In October, under the approving eye of the Biden administration, Venezuela’s cutthroat government inked an agreement with the country’s opposition parties. Called the Barbados Agreement, it was a pledge to work toward a free presidential election.
What’s not to like, right? The government of Nicolás Maduro trumpeted the agreement as a breakthrough, and the Biden administration swallowed the propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
Biden believed that by lifting the sanctions, Venezuela’s migrant problem would subside. He was dead wrong. The number of illegals coming to the United States from Venezuela soared.
Biden didn’t notice that despite the grandiose pronouncements of progress toward democratic reform, Maduro offered no concessions. So it surprised no one except Joe Biden that the Maduro government disqualified the hugely popular opposition candidate, Maria Corina Machado.
The puppet legislature declared her ineligible to run for 15 years, and the kangaroo Supreme Court echoed the decision.
On Saturday the State Department said the ruling is “inconsistent with the commitment” made in Barbados. No kidding. State noted that Ms. Machado “neither received a copy of the allegations against her nor was afforded the opportunity to respond to those allegations.” It said the U.S. is “reviewing our Venezuela sanctions policy, based on this development and the recent political targeting of democratic opposition candidates and civil society.”
There isn’t much to review. Mr. Maduro learned his politics from Fidel Castro and isn’t about to step aside. The U.S. was naive to think he’d allow a free election, and the only realistic response is to restore the sanctions.
Despite evidence of Iran’s perfidy going back four decades, first Barack Obama and then Biden tried to deal with the Islamic thugs in Tehran. Obama signed a terrible nuclear deal in 2015, unfreezing billions in Iranian assets. He also shipped $400 million in cash to the mullahs in a deal for hostages, the first time America had paid for its people. As predicted back then, the Iranians simply snatched four more Americans.
Then in 2023, Joe Biden swapped five Americans for $6 billion. What possesses a man like Biden to trust these brigands and murderers?
It’s the left-wing impulse to “save” these miscreants and bring them back into the civilized fold. Until his last day in office, Obama was agitating to get the World Trade Organization to accept Iran as a member. Fortunately, no one in the WTO was that stupid.
But Biden is a different story.
If indeed, as Mr. Blinken suggests, the six billion spondulix are yet to be transferred to Iran from a Qatari bank, why would America let this deal go forward now that Hamas, an Iranian proxy army, has so barbarically attacked Israeli citizens? Washington has the wherewithal to halt the $6 billion payment and renege on the ransom deal now that the hostages Iran has held are back on American soil. So what’s going on?
The answer seems to be that President Biden’s team remains wedded to the idea that appeasing the Islamic Republic is feasible — never mind all the evidence to the contrary. Iran and its “death to Israel” coterie is adamant to stop any American-backed peace between Israel and Arab countries, and especially the overly-advertised Washington push for a treaty between Jerusalem and Riyadh, which has emerged against Israel in the war.
Caracas believes that it can afford sanctions more than it can afford a loss in the presidential election and a certain trial for corruption. As long as Biden is in office, Venezuela can rest easy.