No kidding. The better question is why we bothered negotiating with them in the first place. That includes the period in which Hillary Clinton ran foreign policy as Secretary of State and when the Iranian people agitated for freedom — while Barack Obama played nice with the mullahs instead.

Yesterday, Clinton skipped over those points to claim that now we should stop engaging with the brutal tyrants oppressing women:

The US should not be negotiating with Iran “on anything right now,” including a nuclear agreement, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday.

“I would not be negotiating with Iran on anything right now, including the nuclear agreement,” Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday, adding that the horse is “out of the barn.” …

Clinton emphasized her support for focusing on the protestors on Thursday, saying that the United States should not “look like we are seeking an agreement [with Iran] at a time when the people of Iran are standing up to their oppressors.”

“We are giving them hope and heart. I think we’re doing something else,” Clinton said. “We’re sending a message to whoever the few possibly concerned people are about what’s happening to the tens of thousands of Iranians being imprisoned, and the many hundreds who are being killed, that maybe they are willing inside to speak out. Not just within the government, but more importantly with the clerics to say that this is not sustainable.”

“You can’t premise a theocracy on covering up women’s hair. That doesn’t mean that we are going to overthrow the regime and they are going to leave peacefully,” Clinton told CNN.

“I’m hoping that there can be some kind of internal discussion that might lead to, you know, more freedom, but also less oppression,” she said.

Ahem. Where was this version of Hillary Clinton in 2009? Iranians marched in the street after a clearly corrupt election kept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power, the clown promoted by the mullahs for their own purposes. Even after security services opened fire on the crowds and killed dozens of protesters, Barack Obama insisted on continuing his “dialogue” with Ali Khamenei and the totalitarian clique. And Clinton fronted that effort:

The White House’s cautious reaction reflected the combustible scene in Tehran, where riot police officers were cracking down on angry opposition supporters, and the likelihood that the administration would be forced to pursue its diplomatic initiative with a familiar and implacable foe, one who now also has a legitimacy problem.

“We, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said during a visit to Niagara Falls, Ontario, on Saturday. “We obviously hope the outcome reflects the genuine will and desire of the Iranian people.”

There was palpable disappointment within the administration, where there were hopes, as President Obama said Friday, that the throngs of people at the polls augured a change in Iran.

Trying to put a positive face on the outcome, one senior administration official held out the hope that the intensity of the political debate during the campaign, and the huge turnout, might make Mr. Ahmadinejad more receptive to the United States, if only to defuse a potential backlash from the disputed election.

It took the Obama administration several days to acknowledge irregularities in the election. A week later, the State Department — again, under Clinton — refused to condemn the Iranian government for its crackdowns on protests. Even Obama’s progressive allies at The Nation declared his “tepid” reaction “disappointing.” Obama eventually offered some bons mots about the protests, but a few days later, the White House leaked to the Washington Post that Obama was carefully conserving his ability to engage the mullahs. That went on all summer, as did attempts to get a deal with Tehran.

And needless to say, all during that time, the Iranian mullahs were continuing to “premise a theocracy on covering up women’s hair.” That didn’t stop Obama from strengthening the mullahs in 2015 with pallets of cash and access to $150 billion in assets with the JCPOA in return for unverifiable “controls” on their nuclear program. Neither did the routine targeting of American military forces by IRGC-controlled proxies in Iraq and Syria. And no one seemed too concerned about women’s hair when the Democrat establishment, very much including one Hillary Rodham Clinton, urged Joe Biden to negotiate with the mullahs to restore the JCPOA and curtail sanctions on Iran.

This is nothing more than shameless exploitation by Clinton of a popular uprising in Iran for her own political benefit. Clinton had the position, authority, and standing to act boldly against the mullahs thirteen years ago, and instead assisted Barack Obama in throwing liberty-minded Iranians under the bus for Obama’s political ambitions.

Addendum: This is equally disgraceful. Res ipsa loquitur.

Hillary Clinton goes on PBS and compares pro-lifers to the Iranian regime, the Taliban, and Russian soldiers raping Ukrainian women. Of course, Christiane Amanpour agrees, "This pushback on American women's rights at the same time as you're trying to figure a way forward." pic.twitter.com/5GznH9uK01

— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) December 2, 2022