Within hours of the announcement that an agreement was made, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the No. 3 Senate Democrat and a man who would run over his own mother if it would show support for the Obama administration, said he was “disappointed” by the pact and opined that Iran won more from the deal’s loosening of economic sanctions than the international community gained by slowing down the country’s nuclear program. He went on to say that more sanctions would be coming.
“This disproportionality of this agreement makes it more likely that Democrats and Republicans will join together and pass additional sanctions when we return in December. I intend to discuss that possibility with my colleagues,”
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) told The Washington Post he had problems with the pact for disproportionately aiding Iran and called for vigorous enforcement of existing sanctions and “ongoing” verification of the nuclear program’s scale-back, particularly given “Iran’s history of duplicity."
Menendez said the committee would continue with the passage of new sanctions, but add a provision that delays their implementation.
“I expect that the forthcoming sanctions legislation to be considered by the Senate will provide for a six month window to reach a final agreement before imposing new sanctions on Iran, but will at the same time be immediately available should the talks falter or Iran fail to implement or breach the interim agreement,” he added.
Democratic Senators Blumenthal (CT) and Cardin (MD) expressed similar reservations as Menendez and Schumer.
Mike Rogers (R-MI) Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee agrees with his Democratic Party colleagues:
“Think about what this agreement does. It says you can continue to enrich. That’s what the Iranians believe. And they have made no changes—no changes—in the development of their nuclear weapon program, and I can tell that you with a high degree of certainty.”
These members of Congress are correct, Iran will get to pocket the billions of dollars they get, using it to stabilize the collapsing Iranian economy, bolster its nuclear program, and fund its global terror network. Ultimately the deal allows Iran to start chipping away at the sanctions regime, and eventually it will lead to its complete disintegration, or at very least collapsing it to the point where they no longer matter.
Iran can use the short-term financial injection to bide its time, waiting for major powers and corporations to engage in a capitalist frenzy: no one wants to be left behind as Iran’s market opens up, so everyone will try to get in first.
As John Bolton said of Fox News, Iran has broken the psychological momentum and effect of the international economic sanctions. And while estimates differ on Iran’s precise gain, it is considerable ($7-20 billion) it is worth much more. A six-months’ easing of sanctions will create contracts and business arrangements which will make it extremely hard for the West to reverse direction.
Amongst the issues with the with the supposed controls put on the Iranian nuclear program is it’s vague language for example the deal calls for‘“a mutually defined enrichment program with practical limits and transparency measures to ensure the peaceful nature of the program.”
In announcing the deal, Iran’s leaders and state-owned media began to brag about the US’s capitulation on their insistence they retain the right to enrich uranium. This is huge because it leads a final agreement that allows Iran to continue spinning centrifuges would leave the terrorist-supporting regime with the ambiguity it needs to dash across the nuclear finish line. It also means the Obama Administration has abandoned a decade of Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran stop all uranium-enrichment activities.
The agreement does not cover centrifuge manufacturing (they can replace broken machines which does not stop them from upgrading and replacing existing ones). The deal does not stop Iran’s ballistic missile program, whose purpose is creating weapons delivery system.
While the agreement requires Iran to dilute some of its weapons grade uranium, it is being done via a process (converting to oxide fuel) that will take about two weeks to reverse, so the converted uranium oxide can be easily converted back.
With all this in mind it’s no wonder that it was reported that Obama avoided calling Netanyahu as the deal was being finalized and announced and why the Israeli Prime Minister had such an angry and public reaction.
“What was achieved last night in Geneva is not an historic agreement; it is an historic mistake. Today the world has become a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world. For the first time, the world’s leading powers have agreed to uranium enrichment in Iran while ignoring the UN Security Council decisions that they themselves led. Sanctions that required many years to put in place contain the best chance for a peaceful solution. These sanctions have been given up in exchange for cosmetic Iranian concessions that can be cancelled in weeks. This agreement and what it means endanger many countries including, of course, Israel. Israel is not bound by this agreement. The Iranian regime is committed to the destruction of Israel and Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself, by itself, against any threat. As Prime Minister of Israel, I would like to make it clear: Israel will not allow Iran to develop a military nuclear capability.”
Netanyahu might say that he will not allow Iran to develop a military nuclear capability, but with Saturday night’s agreement, the military option has been taken out of his hands even though the ability to “rush to a bomb” as Netanyahu has described it in the past has not been taken out of Iran’s hands.
In the end that was Iran’s biggest gain. There is no way that the Jewish State can attack the Iranian nuclear program, no matter how close it gets to the bomb after the entire international community shook hands with Iran and signed an agreement.
Iran gets its protection, Obama gets a few days of relief from media reports of all the problems with his signature health care plan, and Israel (and in the long term the American people) is left holding the short end of the stick, a continued Iranian nuclear threat.
1 comment:
Obama's Iranian deal should prove ever bit as effective as his suport for the Arab Spring.
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