I am at a loss to explain the infatuation that the previous president Obama, and the current President Biden have with Iran. The Iranian nation has been a sworn enemy of the United States since the revolution that brought the Islamists to power.

It is against a backdrop of terrorism and hatred that President Obama decided that there was in fact a crisis that needed to be solved. Because if there isn’t an actual crisis to weigh into, you could just invent one (see Obamacare for an example). Terms like “nuclear breakout”, and “snapback” were defined and given weight. An echo chamber was constructed by the most scandal free administration in history, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was born.

President Trump declared the entire thing a farce, and pulled out of the deal. He then put in place sanctions to cripple the hostile state. The sanctions were largely effective, and Iran spent quite a bit of energy dealing with their effects. This probably helped limit their adventurism abroad.

Now that President Biden is in place, the case is being made to wade back in and look at Iran’s self created isolation. But before they got involved in talks, the administration made a few behind the scenes gifts to the Iranian regime. One was getting South Korea to release 7 billion dollars of frozen assets back to the mullahs. Another Easter egg was to remove the terrorist designation from the Houthi rebels in Syria. This allowed the World Food Program to provide them food, relieving some of the pressure for Iran to support their proxy in the region. But these attempts to butter up the hatemongers was small potatoes compared to the gift basket of power included in one of President Biden’s executive orders.

The executive order had a fairly innocuous name, “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.” It sounds innocent enough but some of the ramifications were immediate and expensive. The Keystone XL pipeline construction was halted and energy supplies, like ANWR, placed off limits. In effect it reversed some of President Trump’s policies that would lead to US energy independence. And right there was the hidden gift for Iran.

If America is not able to fulfill its own need for energy, it has to rely on importing oil from other countries. It just so happens that a lot of that oil comes through the Strait of Hormuz. As a matter of fact about 20 percent of the entire world’s supply of oil, and over 30 percent of all other seaborne trade travels through the passage. A quick look at a picture will probably help.

Source: Google Maps

Iran can cause all sorts of havoc in these waters, and they often do. Just this month a US Coast Guard Cutter was harassed, no doubt to make a point to the world, that they can influence anything that happens in that waterway.

So by signing that executive order, President Biden gave Iran a large amount of leverage over the United States energy policy. This is by far a much more powerful position then they had under former President Trump.

Some skeptics will be tempted to say that this is an unintended, and unseen, third order effect of the policy, but I disagree. National and Military leaders spend hours looking at first, second, and third order effects of actions. This wasn’t missed by either side.