Perspective" Obama / Kerry Iranian Nuke Deal

Editorial Cartoon by Rick McKee

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Context Matters - Twenty-four hours later, the extent of Obama's nuclear sellout is becoming obvious. Keep in mind who we are dealing with.

On the one hand you have the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, whose leaders vow to wipe Israel off the map, refer to America as "the great Satan" and have repeatedly cheated on existing international agreements.

On the other hand, we have a president who traded five Taliban leaders for one deserter, who makes red lines and then erases them, who underestimated the threat from ISIS, calling it "junior varsity," and who has repeatedly misled the American people on issues like marriage, taxes and Obamacare.

Now we're being asked to accept a deal -- involving nuclear weapons -- that these two sides have negotiated!

I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere buried in the pages of this deal is an agreement to trade the Brooklyn Bridge for Aladdin's magic lamp. Used car dealers have more credibility.

Obama's Bad Deal - With that bit of context, let's back up a few months to the conclusion of the previous round of talks that gave us the "framework" for this deal. When the "framework" talks concluded at the beginning of April, the Washington Post editorial board wrote this:
"The 'key parameters' for an agreement on Iran's nuclear program released Thursday fall well short of the goals originally set by the Obama administration."Let's be clear about that: The Washington Post told us months ago that the "key parameters" for the deal Obama announced yesterday were "well short" of his own goals. So we had plenty of warning that this would be a bad deal. That is what the Post was telling us in April.

And it is a bad deal. Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and expert on the Middle East, writes that "Obama and Kerry crossed every one of their own red lines."

For example, two years ago Secretary Kerry declared, "There is no right to enrich." But under the agreement Obama announced yesterday, Iran will have at least 5,000 centrifuges spinning away. Pakistan needed fewer than half that number to develop its nuclear weapons.

Two years ago, Obama said, "They don't need to have an underground, fortified facility like Fordo in order to have a peaceful nuclear program." But this deal allows the Fordo facility to keep functioning.

According to another report, international inspectors must "come from nations that have diplomatic relations with Iran." That means there will be no American inspectors allowed into Iran. Why would we agree to that?

Speaking of inspections, we know that the Obama Administration's strategy in selling this deal will be to lie and to lie big. The idea that Iran can be trusted with a massive nuclear infrastructure is beyond absurd, but a number of left-wing politicians are already making the case.

For example, Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) says he supports the deal because:
"Iran's nuclear program will be under lock, key and camera 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The eyes of the international community are on every centrifuge, every ounce of uranium, in all of Iran's nuclear facilities."Really? According to ABC News:"UN inspectors can demand access to nuclear facilities on Iran military sites, but they aren't immediate or even guaranteed. Any inspections at those sites would need to be approved by a joint commission. . . The process for approving those inspections could take as many as 24 days. . ."In other words, far from being under lock and key, we have to ask permission to inspect a site and then the Iranians have more than three weeks to scrub it. That's not exactly the "anywhere, anytime" inspections that the administration was demanding in April.

Israel Responds To Iran Deal - While we are delving into the details of President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, Israeli officials have been extraordinarily grave in their remarks. That is understandable given Israel's history and Iran's repeated threats to wipe Israel off the map. The Jewish state clearly has the most to lose from this deal.

Naftali Bennett, Israel's education minister, said, "Today a terrorist nuclear superpower is born, and it will go down as one of the darkest days in world history." Danny Danon, Israel's science minister, said the deal "is like providing a pyromaniac with matches," while another Israeli cabinet minister said the deal gives Iran "a license to kill."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the agreement as a "historic mistake for the world," adding that Iran will get hundreds of billions of dollars that it will use to "fuel its terror machine."

He is right. At the Christians United for Israel Summit today, where six thousand pro-Israel activists have gathered to rally support for the Jewish state, a very well-connected Israeli said that based on his initial examination, this was not a nuclear deal but a sanctions relief deal for Iran.

Netanyahu summed up the frustration of many Americans when he said: "One cannot prevent an agreement when the negotiators are willing to make more and more concessions to those who, even during the talks, keep chanting: 'Death to America.'" Then he added this somber warning:
"We knew very well that the desire to sign an agreement was stronger than anything, and therefore we did not commit to preventing an agreement. We did commit to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and this commitment still stands."Reaction From Capitol Hill - Members of Congress are feeling the heat on Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. Today, thousands of pro-Israel activists in town for the Christians United for Israel Washington Summit took to Capitol Hill to meet with every House and Senate office. Their message was clear: Oppose this bad deal!

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) warned, "The bottom line is: The deal doesn't end Iran's nuclear program -- it preserves it. I'm concerned that the deal ultimately legitimizes Iran as a threshold-nuclear state. I'm concerned the redlines we drew have turned into green-lights."

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the nuclear agreement is "deeply troubling."

Here's one example. For the deal to be meaningful, it must be verifiable and that requires "anytime, anywhere" inspections of suspect Iranian sites by international monitors.

In his address this morning, President Obama said that inspectors "will have access where necessary, when necessary." But who decides what is necessary -- the inspectors or the mullahs? The Iranian regime has repeatedly blocked inspections under existing agreements.

Here's something else to keep in mind. This morning, President Obama triumphantly declared, "Today . . . we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons" in the Middle East. No, he hasn't. He probably just started a nuclear arms race.

Saudi Arabia has vowed to match Iran's nuclear abilities, and one Saudi official said this morning, "We have learned as Iran's neighbors in the last 40 years that goodwill only led us to harvest sour grapes."

It's understandable why some liberal politicians are hesitant to embrace Obama's deal. Iran has a well-established record of cheating on existing agreements. And a new poll by Monmouth University finds that 58% of registered voters do not trust Iran to honor its commitments under this new deal.

It remains to be seen whether our political elites will follow the common sense of the American people. But as Senator Tom Cotton explained on the Hugh Hewitt show this week:
"Any congressman or senator who votes for this deal is voting to put their political fate in the hands of the Ayatollah for the rest of his or her life in the public spotlight, because if Iran gets a nuclear weapon in a year, or five years, or 10 years, the American people will want to know who supported the deal that gave them that nuclear weapon."By the way, I'm waiting for Tehran to accuse President Obama of lying about the deal. It seems every time we have an "agreement," Iran disputes the details of what it supposedly agreed to.
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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