America’s Iran policy is at a crossroads. In the wake of President Trump’s decision to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal, his administration has unveiled a new, more muscular approach toward the Islamic Republic. Trump adminstration reinvigorated commitment to engage with the Iranian people. It is needed now, because Iran’s clerical regime is currently facing unprecedented challenges to its stability. Iran’s regime, meanwhile, has lurched into full-blown financial crisis. Beset by widespread inefficiency and corruption, the Iranian economy was never vibrant. But conditions have gone from bad to worse, despite the expected dividends of the Iran nuclear deal, for two reasons. First, Iran’s leaders have consistently prioritized guns over butter, and therefore used the revenue generated by post-sanctions trade to swell the country’s defense budget and bankroll military interventions in places like Syria and Bahrain, rather than make much-needed investments at home. Second, the advent of the Trump administration, and its far more skeptical approach to detente with Iran, has generated massive capital flight from the Islamic Republic, totaling some $30 million to date. The aggregate result of this confluence of factors is that, for perhaps the first time in its 39 year history, the Islamic Republic can truly be said to be in a pre-revolutionary state. This ferment affords the Trump administration an opportunity to engage the Iranian people in support of freedom and democracy. The United States can and should promote fundamental freedoms within the Islamic Republic, and draw attention to the deformities of its ruling regime, as a way of empowering the country’s nascent democratic forces.

The Europeans’ love affair with the regime in Iran should not come as a surprise - they make millions of dollars trading with Tehran. But it’s a tenuous relationship similar to a scorpion who bites an acquaintance who then acts surprised that the scorpion would turn treacherous. The Iranian government’s aggressive interventionist foreign policy sent shock waves through more moderate Arab countries that were dumbfounded the American government would embolden Iran and its plan to expand its Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East. The fear of Iran has overtaken the hatred of Israel as a driving force for Middle East diplomacy. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other nations have quietly forged a working relationship with the Israeli government as a way to limiting Iran’s power and influence in the region. In fact, Mr. Trump’s policy reversal was applauded not only in Jerusalem but in many Arab capitals. Yet our European allies, particularly the Germans, continue to hold hands with the Iranians and now other Arab countries are responding. Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Salman recently took steps to freeze new business with Germany, despite the Kingdom’s nearly $8 billion worth of exports sent to Berlin. The Germans have decided that protecting its industry is more important than protecting peace in the region. As we can see, the impact of the Trump administration decision to re-isolate the Iranian regime is having its desired impact. Despite lobbying and political pressure from the Europeans, businesses recognize that the American market is more lucrative to their bottom line than the Iranian regime. And unlike in the past, when the Arab nations spoke in one voice, we now have allies in nations like Saudi Arabia that agree Iran is a danger to peace.

Most Central Americans are poor because many of the people who run their governments are corrupt and/or incompetent. And that basic fact will continue to overwhelm efforts to stop the illegal migration into the U.S. The Spanish-speaking countries of Central America have been independent from Spain for two centuries, so the excuse of colonialism for their poor economic and human rights performance does not fly. With reasonably responsible leadership, change can take place. In the last three decades, Panama embarked on a series of pro-growth policies that have now lifted it into the ranks of the middle-income countries. Costa Rica has been a functioning democracy for decades with a semi-free market economy. Forty years ago, a number of countries around the globe were as poor as many of the countries in Central America, but now they are middle-income or high-income. Places as diverse as Singapore, Cayman, South Korea and Chile have succeeded not through foreign aid, but through pro-growth policies. If Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua had instituted pro-growth policies as did Singapore and Chile, they also would be rich now, and their citizens would not be trying to flee to the United States. The problem is one of a failure to develop proper institutions and policies. It is not that the people who run these countries are ignorant of the reasons for the successes and failures of other countries ? but they have chosen not to make the necessary changes because it takes some effort or they are corrupt themselves and thus prefer the status quo. High growth results in rapid job creation, diminishing the incentives to climb over a wall to the U.S. Removing most of the barriers to growth can be done quickly if the leadership in the poor countries is so motivated.

Apart from the obvious, there isn’t much more to be said about recent banishment of American journalists from China. The obvious point is that the People’s Republic of China is a totalitarian state, and when the power of a totalitarian state is threatened, it responds with force. The Communist Party, which is the real government in China, cannot tolerate press freedom, as Americans understand it, or journalists interested in reporting the facts. The facts in China aren’t flattering to its government so the journalists have to go. The only other observation to be made is that China, in its customary fashion, is lying not just about the origins of COVID-19 (which it blames on American servicemen traveling in Asia) but about the cause of this escalating standoff as well. It began, in fact, six weeks ago with an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal about COVID-19 which referred, in its headline, to the People’s Republic as “the Real Sick Man of Asia.” This prompted Beijing to immediately expel three Journal reporters and demand a retraction and apology. To their credit, neither the Journal nor the Trump administration were prepared to appease China by restricting press freedom in America. The Chinese foreign ministry has not only propagated the false claim that COVID-19 originated in the United States but has also complained that employees of Chinese media suffer “unreasonable oppression” in the United States. Of course, the only oppression suffered by Chinese journalists here is official American recognition that they are employed by the Chinese government - and ultimately controlled by China’s Communist Party. The “oppression” is entirely self-inflicted. China has much to conceal, and its government is fully prepared to hide it.

Ongoing evidence-gathering conducted by the U.S. government adds credence to charges of China’s efforts to silence news of the outbreak, which allowed its citizens to travel abroad and spread the virus worldwide before the alarm bells were sounded. Though the evidence is incomplete, there is “circumstantial evidence” that either the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention is responsible. Other possible sources have been proven to be highly unlikely. Whether the disease escaped from a lab or a meat market, there is little doubt it was a product of China, and that authorities were negligent in alerting world health officials until it was too late to halt its spread. The Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act of 1976 places limits on lawsuits filed against nations in U.S. courts. But heinous acts by officialdom don’t deserve immunity. Accordingly, Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act on 2016, which opened the way for U.S. citizens to sue Saudi Arabia for alleged complicity in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Cotton-Crenshaw legislation seeks to create an additional exception to sovereign immunity that would hold China liable for covering up the release of the coronavirus and intentionally allowing it to spread to other lands, including the United States. If it were to become law, Americans would be empowered to sue China for damages in U.S. courts, provided no settlement had been reached between Washington and Beijing. China should be held accountable for unleashing a global catastrophe. Or it could happen again.

There is good news emerging from the relentless recitation of death and economic depression: An effort is underway to bring to account those responsible for the sudden outbreak and global spread of the coronavirus, named COVID-19. Winning satisfaction in court against a sovereign nation, not assured, would be all the more challenging with surly China as the defendant. Still, if the U.S. Congress would unite around a patriotic cause, Americans would have a chance to win justice that assuages lost lives and property. Legislation has been introduced on Capitol Hill with a title: the Holding the Chinese Communist Party Accountable for Infecting Americans Act of 2020. The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Texas Republican, would amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, creating a specific exception for damages resulting from China’s failure to prevent the widespread transmission of the deadly virus. “By silencing doctors and journalists who tried to warn the world about the coronavirus, the Chinese Communist Party allowed the virus to spread quickly around the globe,” said Mr. Cotton in statement accompanying the April 16 filing. “Their decision to cover up the virus led to thousands of needless deaths and untold economic harm. It’s only appropriate that we hold the Chinese government accountable for the damage it has caused.” And China had help. Early on, the World Health Organization (WHO) downplayed the transmissibility of the virus among the human population and discouraged the use of travel bans to stop its spread internationally. President Trump told reporters recently WHO "misled us. They’re literally a pipe organ for China.”

In a logical world, Europeans would retake control of their own destiny. That recalibration would entail beefing up their military power, and their navies in particular. They also would begin to frack and horizontally drill. Europeans would push ahead with more nuclear power, hydroelectric projects and clean-coal technologies - at least until new sources of clean energies become viable. Europe should applaud U.S. gas and oil development, which has upped world supplies, diversified suppliers and lowered global prices. Europeans should especially remember that the U.S. military keeps global commerce safe for all vulnerable importers such as themselves. But these remedies are apparently seen in Europe as worse than the disease of oil and gas dependency. The result is again chaos. Europe lectures about greenhouse gases while it desperately seeks supplies of fossil fuels. Germany usually sets the tone in Europe, and it is the most hypocritical in both denouncing and buying fossil fuels from unsavory sources. The danger for Europe now is that the charade may soon be over. Americans are self-sufficient in gas and oil. They have lost interest in Middle East quagmires and petro-regimes. And they don’t like patrolling the world for countries that both count on and ankle-bite the U.S. military. Meanwhile, the more Europeans pander to oil-rich Russia, Iran and various Gulf states, the less respect they earn in return. It is hard to be both the world’s largest importer of gas and oil and the loudest critic of fossil fuels, but Europe has managed to do it.

It’s no wonder that Europe’s traditional foreign policy reflects these crazy paradoxes. Energy neediness explains why the EU was so eager to maintain the so-called Iran deal with the theocracy in Tehran, and also why it was nervous about the anti-Russia hysteria that arose in the United States after the 2016 election. Past European distancing from Israel reflected Europe’s fear of alienating Arab oil producers in the Middle East and North Africa. Europeans see the current U.S. government as nationalist and unpredictable. Americans appear not so ready as in the past to enter the world’s hotspots to ensure unimpeded commercial use of sea and air lanes for the benefit of others. The result is a sort of European schizophrenia when it comes to America and foreign policy in general. On one hand, the European Union resents its military dependence on Washington, while on the other it prays for its continuance. The EU loudly promotes freedom and democracy abroad, but it is careful to keep ties with oil-exporting Middle Eastern autocracies that are antithetical to every value Europeans promote. Germany agrees with its allies that Russian imperial agendas could threaten European autonomy. But privately, Berlin reassures Mr. Putin’s Russia that it wants to buy all the gas and oil that Moscow has to sell. Germany increasingly seems far friendlier with a suspicious Russia than it is with an America that protects it. In sum, what ensures that Europeans have enough daily gasoline and home heating fuel are not batteries, wind farms and solar panels ? much less loud green proselytizing. They count instead on a mercurial Russia, an array of unstable Middle Eastern governments and an underappreciated U.S. military.

Despite its cool Green parties and ambitious wind and solar agendas, Europe remains by far the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas. Oil output in the North Sea and off the coast of Norway is declining, and the European Union is quietly looking for fossil fuel energy anywhere it can find it. Europe itself is naturally rich in fossil fuels. It likely has more reserves of shale gas than the United States, currently the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. Yet in most European countries, horizontal drilling and fracking to extract gas and oil are either illegal or face so many court challenges and popular protests that they are neither culturally nor economically feasible. The result is that Europe is almost entirely dependent on Russian, Middle Eastern and African sources of energy. The American-Iranian standoff in the Middle East, coupled with radical drop-offs in Iranian and Venezuelan oil production, has terrified Europe ? and for understandable reasons. The European Union has almost no ability to guarantee the delivery of critical oil and gas supplies from the Middle East should Iran close the Strait of Hormuz or harass ships in the Persian Gulf. Europe’s only maritime security is the NATO fleet ? a synonym for the U.S. Navy. Vladimir Putin’s Russia supplies an estimated 30 percent of Europe’s oil needs. In times of crisis, Mr. Putin could exercise de facto control over the European economy. In other words, Europe refuses to develop its own gas and oil reserves, and won’t fund the necessary military power to ensure that it can safely import energy from problematic or even hostile sources.

It is strange that many people, conservatives and liberals alike have managed to convince themselves that the Communist dictatorship is evolving into America’s partner. President Trump has sung Mr. Xi’s praises. To be fair, buttering up dictators is part of Mr. Trump’s negotiating strategy. To be fairer, I don’t think that strategy has worked. The Trump administration is, however, the first to identify China as an adversary. It did so in the National Defense Strategy written and released in 2017 when H.R. McMaster was serving as national security adviser. Perhaps the current global health and economic crisis will prompt wider recognition of this one-party state’s oppressive policies at home and hegemonic ambitions abroad, the threat it poses to the security of America and what we used to call the Free World. I was encouraged on April 17th to see the editor of Bild, Germany’s largest and most important newspaper, publish an open letter to President Xi saying: “You are endangering the world. … You plan to strengthen China through a plague that you exported. You will not succeed.” There’s one more point I want to make today. Taiwanese officials have coped with the virus extraordinarily well. As early as Dec. 31, they began screening arrivals from Wuhan. They also warned the WHO about person-to-person transmissions. The WHO ignored them. That’s because China’s rulers insist Taiwan be treated as a rogue province rather than an independent nation-state ? which, for all intents and purposes, it has been for more than 70 years. That should matter to the peoples of what we used to call the Free World.