THANKS, OBAMA: Nebulous Language Enables Tehran’s Missile Ambitions.

What the Iran nuclear agreement essentially does is impose a time-bound pause of Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities along with some monitoring provisions to try to prevent cheating. But the worry is that the Iranians may not even need to cheat and instead can just wait the thing out. Meanwhile, they continue to make progress on the missiles.

Remember, Iran was already thought to be pretty much where it presumably wanted to be in terms of nuclear weapons technology. Former U.S. President Barack Obama said that one of the accomplishments of the agreement was to move Iran from just a few months away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon to a year or more. But that means that even now, they are within a year or so of the “breakout” capability to do that.

But Iran has a longer road ahead on the missile front, where they too are working feverishly just like the North Koreans. Put simply, the nuclear agreement has at best paused one aspect of becoming a nuclear weapons power, the weapons themselves, where Iran had already gotten close to the finish line, while allowing the Iranians to continue making progress on developing, producing, and deploying ever longer-range and more accurate missiles. Worse still, because of sanctions relief, including the release of vast frozen assets that had been held by the United States for decades, the nuclear deal has infused Iran with new resources that it can plow into its missile programs. All of this at the same time the nuclear deal gives Tehran a greater sense of international legitimacy for abiding by the agreement.

The agreement Obama signed is so bad in nearly every possible way, that it’s impossible to believe it isn’t exactly what he wanted.