More folks in Congress - including lotsa Democrats - are waking up to the realization that patty cake with Iran was always a bad idea

 The American Enterprise Institute's Danielle Pletka, writing at The Dispatch, says that the Biden-era push to revive a deal with Iran on its nuclear ambitions is running out of steam among members of Congress:

“It is time to tell the Europeans—who[m] we have shown good faith with, that we were willing to enter into what was hopefully a stronger and longer deal—that the Iranians are not there,” Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Menendez told the AIPAC New Jersey spring leadership dinner last week. Sure, it was what his audience wanted to hear; AIPAC has been lobbying against Barack Obama’s Iran deal since it was first signed in 2015. But Menendez is not alone. A June 1 non-binding measure offered by Sen. Jim Lankford (R-Oklahoma) demanding that any nuclear agreement address Tehran-sponsored terrorism and opposing sanctions relief for the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps passed with every Republican but one, and 16 Democrats, including Menendez and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Lankford got a lot of support from across the aisle:

Democrats who voted with Lankford: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York ), Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), Chris Coons (D-Delaware), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada) Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire), Mark Kelly (D-Arizona), Angus King (I-Maine), Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), Gary Peters (D-Michigan), Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona), Jon Tester (D-Montana) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon). Of the 16, five are up for re-election in 2022, three in tough races (Cortez Masto, Hassan, and Kelly).

And for good reason. Iran has once again been showing itself to bed a bad-faith negotiating partner:

The Board of Governors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed a resolution condemning (with only two nations opposing) Tehran’s failure to disclose requested information about nuclear activity at three previously undisclosed sites. While the work was alleged to have taken place prior to 2003, documents spirited from Iran by Israel reveal a complex effort (which included documents stolen from the IAEA itself) to hoodwink the international nuclear agency. Any steps to condemn Iran at the IAEA would follow a two-year hiatus during which European powers and (reportedly beginning in November 2020) the Biden administration tried their best to sweet talk, cajole, bribe, and threaten Tehran back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

This whole undertaking was always a bad idea. Barack Obama and John Kerry pursed it so vigorously in the first place because they're both flaming narcissists who had some kind of idea that history would regard them as visionaries ushering in an unprecedented era of unicorns and rainbows. Kerry wanted it so badly he was willing to be publicly humiliated and insulted by Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif at the interminable meetings at which the JCPOA was hammered out. And the Obama administration and those shilling for it continued to offer up flimsy defense of it afterward, even as top Iranian officials continued to cal the US the Great Satan and Iran's number-one enemy, even as Iran continued to wage proxy war through terrorist groups, and even as it captured a US Navy crew - on the day of an Obama State of the Union address - and distributed photos world wide of the crewmen on their knees with their hands behind their heads.

Appeasing bad guys is always a bad idea.