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Biden Calls for Lifting Sanctions and Providing “Humanitarian Relief” for Iran Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

Apr 6, 2020 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Joe Biden has called for the American government to lift sanctions on Iran so that the Islamic Republic might be able to cope better with the coronavirus outbreak, by having enough money to buy masks, gowns, gloves, testing equipment, ventilators, and other medical equipment. Biden does not go as far as his rival Bernie Sanders, who has called for a much broader sanctions relief that would last not only during the entire time of the outbreak but continue even after the coronavirus had ended.

Here’s the story:

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the overwhelming favorite to become the Democratic presidential nominee, came out in favor of humanitarian sanctions relief for Iran to help the embattled country cope with the coronavirus pandemic.

“There are already humanitarian exceptions in place for sanctions, but in practice, most governments and organizations are too concerned about running afoul of US sanctions to offer assistance,” Biden said in a statement. “As a result, our sanctions are limiting Iran’s access to medical supplies and needed equipment. The [Donald Trump] administration should take immediate steps to address this problem and streamline channels for banking and public health assistance from other countries in response to the health emergency in Iran.”

The Iranian regime has been using the coronavirus outbreak – and its own failure to deal adequately with it – as a way to pressure the American government to lift sanctions. It wishes to deflect attention from its own failings, and to ascribe its difficulties to American malevolence in refusing to again lift those sanctions on the regime that Trump had reimposed. We are supposed to believe that it’s not the Supreme Leader, with his crazy conspiracy theories that blame America for creating the coronavirus that “targets a genome possessed by Iranians,” who is to blame And we should pay no attention to the failure of the regime to promptly close down Mahan Airlines flights between Iran and China, flights that allowed the virus to spread from Wuhan to Qom. And we should overlook the failure of the Islamic Republic to impose a quarantine on the city of Qom, which might have prevented students and pilgrims returning home from Qom to spread the virus — as it is now known they did — to Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, Iraq, Syria, Qatar, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. No, none of that matters; the Supreme Leader is right — the epidemic in Iran is entirely the fault of the Americans.

Biden’s statement comes after his one remaining primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called for even broader Iran sanctions relief amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Sanders joined Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and 31 other Democratic lawmakers in a letter to the Trump administration this week urging the president to undo the crippling sanctions he has implemented since withdrawing from the nuclear deal.

Sanders and his colleagues urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to relieve sanctions on “major sectors of the Iranian economy, including those impacting civilian industries, Iran’s banking sector and exports of oil,” adding that the relief “should last for at least as long as health experts believe the crisis will continue.”

For now, Biden is only calling for humanitarian exemptions to Trump’s current sanctions regime such as “broad license to pharmaceutical and medical device companies” and “creating a dedicated channel for international banks, transportation companies, insurers and other service firms to help Iranians access life-saving medical treatment.” He also called for new sanctions guidelines and letters for international aid organizations to reassure them that they will not run afoul of US sanctions for supplying humanitarian relief to Iran.

“Looking more closely at Biden’s statement, some of the things he mentioned, such as licenses, are already in place,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “A general license is how the Treasury Department helped work with the Swiss to approve a humanitarian channel that touches even the Central Bank of Iran.”

Joe Biden has apparently overlooked the American offer that has already been made to send humanitarian aid to Iran, which the Supreme Leader at once rejected. According to AP, Khamenei claimed that “ I do not know how real this accusation is [that America was behind the coronavirus epidemic] but when it exists, who in their right mind would trust you to bring them medication? Possibly your medicine is a way to spread the virus more. You might send people as doctors and therapists, maybe they would want to come here and see the effect of the poison they have produced in person.” Khamenei also alleged, having attained the farthest shores of absurdity, that the virus “is specifically built for Iran using the genetic data of Iranians which they [the Americans] have obtained through different means.”

Khamenei was also unwilling to accept the offer of help from Doctors Without Borders, to treat patients at a field hospital the group had brought with it and that it had hoped to install in the most heavily affected region of Iran. Instead, the group was expelled from Iran. The regime apparently wanted to show it can handle the coronavirus outbreak without any foreign help; that is manifestly untrue, and many Iranians have died unnecessarily because of the regime’s refusal to accept such aid from abroad.

Like others demanding that the Administration lift sanctions on Iran, Joe Biden misses the main point. Iran doesn’t need to have sanctions lifted to obtain the money it needs to combat the coronavirus spread. It need only change its priorities. It needs to make a choice: will it continue to send between $10 and $15 billion a year to support proxies and allies in Yemen (Houthi rebels), Iraq (Shi’ite Militias), Lebanon (Hezbollah), and Syria (the Assad regime), or will it decrease, or even end altogether, the funding for this foreign adventurism, and instead apply the billions saved thereby to dealing with the unprecedented coronavirus epidemic? Biden knows all about Tehran’s support for the Houthis, Hezbollah, the Shia militias in Iraq, and Assad’s military in Syria. None of that is secret. And he also surely knows — or he could find out in two minutes of searching the Internet — just how much that costs the Islamic Republic. So why does he fail to mention those sums that Iran might save and use on PPE, ventilators, hospital beds? Does he think it illegitimate to bring up this matter of Iran’s spending priorities? Why?

If Biden were sensible, and also wanted to distinguish himself from Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar et al., he would ask Iran’s leaders something like this:

“Please explain to the American people, and to many others, why it is wrong to expect Iran to concentrate its available resources fully on the coronavirus outbreak, instead of spending upwards of $10 billion a year on supporting proxies and allies in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, in these foreign campaigns. And think of the amounts spent, too, on the nuclear program. That has been Iran’s choice, and for the well-being of the people of Iran, it has been the wrong one. As for lifting sanctions, that should be discussed, if at all, only after Iran has shown that it has made a different choice, and now will prioritize the health of its own people over supporting military adventurism abroad.”

Yes, “if Biden were sensible…he would ask….”

But he isn’t. So he won’t.

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Filed Under: dhimmitude, Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, Iran, Useful idiots Tagged With: coronavirus, Joe Biden


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Apr 6, 2020 at 10:10 am

    Let the mullahs pay with all the money they stole from the Iranian citizens … billions upon billions of stolen loot.

    The mullahs are acting like Mohammed the highwayman. They rob whoever they can and enslave them.

  2. mortimer says

    Apr 6, 2020 at 10:16 am

    To support Iran is to betray the ally Saudi Arabia. Every extra dollar the mullahs get will be spent on military adventurism.

    We certainly wouldn’t want the mullahs to have to reach into their own deep pockets and pay back the hundreds of BILLIONS they stole from the Iranian people!
    (sarc/off)

    • roberta says

      Apr 6, 2020 at 9:38 pm

      ”betray the ally Saudi Arabia”
      Was this part of the sarc?

      • mortimer says

        Apr 7, 2020 at 8:39 am

        No, Roberta, KSA is a military ally. They do not agree with us on everything. Allies come in different sizes: strong, average, and wavering. No ally ever agrees 100% on everything. Better a wavering ally than an outright enemy.

        • gravenimage says

          Apr 10, 2020 at 2:06 am

          Mortimer–with all respect–Saudi Arabia is one of the most hideous Shari’ah states on the face of the earth, and backers of Jihad terror, including 9/11.

          They are no allies of ours.

  3. Kilauea says

    Apr 6, 2020 at 10:17 am

    Joe Biden has become a sad caricature of an individual way past their prime. Do not assist the Iranians to any degree. Let Allah or let other Muslim countries pull their bacon out of the fire. The cure for Islam is to administer more Islam until the patient cannot take it anymore.

    • mortimer says

      Apr 6, 2020 at 10:49 am

      The cure for Islam is to convince Muslims that the Koran was written by uneducated 7th-century humans, They then leave Islam instantly.

      • James Lincoln says

        Apr 6, 2020 at 3:35 pm

        mortimer,

        It appears that most muslims, unfortunately, are not being convinced…

        • mortimer says

          Apr 7, 2020 at 8:43 am

          Response to J.L. … but James, the West is not even trying … even so with all the polemics done by self-financed independents … MILLIONS of Muslims are leaving every year and many are convinced by logical, factual argumentation … that is your forte, is it not?

          Good argumentation works on people who are ready to listen and on some who aren’t ready as well.

          We must use polemics on a government-sponsored level. No one is doing that but China.

        • James Lincoln says

          Apr 7, 2020 at 9:00 am

          Thanks for your reply, mortimer.

          And yes, following factual, evidence-based logic is my “forte.”

          You made some good points and we’re both on the same side here…

  4. Emilie Green says

    Apr 6, 2020 at 10:24 am

    Remember what Robert Gates said about Biden, in his 2014 book, “I think he [Biden] has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

  5. mortimer says

    Apr 6, 2020 at 10:47 am

    Sleepy Joe exemplifies the statement attributed to Einstein: ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.”

    Giving money to the mullahs, means they will spend more on terrorism and a nuclear bomb.

  6. Westman says

    Apr 6, 2020 at 11:17 am

    Iranians are cannon fodder for the Mullahs who manipulate them with the strings of Islam. There is no method of providing money to care for the Iranian citizen without it passing through the sticky and diverting hands of the Mullahs.

    There is only one holistic cure for all of Iran’s ills; the removal of religion and its parasitic exploiters from their dictatorship.

  7. Roland says

    Apr 6, 2020 at 2:40 pm

    Biden is looking rather blank and confused these days. It is imperative that the Democrats replace him soon.

    • James Lincoln says

      Apr 6, 2020 at 3:37 pm

      Very true, Roland.

      Also looks like he forgot to refill his Aricept…

  8. L. D. Haney says

    Apr 6, 2020 at 3:20 pm

    Joe Biden is a demented buffoon…He is merely spouting the left’s talking points…An original thought, and a cold glass of ice water, would probably kill him…

    • mortimer says

      Apr 7, 2020 at 8:46 am

      Ho, ho.

  9. No Muzzies Here says

    Apr 6, 2020 at 4:03 pm

    He, like the man he shared the White House with, knows full well that his political future depends on support from the world’s fastest growing quasi-religious group.

  10. roberta says

    Apr 6, 2020 at 9:43 pm

    The old political parasite is at the top of his game. Shows you how bad his game has always been.

  11. EvansMediaUSA says

    Apr 7, 2020 at 3:57 am

    Biden is INSANE,….could care less if they later say he has dementia,…it’s what he is saying and doing NOW that proves this idiot is INSANE.

  12. Mike says

    Apr 7, 2020 at 7:21 am

    Will Joe still be living in November ?

  13. Giacomo Latta says

    Apr 7, 2020 at 9:17 am

    ”Khamenei was also unwilling to accept the offer of help from Doctors Without Borders”
    When you are a tyrant with a shaky grasp on your people, you can never have enough foreign enemies.

  14. OLD GUY says

    Apr 7, 2020 at 11:22 am

    POOR JOE! Or do we need to follow the money trail.

  15. Norman Gardner says

    Apr 7, 2020 at 11:36 am

    Poor Biden has only half a brain to work with and that even seems to be dimming. America will have two poor choices for president, one a complete dunce and the other the vestige of the ugly American, a selfish egotisical boor. Khameinei is in the category of a ruthless egomaniac despot who cares for himself while pouring gasoline on to the fire of Middle East antagonists in the Islamic community. He has turned down the aid offered to him and Iran and used funds for war . How stupid can Biden be? We know Sanders is a complete fool and a sell out to his bigoted fans but why would anyone want to join him?

  16. Del says

    Apr 7, 2020 at 12:58 pm

    Spend less on terrorism and killing.

  17. gravenimage says

    Apr 10, 2020 at 2:07 am

    I was listening to talk radio today, and the witless host said that if we helped Iran that we’d make friends. Good lord…

  18. DazzleMe says

    Apr 24, 2020 at 7:30 pm

    This man is absolutely and totally a moron—we will be in real trouble if he ever becomes president!!!

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