on Iran. Yet on substance, the hawks’ objections to the deal are based either on ignorance or the deliberate distortions of facts.

To begin with, the $6 billion is not the money the U.S. is going to pay Iran to “buy” the prisoners’ freedom. These are Iranian assets in South Korea earned from the oil sales and frozen by Seoul under pressure by the Trump administration following its unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran known as the JCPOA. This was followed by the introduction of unprecedented sanctions against Tehran, even though according to Trump White House officials Iran had been complying with its commitments under the 2015 deal. 

Iran is essentially getting access to its own money which was withheld on no other legal basis than unilateral U.S. sanctions. And even that access is subject to a number of conditions. 

Iran hawks are opposed to any agreement with Iran, so they freak out even when the U.S. secures the release of Americans at the low cost of letting Iran have conditional access to a portion of its own money. They would rather have five Americans remain in the Iranian government’s custody indefinitely rather than concede anything that could get them released. As concessions go, releasing funds that were frozen as part of a destructive economic war that primarily hurts innocent Iranians is one of the least offensive imaginable. Granting access to these funds through a channel that can only be used for humanitarian goods is even less objectionable.

One of the standard hawkish objections to this deal is that money is fungible. How insightful! This position boils down to opposing the lifting or easing of any sanctions for any reason, and that is the same as being opposed to all diplomatic agreements with the targeted government. Iran hawks have no interest in lifting sanctions at any point. It doesn’t matter to them if the Iranian government is willing to compromise or bargain, because the only thing they are interested in is in forcing capitulation or regime collapse. That is the thinking of a fanatic, and it deserves to be mocked as such.

As far as these hardliners are concerned, any mutually beneficial agreement is outrageous because it shows that diplomacy can succeed. There is nothing more alarming to hardliners that want war and regime change than the prospect of successful diplomacy that lowers the temperature a little between our government and Iran’s. A prisoner release agreement is good news and ought to be celebrated. It shows what can happen when the U.S. is willing to be at least a bit flexible and open to modest sanctions relief.

I doubt that there will be more significant agreements reached between the U.S. and Iran, but the prisoner release is the first encouraging sign in a long time that there could be an opening for productive negotiations on other issues. Iran hawks are clearly terrified when diplomacy works, and they are doing all they can to try to scare the administration away from pursuing any other deals.

The Iranian government should halt its practice of imprisoning dual nationals from the United States and other countries, and the U.S. should halt its economic war against the Iranian people. Both are deeply unjust practices that hurt the innocent, and neither achieves anything except to inflict pain. Instead of freeing up a bit of Iran’s own money as it has done in this agreement, the U.S. would do well to stop inflicting collective punishment on the entire population.