Biden Admin Sure Iran Doesn’t REALLY Mean All That Terrorism, Repression

“Please ignore the decade-plus of violent, brutal repression of internal dissent that’s been going on there, because, well, context or something.”

Washington, April 1 – Foreign policy officials in the White House and State Department sought to reassure Americans and American allies in the Middle East that the regime in Tehran might be engaged in a decades-long effort to attain regional hegemony, destroy Israel, deprive its population of human rights, and intimidate opponents of its ambitions throughout the world through shootings, bombings and other violence, but that’s not where the regime’s heart is.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed questions from reporters Thursday in a brief interactive session during which he shared President Joe Biden’s view that Iran’s doesn’t really mean it when it sows instability and violence throughout the region in an attempt to create power vacuums it can exploit and attain effective control of the Middle East.

“We know that at heart the Iranian leadership is full of goodwill,” stated Blinken. “It is past time to cease viewing the terrorism-support of the Ayatollahs as solely a malign set of policies that others must counter or forestall; we urge our allies and our citizens, some of whom may have suffered from violence perpetrated with Iran’s support, to keep in mind the humanity we share with the mullahs.”

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan sounded a similar theme the day before. “The body count of US soldiers, citizens, and others who fell in incidents sponsored or directed by Iran isn’t really the salient point,” he insisted. “You can’t take just one aspect of the Khamenei administration and paint everything else with it. You also have to take into account other policies. Also please ignore the decade-plus of violent, brutal repression of internal dissent that’s been going on there, because, well, context or something.”

Analysts have observed a dynamic in which a Biden administration official attempts conciliatory rhetoric toward Iran, or the administration itself eases pressure on the rogue regime in some material way, after which Iran or its regional proxies engages in further terrorism, which the Biden administration takes as an indication that its departure from the Trump administration’s uncompromising stance on Iran’s terrorism and pursuit of nuclear weapons has borne fruit, and the process repeats.

“It’s an understandable shift,” noted former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes. “While Trump was in office, Iran was isolated and facing severe economic and diplomatic pressure, and might even have departed from its nuclear ambitions if the pressure continued – and we cannot have that. If you can’t trust nuclear weapons to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, whom can you trust?”

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