The Tranquility Initiative

During his four years in office, Donald Trump achieved a number of significant foreign policy successes, including important trade deals, the first real Arab-Israeli peace initiative in  generations, and the first time ever that the USA had put limits on China's attempt to dominate the Far East. Of course the media gaslighted the public, telling us that Trump's policies were chaotic and that there were no achievements. They lied, but that's par for the course.

The previous administration led by Barack Obama is notable in comparison. Trump's list of foreign policy achievements is exceeded only by Obama's list of foreign policy failures. At the top of that list of failures was Obama's capitulation to Iran, his vaunted "Iran Deal." At the time, I was less than enthusiastic about the deal.

Wisely, Trump backed out of the "deal," but now that Joe Biden and the Democrats are returning to power, it looks like Biden's emerging foreign policy Team of 2s wants to put the "deal" back into place.

The editors of The Wall Street Journal comment:

President Trump’s maximum-pressure sanctions campaign against Iran will continue until his final day in office—and so will Tehran’s escalating violations of the 2015 nuclear deal. While the facts on the ground change, Joe Biden’s policy hasn’t.

Iran is now enriching uranium to 20% purity, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Monday. This is below the 90% needed for a bomb but a big leap above the accord’s 3.67% limit ...

The regime also said Monday that it had detained a vessel from South Korea, which is in a dispute with Tehran over frozen bank accounts. Last month Mr. Trump blamed Iran-backed militias for the largest attack on Baghdad’s Green Zone since 2010. Iran was also likely behind a series of cyber attacks against dozens of Israeli firms at the end of 2020.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone: Tehran has been a regional menace for 40 years. Mr. Trump’s newly acquired sanctions leverage could eventually forge a better deal, but it was always unlikely in his first term. Watching Iran break out from the deal so easily is a reminder of how sweet the 2015 accord’s terms are for Tehran, which bet on waiting out Mr. Trump for a Democrat.

Mr. Biden has said the U.S. will comply with the agreement again as soon as Iran does ...

It looks increasingly likely that Biden's term in office will be Obama 3.0, with a tinge of hard-left influence that Obama could resist because of his star power. Since the Democrat's trained hamsters in the media laughably characterized Obama's Iran Deal as an "achievement," the Dem's feel compelling to double down on stupid.

The WSJ editors continue:

Simply rejoining the deal means giving up significant leverage for nothing. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said last month that the sanctions campaign had done $250 billion in damage. The U.S. would have to accept irreversible benefits to Iran, like the knowledge and data its scientists gained while violating the deal.

Iran is escalating its nuclear enrichment to put pressure on the new U.S. Administration to rush back into the 2015 deal. It sees the same Obama negotiators moving into Biden jobs, and figures it can outfox them again. But if the U.S. keeps Mr. Trump’s sanctions, and persuades Europe to join them, the pressure will be back on Tehran to make concessions.

If Biden were smart, he'd rename Trump's approach to something that sounds acceptably woke, say, "The Tranquility Initiative," and keep all of its elements in place. 

Biden isn't smart.