All the Republican candidates, announced or unannounced, should stop what they are doing and band together over the July 4 weekend to stop the Iran Deal. In so doing, they should reach out not just to their fellow Republicans, but to all Americans, including especially their colleagues on the other side of the aisle. This is an emergency.
Sometimes world events reach a level that petty politics must be put aside and true patriotism come to the fore. September 11, 2001, and Pearl Harbor were such instances. The about-to-be-signed (between June 30 and July 6) nuclear deal with Iran is another. According to the Corker-Menendez bill, Congress only has thirty days to review the deal and (unfairly) needs to muster a two-thirds majority to overthrow it.
Allowing the mullahs a glide path to the bomb, this agreement shifts the international balance of power as nothing since Chamberlain’s famous appeasement of Hitler at Munich. In fact it is worse than Chamberlain, because then the British were weaker than Nazi Germany and needed time. The U.S. and Europe are vastly stronger than the Iranians.
The Iran deal is therefore tantamount to a suicide of the West. And, ironically, the only one who can block it at this point is Ayatollah Khamenei. Barack Obama seems willing to give the Iranians just about anything they want in order to get an agreement. He might as well load a couple of dozen nuclear-tipped ICBMs on the USS Harry S. Truman and sail them over to Bandar Abbas for off-loading.
Sound over-heated? Consider this list of reported American concessions for a deal that would afford, at best, a one-year breakout before Iran goes nuclear, more likely one-to-three months:
1. Anytime/anywhere inspections of Iran nuclear sites has turned into a committee — including Iran — deciding what that IAEA can access, but military sites are off-limits (this last makes the deal totally absurd).
2. Iranians get sanctions relief immediately, can resolve IAEA concerns later. How much cash is involved? An approximate $11 billion has been reported being released plus a signing bonus of as much as $50 billion. That’s a record for signing bonuses, needless to say. What will Iran do with that money? You can cross off the Little Sisters of the Poor.
3. “Strict limits” on centrifuge R & D — gone. Now the international community is actively helping Iran with next-generation centrifuges at the supposedly-impermeable underground facility at Fordow (that was once supposed to be closed down — go figure).
4. Automatic “snapback” on sanctions for a violation — gone (if they were ever even possible with China and Russia part of the game).
5. Sanctions for non-nuclear activities (building ICBMs, etc. ) — gone.
6. “Most importantly” Iran will be allowed unlimited industrial-scale enrichment after the agreement’s sunset clause sets in. Further, the New York Times has reported that Iran is even now refusing to give up its stockpiled uranium.
You don’t need The Donald to tell you this is a terrible deal.
Meanwhile Iran continues to support terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and to seek regional hegemony in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen (Jordan and Saudi Arabia doubtless yet to come, not to mention the big prize, Israel). And needless to say Obama has completely ignored the human rights behavior of the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, including its well known misogyny and homophobia. It seems, for our president, gay and women’s rights stop at the water’s edge. Maybe he just hasn’t evolved far enough. Nor does he seem interested in the record number of executions during this supposedly moderate regime.
You don’t need to attack Iran to stop its behavior (although you should never, as Obama did recently, take the military option off the table). You need to tear up this wretched deal, impose the most severe sanctions possible and wait for Iran to come back to make a decent one. To do that, we have to impress on these people that we’re serious. We haven’t, remotely. We’ve done the opposite. We need leadership. Go for it, candidates.
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