September 3, 2021
The new Raisi Administration has fired a shot at the Biden Administration, accusing it of “threatening” Iran with military action.
The Biden Administration has made no such threat and it isn’t clear why the Raisi Administration wants to pretend it has done so. In recent years, the Iranian government including the military has consistently insisted the United States has given up any thought of attacking Iran militarily.
It is assumed by many that the regime decided to stop talking about US military attacks because polling showed that such talk scared the Iranian public and lowered support for the regime as more Iranians saw the regime risking Iran’s security by angering the United States and prompting it to consider a military attack.
But on August 28, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters that President Biden had threatened to attack Iran, emphasizing that such a threat was a violation of international law.
But Biden made no such threat in fact, quite the opposite.
Khatibzadeh insisted that Biden was threatening a military attack on Iran when Biden said he was prepared to turn to “other options” if negotiations didn’t produce a return to the JCPOA.
The previous day, Biden had met with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Afterward, Biden told reporters that in dealing with Iran, “We’re going to put diplomacy first and see where that takes us.” That certainly was not a military threat, but it was ignored by Khatibzadeh.
Biden’s next sentence was, “But, if diplomacy fails, we’re ready to turn to other options.” That’s what Khatibzadeh decided to call a threat.
Actually, other American officials have already said many times that they are planning what to do if the JCPOA talks fail, with the most likely first move being to increase the enforcement of US sanctions in order to squeeze the Islamic Republic. No one has talked about military action. Biden has said numerous times that he wants to reduce the US involvement in the Middle East in order to put more focus on the Far East and the challenge there from China, so it is exceedingly unlikely that he would be thinking of a military attack on Iran.