In an interview with Fareed Zakaria, “Obama defends comparison between Iran hardliners and GOP.” In the interview to be aired on CNN, on Sunday, Obama insists, “What I said is absolutely true, factually….The truth of the matter is, inside of Iran, the people most opposed to the deal are the Revolutionary Guard, the Quds Force, hardliners who are implacably opposed to any cooperation with the international community.”
Conspicuously missing from this list is Ayatollah Khamenei. Is Obama unaware of Iran’s Supreme Leader’s much publicized calls for “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”?
Berating the opponents of the deal, the Republican caucus in Congress and Democrats as making common cause with the hardliners Iran has already caused considerable outrage.
It seems that the more he talks, the more members of Congress are likely to rise in opposition to the agreement. If nothing else, for embarrassment. Why should they tolerate his belittling them for opposing the agreement he signed with Iran, “before it was even posted” as he himself pointed out. Why does he bully them to approve his veiled agreement with an enemy committed to destroy America?
If Secretary Kerry has been telling the truth that parts of agreement are kept secret, what led him and the President to sign anything with hostile Iran and a third party, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)? It seems that it is Obama’s and Kerry’s actions are “reflective of an ideological commitment” to “get a deal done.” Why else sign on for a ticking Iranian bomb-in-the-bag?
One does not have to study the parts of the Iran deal the White House has released for the public to realize the administration’s claims outdo the most absurdist fiction. What makes this scary are not only the continuing and unrelenting pre- and post-deal threats to the United States from the Ayatollah Khamenei, but the insulting and vitriolic statements by President Obama and members of his administration in an attempt to bully the opponents into approving this bad deal. Why would he expect them to buy a used car on the condition that they cannot look under the hood?
All those who set on the fence had to do, was to listen to Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, responding to Senator Deb Fischer’s (R-Neb) question on the inspections of Iranian nuclear sites, including Parchin. Moniz blurted out, “The aim is not to go to military site,” thus contradicting himself and the lead U.S. nuclear negotiator, Wendy Sherman and other administration officials. However, it is because nuclear weapons are developed on military complexes that the Obama administration repeatedly claimed during the negotiations that requirement of IAEA inspectors getting anytime anywhere – including military sites, especially Parchin – was not negotiable.
Moreover, it is known that the Iranians used Parchin to conduct experiments relevant to the detonation of nuclear warheads. Therefore, finding out what was going on in Parchin, is of critical importance to the IAEA’s verification regime.
But, wait, the plot thickens. We learn that the soil of Parchin and elsewhere will be provided to the IAEA, by the Iranians! Secretary Kerry, refusing to discuss the issue while testifying before the Senate last week, stated this information was classified, at the time it was already made public in Vienna.
This was followed by news that Iran began “sanitizing” Parchin immediately after the signing of the deal on July 14. On Wednesday, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington think-tank, put out one of its Imagery Briefs with satellite photos showing bulldozers moving land at Parchin. ISIS said that “the renewed activity occurring after the signing of the JCPOA raises obvious concerns that Iran is conducting further sanitization efforts to defeat IAEA verification…this renewed activity may be a last ditch effort to try to ensure that no incriminating evidence will be found.”
U.S. lead nuclear negotiator with Iran, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, told Congress on Wednesday not to worry: “the IAEA could do its work at the base even if its inspectors weren’t physically at the site. She said soil sampling overseen by Iran could provide the necessary assurances about the activities at Parchin.”
In the last few weeks, some skeptics of the deal have suggested that the JCPOA’s flaws are becoming borderline-comical (or at least they would be if the deal wasn’t such a catastrophe). Revelations like this are the reason why: the White House is telling Congress that Iran can be trusted to turn over evidence from Parchin while independent researchers with photographs are showing the public and Congress how Iran is destroying evidence at Parchin.
The White House could and should demand the side agreement between the IAEA is made public. Any member state that sits on the IAEA’s Board of Governors, as does the U.S., can request that the Iran-IAEA documents be distributed to all member states. But the administration clearly does not want to obtain the documents because it would have to give them to Congress.
The administration is so anxious to keep Congress and the public in the dark, that it was caught deliberately mixing classified and unclassified information into the same documents so that lawmakers and staffers can’t make them public.
In his speech on Wednesday, Obama accused the deal’s opponents of not reading the JCPOA agreement and of “suddenly becoming nuclear scientists.” While Obama may have found a few nuclear scientists who, for self-serving reasons, support the Iran deal, the great bulk of nuclear scientists and other national security experts oppose the agreement, calling it “a disaster.”
It is scary to imagine how much worse the details are in the side-agreements that neither Congress nor the public has access to. When Obama attacks the opponents of the deal calling them “warmongers,” he should look in the mirror. He will see the warmonger whose actions have already caused an arms race that will lead to a bloody war. He legitimized the terrorist theocracy of Iran, lifting the sanctions and giving the regime a $100-$150 billion bonus, which even Obama admits, would be partially spent on terrorism.
Obama has been comparing himself with Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan who also negotiated with the enemy. However, they negotiated from a position of strength and forced the enemy to cave in. Reagan’s motto was “Trust, but verify”. Obama, on the other hand, as Mike Huckabee put it, has adopted the motto “Trust and Vilify.”