YA THINK?: The Washington Post editorializes, “U.S. Response to Iran’s Cheating is a Worrying Omen.”
If it is reached in the coming days, a nuclear deal with Iran will be, at best, an unsatisfying and risky compromise. Iran’s emergence as a threshold nuclear power, with the ability to produce a weapon quickly, will not be prevented; it will be postponed, by 10 to 15 years. In exchange, Tehran will reap hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief it can use to revive its economy and fund the wars it is waging around the Middle East. . . .
That’s why a recent controversy over Iran’s compliance with the interim accord now governing its nuclear work is troubling. The deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium, but required that amounts over a specified ceiling be converted into an oxide powder that cannot easily be further enriched. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran met the requirement for the total size of its stockpile on June 30, but it did so by converting some of its enriched uranium into a different oxide form, apparently because of problems with a plant set up to carry out the powder conversion.
Rather than publicly report this departure from the accord, the Obama administration chose to quietly accept it. When a respected independent think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, began pointing out the problem, the administration’s response was to rush to Iran’s defense — and heatedly attack the institute as well as a report in the New York Times.
When the United States is more interested in protecting and defending Iran and its nuclear “deal” than confronting Iran’s cheating behavior, it acts like an insecure, vulnerable spouse making excuses for a cheating husband/wife because fear prevents him/her from confronting the sad reality. If the U.S. looks the other way now, the precedent will be set, the cheating will continue, and predictably will become more brazen. No good can come from the Obama Administration’s tactic of sweeping such transgressions under the rug, and certainly not from attacking experts and officials who report the transgressions.