A Snapback to Reality in the Iran Nuclear-Deal Talks

Tehran has deepened its friendship with Moscow in recent months, as both governments endure Western isolation and censure. Since his February invasion of Ukraine,

Vladimir Putin

has visited with the Iranians twice—first with

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

in Iran in July, and then with President

Ebrahim Raisi

at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan last week. At the latter meeting, Mr. Putin announced that a delegation of 80 Russian companies will travel to Iran this week to expand trade ties.

Tehran is a willing accomplice in helping Russia bust through the West’s sanctions. According to some reports, Iran has agreed to act as a middleman to sell Russian oil in world markets. Mr. Khamenei’s top national-security aide explained the scheme to Iranian media after Mr. Putin’s July visit: “We receive oil from Russia and Kazakhstan via the Caspian Sea . . . for domestic consumption and then we deliver oil in the same quantity to their customers in the south.”

Such prospects are made possible by the Biden administration’s pending nuclear deal with Tehran, which would lift sanctions on the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum and the National Iranian Oil Co. If agreed to, the deal would provide these national companies immunity from future sanctions, giving them free rein to facilitate Russia’s sanctions-evasion scheme.

Though the nuclear deal appears to be on life support, the negotiations have given Russia a sufficient opening to strike deals in Iran. Consider one example. In early February, the U.S. State Department offered Russia’s state-owned nuclear company, Rosatom, a waiver for a $10 billion contract to build a series of nuclear reactors in Iran. The administration marketed these as necessary concessions to finalize negotiations. After Mr. Putin’s invasion a few weeks later, Rosatom seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear-power plant in Ukraine, cutting off power to Ukrainian citizens and enabling the Russian military to launch attacks from the site.

Last month Mr. Blinken had the opportunity to put a nail in the Russian nuclear-power deal with Iran as the original six-month sanctions waiver was set to expire. Instead, he chose to renew it, signaling the U.S. wouldn’t stand in the way of Russia making $10 billion from the Iranian regime.

Iran’s partnership with Russia isn’t merely economic; it operates on the military front too. Since August, Iran has sent hundreds of “suicide drones” to Russia, where they have been used to strike Ukrainian forces and destroy U.S.-supplied military equipment.

That trade, too, was enabled by the West’s negotiations with Iran. In 2007 and again in 2010, the United Nations Security Council banned conventional-weapons sales to and from Iran. But as a part of its original nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, the Obama administration, with support from European allies, set the ban to expire in October 2020. Though the ban’s sunset wasn’t contingent on any Iranian behavior, it contained a “snapback” provision allowing any participant in the original deal to reverse the resolution unilaterally—exempt from the typical veto of other Security Council members.

The Trump administration moved to reverse the impending expiration in August 2020, citing several Iranian violations of nuclear commitments documented by impartial U.N. investigators. But the move was blocked over objections and votes from such allies as the U.K., France and Germany. Shortly after his inauguration in January 2021, President Biden directed the State Department to reverse formally the conventional weapons export ban, among other restrictions on Iran. Since then, trade between Tehran and Russia has proceeded without interruption.

The U.S., France, Germany and the U.K. could all make these weapons transfers illegal by snapping back the U.N. sanctions, but they continually refuse to do so out of fear it will disrupt their nuclear negotiations with Iran. They do so even as Iran has violated possibly every part of the 2015 Security Council resolution that constrained its nuclear program for 2½ years. The consequences of U.S. timidity are now on full display on the battlefields—and soon the morgues—of Ukraine.

It’s time for the Biden administration and Europe to decide: Do they stand with Ukraine in their fight against Russia, or with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism—the Islamic Republic of Iran?

They can’t have it both ways.

Ms. Ortagus is founder of Polaris National Security. She served as State Department spokesperson, 2019-21.