President Obama holds Iranian national pride in higher esteem than the security of the American people. He made no secret that a nuclear deal with Iran was a priority of his, and he determined to keep most of his dealings with the Mullahs from the American people. When the first Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement, which was supposed to freeze “key parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for temporary relief from some economic sanctions” was signed in November 2013, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared that the deal recognized Tehran’s “right” to maintain its enrichment program.
Shortly afterward, Secretary Kerry was quoted by the Washington Post – a participant in the White House’s “echo chamber” as saying that the “agreement…states they could only do that by mutual agreement and nothing is agreed on until everything is agreed on.” But skeptics who questioned Kerry’s frequent denials of Iran’s boasting of “victories” with the agreement, should feel vindicated.
Yesterday, a leaked document to the Associated Press revealed a secret agreement allowing Iran to replace 5,060 inefficient centrifuges with 3,500 advanced machines, which are “five times more efficient.” The upgrade , which is supposed to take place in ten years from now, will enable Iran to develop nuclear weapons in six months. So when Obama declared: “Under this agreement, Iran is never allowed to build a nuclear weapon – period,” he was fully aware this was not true.
Today, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who negotiated the deal proudly confirmed the document was submitted by Iran as a condition to the agreement, because “expansion of its uranium enrichment program is a matter of pride,” he said. Moreover, Keeping the Iranian pride intact, the secret agreement also allows the unsupervised research to develop the advanced centrifuges.
Disregarding Iran’s repeated violations of the public version of the “Iran deal” and its defiance of UN Security Council resolution 2231 (ban on developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons), as well as growing Iranian aggression in the region, Kerry incredibly insists, “The world is safer today because conflict in the region is not calculated on the basis of the potential of nuclear confrontation and nuclear explosion.”
In the meantime, U.S. enemies are benefiting from the December 2011 inadvertent drone technology “gifts” to Iran. An American RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone was flying over Afghanistan when Iran hacked into its system and landed it on Iranian soil. Obama reacted by “asking for it back,” and Iran promptly sent him a pink toy-drone. It is unknown if Obama responded or his pride was hurt. But a year later on December 2012, Iran landed another unmanned U.S. spy plane, the ScanEagle drone.
Why the drones were not destroyed by the U.S. is unclear. But it would be safe to speculate that whoever was to order the destruction of the drones feared the reaction from the White House.
The Iranian used “reverse-engineering” and technological assistance from Chinese and Russian cyber warfare experts to produce the Yasir drone with exceptional maneuverability. According to Debka, on July 17, the Iranians launched the Yasir drone from a Hezbollah base in Syria’s Qalamoun Mountains to spy over the Golan and Upper Galilee. For more than an hour, the drone evaded “Israeli air force jets and helicopters, Patriot surface-to-aircraft missiles and two air-to-air missiles. Moreover, the drone’s electronic capabilities may have caused the two Patriot missiles to veer off course and crash into each other.
Understandably, this upgraded drone worries the Israelis and should worry the Americans. While it is unknown how many similar drones were produced by Iran, it is safe to assume they will be deployed by Iran to spy on or interfere with American forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The U.S. should also worry about similar drones in the hands of the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans, and even Jihadi terrorists.
These and other future threats could have been prevented with an American president who cares more about disarming Iran than preserving the pride of the Mullahs in Tehran.