RUTHFULLY YOURS

Since President Biden took office in January 2021, U.S. foreign policy has been directionless and increasingly contradictory. The botched Afghanistan withdrawal, the rudderless response to Chinese surveillance balloons flying over the contiguous United States, and the erratic approach to support for Ukraine reveal a White House that is more comfortable reacting to world events than shaping them.

This past week, the Washington Post published a report detailing Russia’s progress toward building an army of drones — with Iran’s help. Russia’s goal is “to domestically build 6,000 drones by the summer of 2025” as Iran “covertly provid[es] technical assistance.”

On the one hand, the Biden administration has pledged support for Ukraine’s resistance against Russian aggression: At every turn, the president has affirmed that the U.S. will do everything within its power to help Ukraine maintain its territorial integrity and independence from Russia. On the other hand, this is the same Biden administration that seeks to restore some form of nuclear deal with Iran and just made a lopsided prisoner exchange granting the Islamic Republic access to $6 billion in frozen assets.

In short, the U.S. government’s approaches to Iran and to Ukraine are at cross purposes. While most of the world has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and even China has turned away from aiding Putin’s war effort, Iran has become the Kremlin’s most important military supplier in a “full-scale defense partnership,” according to John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications. Between last October and April of this year, Iran shipped over 300,000 artillery shells and 1 million rounds of ammunition to Russia. After reports of multiple Russian visits to the Islamic Republic’s airfields and drone stockpiles, Ukrainian claims of having downed Iranian-supplied hardware, and Tehran’s well-documented agreement to sell weaponry to Russia, the U.S. last month reported its finding that “Russia is working with Iran to produce Iranian UAVs from inside Russia.”

No matter how badly the Biden administration may want to try, it is impossible to separate our respective policies toward Russia and Iran.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too here,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the author of Arsenal, a comprehensive monograph on Iran’s ballistic-missile program, told National Review. “You can’t be trying to improve the economy of a country which is producing weapons for Putin to use in Ukraine and also be serious about trying to end the war.”

By engaging Iran diplomatically, the Biden administration hinders its own Ukraine efforts. Any new nuclear deal with the ayatollah would ostensibly include some form of sanctions relief. When the U.S. and Iran entered the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Secretary of State John Kerry himself acknowledged that a nonzero amount of the money delivered to Tehran would go toward financing terror. There is every reason to believe that an updated agreement would yield the same result — only this time, the funds might be used to cover the cost of killing Ukrainian civilians. The U.S. and Iran can designate the money in any deal for a particular purpose, but it seems naïve to assume the Islamic Republic will keep its word and ensure those funds stay out of the hands of Russian military engineers.

“If it is the case that we are going to strike a nuclear agreement and Iran has greater capital inflows and brings more money into their economy, generating more wealth, that’s going to invigorate the regime with additional resources to throw at its military programs,” Nicholas Carl, the Middle East–portfolio manager at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Program, told NR.

And drones might just be step one. At Russia’s annual Army International Military-Technical Forum, which opened near Moscow earlier this week, the country’s largest defense contractors display their wares. For the first time, the advertised weapons include an Iranian ballistic missile, and Iranian military officials have signaled their readiness to export their country’s military technology to Russia.

Currently, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 prohibits Iran from undertaking “any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons,” but that resolution lapses in October.

“There’s a well-established track record of [Iran’s aiding the Kremlin] with drones, and there might even be one now, with this weapon, for Iranian ballistic-missile support for Russia,” Taleblu said.

Which makes it all the more naïve for the Biden administration to seek diplomatic rapprochement with Iran while committing U.S. resources to the defense of Ukraine.