Few early Biden administration decisions would be as controversial as the rumored selection of Robert Malley as chief envoy for Iran talks. Code Pink has come to his defense, as has the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Conservatives point out that Iranian regime officials also appear to celebrate Malley’s name being in the mix.
On paper, Malley is eminently qualified. He serves as head of the International Crisis Group, is an alum of both the Clinton and Obama administrations, and was a Rhodes Scholar. Make no mistake: I disagree with Malley on almost all issues relating to Iran and the Middle East, and I criticized his approach in my history of U.S. diplomacy with terrorist groups. Still, there are few people in Washington as generally kind, classy, and intelligent as Malley. His supporters, of course, are also right to point out that elections matter.
While it is fair to criticize Malley’s ideas (as opposed to his person), the broad problem with Malley’s appointment is not that he is insufficiently skeptical toward Tehran, but rather that it signals that Biden’s national security team have not learned the lessons of why the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action so quickly derailed.
President Barack Obama made reaching a deal with Iran over its suspect nuclear program his signature foreign policy issue. While liberals and conservatives can argue about its merits — I have been a frequent critic — one reason for the Iran deal’s ultimate fragility was the way in which Obama sought to marginalize Republican concerns rather than build broad domestic consensus in its support. Obama drew a moral equivalence between Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rejectionists and his own domestic critics. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes bragged of creating an echo chamber, not only to promote the deal’s merits but also pillory its critics. While Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and more seasoned members of Obama’s team kept their hands clean, those with whom they repeatedly met would return from White House meetings and amp up vilification of policymakers who raised concerns about the deal’s content. Seldom did they bother to talk quietly to the deal’s critics to assuage their concerns.
Secretary of State John Kerry and negotiator Wendy Sherman, currently the nominee for the No. 2 post in the State Department, never seriously considered negotiating the nuclear deal as a treaty. Perhaps they feared getting Senate ratification would be a bridge too far. Ironically, had they tried, they might have used the Senate standard in their talks as a means to force more concessions, which, in turn, could have won them broader bipartisan support. Instead, the Iran nuclear deal passed the Senate by means of a compromise that meant it, in effect, needed only one-third support, a standard it barely reached. Kerry and Sherman then front-loaded sanctions relief and financial incentives so Tehran got its rewards up front. This meant that America’s walking away from the deal could serve no obvious strategic benefit. Of course, the Obama administration never believed that a Republican would beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and, even if, on some level, they considered it a fleeting possibility, they did not believe that partisan animus, including some they themselves knowingly fanned, would lead to a Republican president walking away from the deal.
Back to the future: Malley might be a gentleman but, both in office and in International Crisis Group programming, he has preferred to quarantine conservative views rather than confront them (full-disclosure: He did participate on an American Enterprise Institute panel a decade ago to address the Arab Spring). He has also remained blind to his own hire’s anti-Semitism or accusations of dual loyalty.
There’s a broader point here. Biden talks like a centrist, but his appointees increasingly appear disinclined to govern as such. While it is true that Biden or Secretary of State Blinken can appoint Malley simply by virtue of their electoral victory, to do so without any effort to reach out across the partisan aisle is to condemn the Iran portfolio to remain a partisan football. The country is at its strongest when it confronts foreign policy challenges with a united home front. Obama believed political power trumped consensus. His shortcuts around the treaty process came with a tremendous cost. Whether pro-JCPOA or anti, it is hard not to conclude the result was a political and strategic mess that did little to strengthen our moral or strategic position in the world.
If Biden is to succeed where Obama and President Donald Trump did not, it is time to construct a common strategy at home and address, rather than dismiss, the Iran deal’s critics. Success will never come when negotiators and envoys treat adversaries with more deference than political opponents.
