Congress’ Letter On Iran Was Leadership, Not Treachery

Let’s put aside President Obama’s ridiculous argument that the recent letter to Iranian officials signed by 47 U.S. senators constituted “wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran.” It was nothing of the kind.

This letter warned Iran and the world that the agreement being negotiated on its nuclear program will not be binding on the United States and may be rejected by the next president.

This wasn’t a traitorous act. It was an act to exert adult leadership over a disastrous U.S. foreign policy that is on track to produce a deal with Iran that will be deeply destabilizing and could lead to a Middle East war.

The Obama team and its media supporters attack Republican signatories of the letter to distract from the president’s capitulation to the Iranian mullahs to get a legacy nuclear deal.

He has conceded to Iran the “right” to enrich uranium and the “right” to build a heavy water, plutonium-producing reactor. Iran is on the brink of a nuclear deal that may last only 10 years even though it has never fully cooperated with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and shows no sign of ever doing so.

The danger from Iran’s nuclear program has soared during the Obama presidency: Iran can now make at least eight nuclear weapons from its reactor-grade uranium, up from seven when the nuclear talks began. The nearby chart from the Center for Security Policy illustrates this.

Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have repeatedly assured us that they will not agree to a deal that lets Iran build nuclear bombs. After six years of lies about ObamaCare, the IRS scandal, spying on journalists, Benghazi and other things, most Americans don’t believe them.

Moreover, based on leaks to the press of U.S. concessions already made to Iran in talks, Obama administration claims about the talks don’t add up. This is why most Americans probably believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not President Obama, about the threat from a nuclear Iran and the nuclear talks.

Obama officials and supporters don’t want to talk about what’s really going on with the nuclear talks — Obama has capitulated to Iran on its nuclear weapons program because he sides with liberal foreign policy experts such as Georgetown University’s Paul Pillar, MIT’s Barry Posen, Columbia’s Kenneth Waltz and the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Pollack.

They believe that an Iranian nuclear bomb is inevitable and can be contained. Waltz actually wrote that a nuclear Iran would stabilize the region.

Although Obama officials will never admit it, there can be no other explanation for the extraordinarily weak and short-lived nuclear deal they are trying to get with Tehran.

This wrong-headed approach would legitimize a nuclear program for a state sponsor of terror. It would be better to have no deal than this deal, which would, as Netanyahu told Congress, pave the way to an Iranian nuclear bomb. Congress must do everything it can to stop the talks and force the White House and our European allies to pursue a tough, realistic strategy to halt Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

This means requiring Iran to cease uranium enrichment, disassemble its uranium centrifuges, disassemble the Arak heavy-water reactor, send its enriched uranium stockpile out of the country, fully cooperate with IAEA inspectors and answer the agency’s outstanding questions about weapons-related nuclear activities.

The letter by the Senate 47 was an appropriate and meaningful step to stop President Obama’s nuclear capitulation and to begin a new approach.

Hopefully there will be further congressional action to save our country and the world from the dangerous and foolish deal with Tehran being pursued by the Obama administration.