Remember President Obama’s Obamacare promise that if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan? That turned out to be you can keep your health care plan if Obama likes your health care plan, as millions of Americans lost their health care plans they liked perfectly well for the price, because those plans failed to include all the costly benefits Obamacare required them to include.
Now President Obama is trying to manipulate public opinion again on the Iran nuclear deal. He is telling the public the deal is so good because under the deal “every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off” to Iran, and the deal “will prevent [Iran] from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
But exactly to the contrary, the deal paves the road to a nuclear bomb for Iran, just exactly as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been telling us all along. As Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, explained in the Wall Street Journal on July 15, “The deal will entirely end the United Nations’ involvement in Iran’s nuclear program in 10 years, and in 15 years will lift most restrictions on the program.” That means that once the deal runs its course in 10 to 15 years, Iran will have the world’s blessing to build all the nukes it wants.
Moreover, the deal frees, and finances, Iran to build a mighty nuclear, military, terror machine while the deal is running its course. Kagan further explains, “The main achievement of the [Iran] regime’s negotiators is striking a deal that commits the West to removing almost all sanctions on Iran, including most of those imposed to reduce terrorism or to prevent weapons proliferation. Most of the sanctions are likely to end in a few days. Thus the agreement ensures that after a short delay Iran will be able to lay the groundwork for a large nuclear arsenal and, in the interim, expand its conventional military capabilities as much as it pleases.”
Newt Gingrich adds in the Washington Times on July 14 that as a result of the deal, “as much as $150 billion in money impounded by the sanctions will be released [to Iran].” That money will go to buy more advanced centrifuges allowed by the deal, unrestricted development of ballistic missiles allowed by the deal, and unrestricted conventional military capabilities allowed by the deal. Everything necessary for a civilization-rattling nuclear and military breakout in 10 to 15 years.
Moreover, even during those 10 to 15 years, the money can go into funding terrorism and even military action by Iranian proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, not to mention the Iran Revolutionary Guard, against allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon, if not Europe and even America. It is like reading the Book of Revelations jumping right out of the pages of today’s newspapers.
Gingrich further explains, “The [Iranian] dictatorship has continued building centrifuges and is more nuclear capable today than when the sanctions began. The great irony of the talk-talk strategy is that the regime has gone from possessing a handful of centrifuges to thousands of them while its proponents pretend its progress is frozen.”
Moreover, the inspection regime under the deal has been compromised away into ineffectiveness. Obama says, “This deal is not built on trust; it is built on verification. Inspectors will have 24/7 access to Iran’s key nuclear facilities. Inspectors will have access to Iran’s entire nuclear supply chain — its uranium mines and mills, its conversion facility, and its centrifuge manufacturing and storage facilities.”
None of that is any more true than “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.” Iran reserves the right in the deal to deny and stall inspections, especially of what it considers its military facilities. Remember Obama promising that under Obamacare, the cost of an average family’s health plan would be cut by $2,500 a year?
And what will we do if we discover Iran is cheating on the deal? Obama tells us, “And if Iran violates the deal, all of these sanctions will snap back into place.” But Gingrich is more realistic when he states, “once the sanctions are gone, the Iranians will sign very profitable contracts with German, Russian and Chinese firms. The pressure against reinstating the sanctions will be overwhelming and two of the three countries have vetoes on the U.N. Security Council.”
That is why Ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is so right when he says that “We have gone from preventing Iran having a nuclear capability to managing it.” Obama cites the success of our past nuclear deals with the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union collapsed, and so was rendered ineffective to threaten us with nuclear weapons. Whether those agreements remain effective in restraining the resurgent Russia under Putin has been more than questioned.
Moreover, Russia does not involve a suicide bomber culture. Iran does. Precisely because of that, we cannot rely on deterrence with Iran as we did with Russia. That is why American leaders who care about the future of their country have always said Iran cannot be allowed a nuclear weapon. Now Obama has abandoned that position.
But it is worse than Menendez says, because under this deal nuclear non-proliferation will collapse. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey at least would be compelled to gain their own nuclear weapons in response. Obama says Iran will still be subject to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement, which it has signed. But that has not stopped Iran’s open march to nuclear weapons in broad daylight today.
The only ray of light is that Obama has miscalculated his relationship with Congress on the deal, just as he miscalculated his deal with Republicans on the sequester. Obama will not submit the deal to the Senate for ratification as a treaty, which requires 67 votes, and so can be blocked by Republicans. Obama has agreed only to consult with Congress, which is authorized to vote on a bill to disapprove the deal. Obama says he will veto any legislation disapproving his deal. So he only needs 34 Democrat Senators to stick with him to sustain that veto.
But without a treaty ratification vote of 67 Senators, the deal will not be legally binding on the next President at all. He or she can dissolve it at will, by issuing a mere press release. That is my legal opinion as a former Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and a member of the Bar of the United States Supreme Court. And I will so advise the next President.
But the problem is even worse, because Obama has deliberately followed a course of unilateral nuclear disarmament. Retired Vice-Admiral Robert R. Monroe, former Director of the Defense Nuclear Agency (1977-80), writes on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal on July 13, “When the Cold War ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S. began a debilitating nuclear freeze, establishing ever broader antinuclear policies and largely ignoring the growing threat posed by these massively destructive weapons.” But that was not the course followed by other countries.
Monroe continues, “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military strategy focuses on early use of these weapons in conflicts large and small. China is in the midst of an immense strategic modernization. India and Pakistan are expanding and improving their nuclear arsenals. North Korea issues nuclear threats almost weekly. The Middle East is dissolving into chaos, and Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been on the front pages for years.”
President Obama has recklessly pursued a policy of a “world without nuclear weapons,” thinking that will lead the rest of the world to follow us too, by moral example. But instead all of the above countries have raced ahead even faster.
Monroe advises, “America’s preeminent national goal—on which U.S. survival depends—must be paramount nuclear weapons strength. Since the dawn of the nuclear era, [all] 12 U.S. presidents…have specifically stated nuclear superiority as U.S. policy. Mr. Obama reversed it upon taking office and has accelerated the deterioration of America’s nuclear arsenal.” Indeed, under Obama’s 2010 nuclear arms control deal with Russia, America has been destroying existing nuclear warheads, while Russia has been building more, as specifically allowed by the deal.
Monroe emphasizes that we must “modernize America’s nuclear arsenal. President Obama’s policy doesn’t permit research, design, testing or production of new, advanced nuclear weapons. Our current nuclear weapons…were designed and built decades ago to meet different threats, and have gone untested for decades.” Few Americans know that nuclear warheads deteriorate over the years, and without testing, we do not know what we have.
Monroe urges that we must “produce an entirely new nuclear weapons stockpile, including specialized, low yield, advanced weapons. Production and testing facilities — atrophying for decades — must also be built on an accelerated schedule…. U.S. leaders have failed to plan and budget for the next generation of nuclear delivery systems — intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launched ballistic missiles and bombers.”
Monroe concludes, “Today’s nuclear threats are as dangerous as those during the Cold War. Change can’t wait. Even if reform begins in 2017 under the next administration, it will take decades to regain America’s once dominant nuclear capabilities and reestablish a viable policy of deterrence.”
President Obama’s national defense and foreign policies put the very lives of millions of Americans at risk.
