Something strange seems to be going on in terms of America’s foreign policy maneuvers under the Biden Administration, specifically when it comes to Iran. As you may recall, over the weekend the Iranians announced that a deal had been reached between Tehran and Washington, also including Great Britain. The alleged agreement would have included a prisoner swap and the release of billions of dollars of Iranian funds currently tied up by sanctions. After a bit of a delay when asked for confirmation, both the U.S. State Department and the UK’s Foreign Secretary denied that a deal had been reached.

Something about the White House announcement just seemed odd at the time. Not only did they not immediately respond to the original request for confirmation from the Associated Press, but when the denial came, it was quite short and lacking in specificity. The State Department spokesperson said that there wasn’t a deal, but he also didn’t deny that a deal might be in the works and possibly even imminent. And we really have to wonder why Iran would put something like that out there if it was completely fictional when it would be so easily batted down by Washington and London. It appears that the Associated Press wasn’t satisfied with the answers either because they’ve been doing some additional digging and finding a flurry of activity among American diplomats that seems to point to something coming our way soon.

Even as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab rejected the prisoner swap reports at a news conference Monday in London, senior American diplomats were in the Middle East meeting Gulf Arab leaders. And two of the nuclear deal’s biggest proponents in Congress — Democratic Sens. Chris Coons and Chris Murphy — were touring the region.

Those discussions follow a week of top-level meetings in Washington between Biden; his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan; Blinken; his deputy, Wendy Sherman; special Iran envoy Rob Malley; and others with the head of Israel’s spy agency and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top national security aide.

The Israelis are adamantly opposed to any U.S. rapprochement with Iran, which they regard as an existential threat to the Jewish state. At least three separate meetings were held with the Israelis last week, including one Friday with Mossad chief Yossi Cohen at which Biden made an appearance. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Cohen was briefed on the Vienna discussions “and the progress being made there.”

That’s an awful lot of diplomatic travel (particularly with the pandemic still dragging on) and Zoom calls for a situation that’s supposedly still on the back burner. Israel is going to be enraged if we suddenly start playing nice with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Saudi Arabia and other Arab states around the Gulf who are traditionally at odds with Iran will be similarly put off, particularly after relations in that region improved considerably over the past four years.

When you add all of these clues up, it certainly looks like the Biden administration could be saying “no deal” in public but working all of the players at the table in private to put something together. If so, it paints a very different picture than the one being pitched by Jen Psaki over the past few weeks. And where is our loyal and dedicated press corps during all of this? Surely they could find somebody to leak a few details if a revived Iran deal is in the works, right? But we’re not hearing a peep about it.

To put this in context, we should remember precisely who Joe Biden may or may not be about to shake hands with. Check out this video that Iran released over the weekend, just as they were talking about cutting a deal with the United States.

Today pre-Khamenei talk,Iran state TV aired this clip depicting an IRGC attack on #Congress

Yes, it’s propaganda. But it shows the anti-US ideology of #IRGC,which is rising in power

Should the #US give #Iran billions in sanctions relief before addressing the challenge of IRGC? pic.twitter.com/Yp4z4igwWL

— Kasra Aarabi (کسری اعرابی) (@KasraAarabi) May 2, 2021

In case that was too subtle for you, that was a promotional video with some Hollywood-level CGI showing Iranian forces on the march, a missile being launched, and the U.S. Capitol Building going up in flames. Details of the video are provided at the Free Beacon.

Iran released a provocative new video over the weekend that depicts its military forces blowing up the United States Capitol building, a threat that comes as the Biden administration inches closer to providing Tehran with billions of dollars in economic sanctions relief.

The video debuted Sunday on Iranian state-controlled television before Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei delivered remarks, in which he praised the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the paramilitary force that has killed Americans, and celebrated IRGC leader Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a drone strike by the former Trump administration.

I suppose it isn’t enough that virtually every speech given by Iranian leaders inside their own country ends with a rousing chorus of “Death to America” from the crowd. Now they’re putting out inspirational videos of our Capitol Building being blown up. But hey… let’s give them billions of dollars in cash, free some of their terrorists, and give them the green light to make more plutonium. I’m sure that will make them adopt a much more reasonable attitude, right?