opinion
peace which lasts to this day.

She was a strong, constant supporter of my work
on Holocaust justice in my negotiations with Swiss
and French banks, German and Austrian slave labor
companies and European insurance companies.

She gave the keynote speech at the Washington
Conference which led to the Washington Principles
on Nazi-Confiscated Art, where she weaved her
own Holocaust background into the contemporary
challenge of returning looted art. And she asked
me to lead the U.S. delegation to the Kyoto confer-
ence on Climate Change, giving me strong backing
for the Kyoto Protocols.

She decided to name the State Department
headquarters after President Harry S. Truman, to
symbolize the leadership he had taken to build a
new, peaceful, post-war world, with U.S. leader-
ship. We shared a laugh when we found out his
middle initial “S” was not an abbreviation for any
name, but was just a letter his mother added to
his name.

We went through tragedies as well. I accompa-
nied her to Dover Air Force Base, where we met
the flag-draped coffins of American diplomats
killed in terrorist attacks at the U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania, and she gave an uplifting
speech on the sacrifices American diplomats
take to try to create a better world.

Madeleine Albright, tiny in stature but huge in
impact, had a charisma, a sparkle, a brilliance and
a fluency in Czech, French, Polish and Russian.

She connected the foreign policy she forged
with President Clinton to the lives of everyday
people around the world. All of these qualities
made her larger than life. One of her trademarks
was wearing a variety of brooches on the lapel
of her clothing to underline her political and dip-
lomatic messages. When I asked why, since she
had not done this in our early years together, she
recalled when Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein,
following his invasion of Kuwait, compared her to
an “unparalleled serpent.” She wore a snake pin
in response, and a tradition was born.

The United States has lost a great American
public servant, a role model for women as the
first female secretary of state, a professor at
Georgetown University, an author, a lifelong
proponent of democracy and human rights,
a constant friend of Israel and someone who
embraced her Jewish background. And I have
lost a dear friend. JE
Stuart E. Eizenstat worked with Madeleine
Albright when they were both in the Carter White
House and during the Clinton administration in
which she was the secretary of state and he was
undersecretary of state for economic business
and agriculture affairs and special representative
of President Clinton and Secretary Albright on
Holocaust-era issues.

BY FARLEY WEISS
T The New Iran Deal
Is a Disaster, and
Everyone Knows it
he United States and Iran are reportedly on
the cusp of a new nuclear agreement. One of
the last remaining issues is said to be whether or
not the Biden administration removes the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps from the Foreign Terrorist
Organization list.

The administration is purportedly offering to do
so on the condition that Iran makes some amor-
phous commitment to rein in its regional aggres-
sion and refrain from targeting Americans.

In other words, as far as the Biden administra-
tion is concerned, it’s OK if the Iranians attack
Europeans, Saudis, Israelis or Emiratis.

Such an agreement brings to mind the deal West
Germany reportedly made with Fatah shortly after
the Palestinian terrorist group Black September
hijacked Lufthansa flight 615 on Oct. 29, 1972.

There is strong evidence suggesting that West
Germany released the three surviving Palestinian
Arab terrorists involved in the Munich massacre
in exchange for a commitment that no terrorist
attacks would be carried out in the country.

The Biden administration was supposed to
be negotiating an agreement with Iran over its
nuclear program. Instead, the revised agreement
apparently includes many provisions regarding the
lifting of terror-related sanctions on the IRGC and
numerous individual Iranians, despite their ongo-
ing involvement in terror activity.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) recently stated that
while the agreement taking shape in Vienna
will not prevent Iran from eventually obtaining a
nuclear weapon, neither will the absence of a deal.

However, this misses the point — with no deal in
place over the past three years, it has been the
actions taken by both Israel and the United States
that have prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear
weapon. Furthermore, there is the example of North Korea.

The United States signed a deal with North
Korea on Oct. 21, 1994, under which Pyongyang
committed to freeze its nuclear program. In
exchange for North Korea agreeing to shut down
its main nuclear plant and abandon others under
construction, the United States would provide two
light-water reactors, along with oil for heating and
energy production until the new reactors were
completed. In addition, the United States agreed
to lift economic sanctions and end its diplomatic
freeze on North Korea.

Ultimately, however, North Korea never gave
up its nuclear weapons program, and did develop
nuclear weapons, all while economically benefit-
ing from the mistaken agreement. In other words,
the United States would have been far better off
maintaining the sanctions on North Korea.

The original nuclear agreement with Iran, known
as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed in
2015, was supposed to change Iran’s behavior and
rein in its nuclear weapons program, in exchange for
over $100 billion in sanctions relief. However, Iran
clandestinely continued its nuclear weapons pro-
gram, using the massive influx of money to increase
its defense budget by 40%, as well as upping the
budgets of Hamas and Hezbollah.

After the United States unilaterally pulled out
of the JCPOA in 2018 under President Donald
Trump, Iran’s defense budget plummeted, its for-
eign reserves dropped to just $4 billion and
Hamas and Hezbollah budgets were drastically
cut. The United States and Israel were able to take
military action to prevent Iran from obtaining a
bomb; Germany, France and Britain stayed in the
JCPOA, despite Iran openly and flagrantly violat-
ing its provisions.

The Biden administration has already loosened
sanctions even before a new deal has been reached.

Iran’s foreign reserves have already increased to
well over $30 billion, and are still rising.

Iran flagrantly violated the original JCPOA, and
the Biden administration is now pursuing a sec-
ond, weaker agreement, with less nuclear over-
sight and significant terrorism sanctions relief.

Not only that, but that sanctions relief will now
benefit not only Iran but also Russia, which is per-
secuting a war in Ukraine.

It’s obvious that the Biden administration’s
attempt to reach a new agreement with Iran is an
unmitigated disaster. They aren’t even attempting
to sell it as a good deal — instead they’re trying to
blame the Trump administration’s pullout from the
JCPOA for the bad deal they are about to sign.

In the end, providing massive sanctions relief
to an evil regime that calls for the destruction
of Israel and America, and which is the leading
global state sponsor of terrorism, is a terrible idea
— and one that has already been tried. If, as Albert
Einstein famously said, insanity is doing the same
thing over and over and expecting a different
result, then what is doing the same thing over and
over despite expecting worse results?
Apparently, only the Biden administration can
answer that question. JE
Farley Weiss, former president of the National
Council of Young Israel, is an intellectual property
attorney for the law firm of Weiss & Moy.

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 19