Just how impotent is President Biden’s foreign policy on Iran?
First lady Jill Biden in 2023 presented Iranian singer Shervin Hajipour a Grammy Award in absentia for his song “Baraye,” a protest anthem inspired by Mahsa Amini, the young woman killed by Tehran’s religious police.
Now Iran’s rulers are reportedly forcing Hajipour to write an anti-USA song.
It’s a massive soft-power slap in the face by Tehran.
To be clear: The Khameinists are and always have been monstrous; their domestic political repression can’t be laid at Biden’s feet.
But that they chose this artist, who took his award from the first lady’s hands, to create their propaganda sends a clear signal to the president.
We laugh at you and your pathetic efforts against us.
The sad fact is, they have every right to guffaw.
Since taking office, the president has done everything he could to conciliate with the world’s leading state sponsor of terror.
He humiliated himself, his government and his nation in efforts to entice Tehran back into President Barack Obama’s disastrous 2016 nuclear deal — agreeing to send it billions in cash ransoms for American hostages, relaxing sanctions to let it collect (at least) tens of billions more.
As Iran scaled up its attacks via proxy armies on US assets around the region, Biden hit limply back with meaningless attacks on ammo dumps and the like.
Not even the Iran-blessed atrocities of Oct. 7 could change his mind: After Iranian proxies killed three American soldiers in Jordan, he responded with a mild show of force.
Then? Nothing.
Now (to take just one example) a British-owned commercial ship attacked by Iran’s Yemen force, the Houthis, and abandoned since mid-February sank this weekend in the Red Sea.
That vicious attack on our closest European ally should have been a massive red line for the White House.
It wasn’t and isn’t, of course.
However, it does prove — as does the ugly story of Shervin Hajipour — that there can be zero rapprochement with Iran under its current regime.
Biden’s sad delusion otherwise will only cause more chaos abroad, and more misery at home for brave dissidents like Hajipour.