Tag Archives: JCPOA

Why Did President Trump Really Extend the Iran Nuclear Deal Again?

Originally posted on National Review

Like many conservative Iran watchers, I was disappointed with President Trump’s decision last week to extend the controversial July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran (the JCPOA) by waiving sanctions and giving Congress and European states a final chance to “fix” this agreement in 120 days. This decision was especially disappointing given the recent Iranian protests and that the president issued a similar ultimatum in October 2016.

However, there appear to be some undisclosed reasons for this decision that give me hope the president will kill this terrible agreement in the near future.

A Deeply Flawed and Dangerous Agreement

Critics of the JCPOA were hoping that President Trump would reimpose U.S. sanctions — which would essentially kill the Iran deal — because they believe he was exactly right when he said during the 2016 presidential campaign that the JCPOA is the worst deal ever negotiated.

To get this “legacy” nuclear agreement with Iran for President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and other Obama-administration officials made any concession necessary to Tehran. This included allowing Iran to continue enriching uranium with over 5,000 centrifuges and to develop advanced centrifuges; to construct a plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor in Iran; to wipe clean a long list of unanswered questions about nuclear-weapons-related activity; and to agree to a deal with extremely weak verification provisions. There are credible reports of Iranian cheating on the agreement, including several accounts from German intelligence agencies.

It gets worse. The JCPOA lifted terrorism-related sanctions from Iranians and Iranian entities. Iran’s missile program — which is a nuclear-weapons-delivery system — was excluded from the deal because of a last-minute demand by Iran. Under a side deal, the United States secretly paid Iran $400 million in ransom to swap five innocent Americans imprisoned by Iran for the release by the U.S. of seven Iranian criminals and the removal of 14 other Iranians from an INTERPOL wanted list. According to a bombshell December 18, 2017, Politico story, “The Secret Backstory of How Obama Let Hezbollah off the Hook,” the Obama administration also blocked an investigation of drug trafficking by Hezbollah — Iran’s terrorist proxy — to secure the nuclear deal.

President Obama and Secretary Kerry claimed that the nuclear deal would help bring Iran into the “community of nations” and improve U.S.–Iran relations. This didn’t happen, however. Iran’s behavior got worse. It sent troops into Syria after the deal was announced. It continued to support the Houthi rebels in Yemen and gave them missiles that they used to attack Saudi Arabia and ships in the Red Sea. It also has proceeded with its ballistic-missile program and tested some missiles with the words “Israel must be wiped off the map” emblazoned on them.

Iran also appears to have used sanctions relief to fund terrorism. In 2016, Tehran reportedly pledged $70 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad to conduct “jihad” against the State of Israel. In 2017, the Iranian government quadrupled its annual support to Hezbollah to $830 million and resumed providing aid to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Although the amount of Iranian payments to Hamas has not been released, we do know that Tehran provided it with $50 million per month prior to a breakdown in relations in 2012.

The Iranian government’s squandering of huge sums of sanctions relief for belligerent purposes worsened the country’s poor economy and led to the recent protests after a rise in prices of eggs and poultry. Food prices are a sensitive issue in Iran since the price of many basic foods increased by 40 percent over the last year. There also is a high rate of inflation — about 10 percent in 2016 — and youth unemployment of about 40 percent. The economic situation is so bad that there are reports, according to the Los Angeles Times, of Iranians selling their organs to raise cash.

President Trump’s Iran-Deal Fixes Fall Far Short

These and other major problems with the JCPOA are why President Trump has repeatedly criticized it. But last week, when Trump gave Congress and European leaders 120 days to fix its major flaws, he demanded the following changes that mostly fall far short of doing so:

1) Require Iran to allow immediate inspections at all sites requested by international inspectors. This fix misses the mark because Iran is already required under the JCPOA to allow IAEA inspectors access to any site they ask to visit. The problem is that the IAEA refuses to ask to visit places such as military bases that Iran says are off-limits to inspectors.

2) Ensure that Iran never comes close to possessing a nuclear weapon. A laudable goal, but vague and meaningless, especially since the president’s fixes do not address two of the JCPOA’s major flaws: allowing Iran to enrich uranium and giving it a light-water reactor.

3) Lifting the JCPOA’s sunset provisions so the deal never expires. This is also meaningless because it fails to address many flaws of the nuclear deal, such as uranium enrichment, and leaves unanswered questions about Iran’s past nuclear-weapons work. There is no point in lifting the JCPOA’s sunset provisions if Iran is allowed to continue enriching uranium.

4) Congress must legally link Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and subject the missile program to severe sanctions. Unlike the above changes, this one is sensible and long overdue.

The weaknesses of the president’s JCPOA fixes reflect the weaknesses of his top advisers on the Iran deal — principally National Security Adviser McMaster and Secretary of State Tillerson. Both have opposed President Trump’s efforts to withdraw from the Iran deal over the past year and have repeatedly tried to delay the president’s final decision on the agreement.

But it doesn’t matter how weak these fixes are because there is no chance that Congress or European states will do anything to implement them. Congress is divided between Democrats determined to protect President Obama’s legacy deal with Iran and Republicans who view it as a dangerous fraud. As a result, it is very unlikely that Senators Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) and Ben Cardin (D., Md.) will succeed in their effort to pass legislation to fix the accord. Europe does not want to amend the JCPOA, in part because of trade deals it struck with Iran after the accord came into effect. And to no one’s surprise, Iran is adamant that it will never renegotiate the JCPOA.

What’s Really behind President Trump’s “Final” Extension of the Iran Deal?

Although President Trump’s decision last week was disappointing, there may be three undisclosed reasons behind his move that suggest he plans to withdraw from the agreement in the near future. The first two reasons are based on a discussion about the Iran deal that a friend of mine had with the president last month.

First, Trump told my friend that even though he gave Congress 90 days in October to pass legislation to fix the JCPOA, he believed that strong partisan differences among lawmakers would prevent them from passing any substantive fixes. I believe that this remains the president’s view.

So why would the president kick the nuclear deal to Congress for a second time if he predicts that Congress will not act?

That brings me to a second possible reason for president’s decision: As much as he hates the JCPOA and wants to kill it, he told my friend, North Korea takes precedence, and he does not want both crises blowing up at the same time. Given the extremely high tensions with North Korea and the need to work with our allies to isolate Pyongyang, it makes sense that President Trump might want to delay gutting the Iran deal at this time.

There may be a third reason President Trump extended the Iran deal: He needs better personnel to implement an exit from the JCPOA. With rumors swirling that McMaster and Tillerson could leave the administration over the next couple of months, Trump might be postponing a decision to exit the JCPOA until they are replaced by advisers who will fully support and aggressively implement such a decision.

Ambassador John Bolton would be the best person President Trump could bring into his administration to oversee a U.S. withdrawal from the Iran deal. Not only does Bolton have extensive government experience and an in-depth understanding of the Iran nuclear issue, he also authored a plan last August on how the U.S could withdraw from the JCPOA and work with our allies — especially Israel — to replace it with a much better arrangement. Making Ambassador Bolton the next national-security adviser could end the infighting in the administration on the Iran deal and also would probably improve the implementation of Trump’s national-security policies on radical Islam, North Korea, climate change, Russia, China, and other issues.

So I say to my fellow conservative Iran watchers: Take heart. Although President Trump’s decision to extend the Iran deal again was disappointing, I believe he had good reasons for delaying a U.S. exit from the agreement. Signs suggest that he will withdraw from the accord in the near future, possibly when he has a better national-security team in place.

A Tragic Story: Iran’s Criminal Presence in the Western Hemisphere with U.S. Complicity

Last month an Argentine Judge ordered the indictment of former President Cristina Kirchner, her foreign minister Hector Timmerman and others on grounds of treason. The allegation is that these leaders made an agreement with Iran where the Islamic Republic would eventually be exonerated from responsibility for the crime of bombing the Argentinean Jewish community headquarters in July 1994, which claimed the lives of 85 people and led to several Iranian figures being placed on Interpol’s Wanted Persons list. The Argentine-Iranian agreement would have eventually had the Argentine government remove these Iranian individuals from the Interpol list. The late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was the first to uncover the conspiracy, but died under highly suspicious circumstances just hours before he was due to testify before the Argentinean Congress.

While Argentina is delving into this problem, Politico uncovered another serious story this time, involving not a corrupt foreign country, but rather the Obama Administration.

According to Politico, the Obama Administration, in its eagerness to secure a nuclear deal with Iran and fearful of Hezbollah’s destabilizing activities in the Middle East, undermined and blocked an entire Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) operation, aimed at targeting a one billion dollar annual Hezbollah cocaine trafficking operation in Latin America and the United States.  Such Hezbollah operation also involved traffic of weapons and money laundering. According to the report, the trafficking of cocaine took place from Latin America through Venezuela and Mexico, with profits in the U.S. The money was laundered through the purchase of American used cars. According to American agents involved in the investigation, the criminal operation was directed and planned by Hezbollah’s innermost circle and “its State sponsors in Iran.”

The DEA investigation, dubbed “Project Cassandra”, sought approval to continue investigations, order the arrests, extraditions and prosecutions of suspects, and impose financial sanctions. However, the Departments of Justice and Treasury rejected, delayed, or blocked these requests. Likewise, the State Department rejected requests to pursue cooperation with countries that could have helped target key suspects involved in those criminal activities.

The money collected by Hezbollah, according to Politico, went directly to fund the group’s military activities in the Middle East, particularly in Syria where it continues to aid and abet the murderous regime of Bashar Al Assad. In Syria alone, more than half a million people have been killed and millions more displaced. Furthermore, this dirty money was made at our own expense, as tons of cocaine were sold on the American market at a time where drug addiction constitutes one of the main social problems in American society, already claiming close to 50,000 American lives this year.

Why would the Obama Administration make such a costly sacrifice to avoid undermining its deal with Iran?

For some it may not make sense. However, based on my own observations throughout the years, it does. The Obama Administration tried to avoid confrontations with anyone it wanted to make a “historic deal” with. Most of these “historic deals” were intended to be made with enemies, as Obama desperately sought an agreement not only with Iran, but also with Cuba and reconciliation with Venezuela.

Thus, Obama failed to insist on the extradition of Venezuelan military and drug trafficker Hugo Carvajal from Aruba and the Syrian-born Venezuelan drug lord Walid Makled from Colombia. Carvajal was the chief of Venezuelan military intelligence and Makled is one of the most notorious drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere. Makled himself disclosed his own cooperation with scores of the highest officials within Chavez’s government — including Carvajal himself, with the chiefs of the Venezuelan army and navy, as well as with dozens of Venezuelan generals.

Makled also provided information about Hezbollah’s criminal activities and its relations with the Venezuelan political and military elite. Already in 2011, he claimed that Hezbollah was making considerable profits in the Western Hemisphere which was funneled to the Middle East. Makled also said that he was willing to tell this to American prosecutors and asked to be extradited to the United States. Still, Obama failed to apply pressure or make an effective request. Both Carvajal and Makled were returned to Venezuela by the Dutch and Colombian authorities respectively.

In addition, at the end of 2012 Congress approved the “Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act” that provided for “a comprehensive strategy to counter Iran’s growing hostile presence and activity in the Western Hemisphere.”

The bill was signed by President Obama; however, a few months later, the State Department reported that after investigating the matter, it concluded that no threatening Iranian activities exist in the Western Hemisphere. Such report raised suspicions that the Administration was not interested in exploring the matter. According to Congressman Jeff Duncan, then chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the report did not consider evidence presented in other countries, particularly the report issued by prosecutor Alberto Nisman that concluded that Iran and Hezbollah had a strong presence in 12 countries.

Nisman died under mysterious circumstances in January 2015; the cause was likely murder. However, the Obama Administration did not pressure the government of Argentina or make any statement of concern about Nisman’s death or his findings.  Considering the context provided by Politico, it now makes more sense; Nisman could have opened the debate on Iran in the Western hemisphere once again and perhaps undermined the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

It turns out that the JCPOA has enabled and encouraged Hezbollah’s criminal activities in the Western Hemisphere, which are connected to Iran’s increasing subversive and military activities in the Middle East.

For all the reasons cited above, I believe that the Politico report deserves a Congressional investigation. But most importantly it is crucial that the activities of Iran and Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere be fully investigated and dismantled. Project Cassandra needs to be restored and carried out to its very end.

A Tragic Story: Iran’s Criminal Presence in the Western Hemisphere with U.S. Complicity

Last month an Argentine Judge ordered the indictment of former President Cristina Kirchner, her foreign minister Hector Timmerman and others on grounds of treason. The allegation is that these leaders made an agreement with Iran where the Islamic Republic would eventually be exonerated from responsibility for the crime of bombing the Argentinean Jewish community headquarters in July 1994, which claimed the lives of 85 people and led to several Iranian figures being placed on Interpol’s Wanted Persons list. The Argentine-Iranian agreement would have eventually had the Argentine government remove these Iranian individuals from the Interpol list. The late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was the first to uncover the conspiracy, but died under highly suspicious circumstances just hours before he was due to testify before the Argentinean Congress.

While Argentina is delving into this problem, Politico uncovered another serious story this time, involving not a corrupt foreign country, but rather the Obama Administration.

According to Politico, the Obama Administration, in its eagerness to secure a nuclear deal with Iran and fearful of Hezbollah’s destabilizing activities in the Middle East, undermined and blocked an entire Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) operation, aimed at targeting a one billion dollar annual Hezbollah cocaine trafficking operation in Latin America and the United States.  Such Hezbollah operation also involved traffic of weapons and money laundering. According to the report, the trafficking of cocaine took place from Latin America through Venezuela and Mexico, with profits in the U.S. The money was laundered through the purchase of American used cars. According to American agents involved in the investigation, the criminal operation was directed and planned by Hezbollah’s innermost circle and “its State sponsors in Iran.”

The DEA investigation, dubbed “Project Cassandra”, sought approval to continue investigations, order the arrests, extraditions and prosecutions of suspects, and impose financial sanctions. However, the Departments of Justice and Treasury rejected, delayed, or blocked these requests. Likewise, the State Department rejected requests to pursue cooperation with countries that could have helped target key suspects involved in those criminal activities.

The money collected by Hezbollah, according to Politico, went directly to fund the group’s military activities in the Middle East, particularly in Syria where it continues to aid and abet the murderous regime of Bashar Al Assad. In Syria alone, more than half a million people have been killed and millions more displaced. Furthermore, this dirty money was made at our own expense, as tons of cocaine were sold on the American market at a time where drug addiction constitutes one of the main social problems in American society, already claiming close to 50,000 American lives this year.

Why would the Obama Administration make such a costly sacrifice to avoid undermining its deal with Iran?

For some it may not make sense. However, based on my own observations throughout the years, it does. The Obama Administration tried to avoid confrontations with anyone it wanted to make a “historic deal” with. Most of these “historic deals” were intended to be made with enemies, as Obama desperately sought an agreement not only with Iran, but also with Cuba and reconciliation with Venezuela.

Thus, Obama failed to insist on the extradition of Venezuelan military and drug trafficker Hugo Carvajal from Aruba and the Syrian-born Venezuelan drug lord Walid Makled from Colombia. Carvajal was the chief of Venezuelan military intelligence and Makled is one of the most notorious drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere. Makled himself disclosed his own cooperation with scores of the highest officials within Chavez’s government — including Carvajal himself, with the chiefs of the Venezuelan army and navy, as well as with dozens of Venezuelan generals.

Makled also provided information about Hezbollah’s criminal activities and its relations with the Venezuelan political and military elite. Already in 2011, he claimed that Hezbollah was making considerable profits in the Western Hemisphere which was funneled to the Middle East. Makled also said that he was willing to tell this to American prosecutors and asked to be extradited to the United States. Still, Obama failed to apply pressure or make an effective request. Both Carvajal and Makled were returned to Venezuela by the Dutch and Colombian authorities respectively.

In addition, at the end of 2012 Congress approved the “Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act” that provided for “a comprehensive strategy to counter Iran’s growing hostile presence and activity in the Western Hemisphere.”

The bill was signed by President Obama; however, a few months later, the State Department reported that after investigating the matter, it concluded that no threatening Iranian activities exist in the Western Hemisphere. Such report raised suspicions that the Administration was not interested in exploring the matter. According to Congressman Jeff Duncan, then chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the report did not consider evidence presented in other countries, particularly the report issued by prosecutor Alberto Nisman that concluded that Iran and Hezbollah had a strong presence in 12 countries.

Nisman died under mysterious circumstances in January 2015; the cause was likely murder. However, the Obama Administration did not pressure the government of Argentina or make any statement of concern about Nisman’s death or his findings.  Considering the context provided by Politico, it now makes more sense; Nisman could have opened the debate on Iran in the Western hemisphere once again and perhaps undermined the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

It turns out that the JCPOA has enabled and encouraged Hezbollah’s criminal activities in the Western Hemisphere, which are connected to Iran’s increasing subversive and military activities in the Middle East.

For all the reasons cited above, I believe that the Politico report deserves a Congressional investigation. But most importantly it is crucial that the activities of Iran and Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere be fully investigated and dismantled. Project Cassandra needs to be restored and carried out to its very end.

McMaster Should Not Be Surprised Over Turncoat Iran

Originally published on Newsmax

While official Washington is preoccupied with a special counsel’s selective pursuit of allegations of collusion with Russia, the far-reaching consequences of what amounts to ongoing U.S. collusion with Iran are going unaddressed.

In his single-minded pursuit of the destruction of the Islamic State, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has effectively aligned us with the mullahs in Tehran. American troops on the ground have wound up enabling the advance of Shiite Iraqi units dominated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps; our warplanes have amounted to their air force.

McMaster has belatedly expressed unhappiness that Iran and its proxies have turned on America’s allies in Kurdish areas of Iraq. By failing to anticipate that outcome, to say nothing of equipping the Kurds to prevent it, he has helped Iran consolidate its position throughout the region — with extremely ominous implications for people there and here.

Trump Takes Aim at Iran’s ‘Clandestine Nuclear Weapons Program’

Originally posted on Breitbart.

President Donald J. Trump put the Iranian regime on notice with his speech last week: the time when the United States (U.S.) government would turn a blind eye to its decades-long drive for deliverable nuclear weapons is over. Citing a long litany ofdestabilizing, rogue behavior on the part of Tehran, the president announced he would not re-certify Iranian compliance with theJoint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Iran nuclear deal.

That is a necessary and first step, but must be followed up with a clear U.S. strategy for ending Iranian support to Islamic terror proxies and the criminal regime of Syrian Bashar al-Assad, its reckless regional aggression, human rights abuses against its own people, and above all, development of an entire range of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) – biological, chemical, and nuclear – as well as the ballistic missiles on which to deliver them.

By making explicit references to “Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program” and “illicit nuclear program,” President Trump acknowledged what many have known for a long time: there has never been a time since 1988, when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini first ordered his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to “get the bomb,” that Iran has not had a clandestine nuclear weapons program. The world first learned publicly about that illicit program in 2002, when the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) blew the lid off the program with revelations about places whose names are now well-known, including Natanz and Isfahan. Iran remains a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is obligated under the terms of that agreement to disclose all nuclear sites to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Of course, it never has. In fact, of all the facilities now known to be part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, not one was ever reported first by the Iranian regime itself.

One of the most glaring problems with the terms of the JCPOA is that there is no obligatory mechanism under which the Iranian regime is compelled to open facilities to IAEA inspection where it is suspected that nuclear weapons work is being done. Iran’s leadership has made quite clear in numerous public statements that it will never allow inspectors onto military sites it declares off-limits. Unfortunately, this means there is no chance under the terms of the JCPOA for IAEA inspectors ever to clear up the many unresolved “Possible Military Dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program – involving nuclear warhead work, explosive charges to initiate the implosion sequence of a nuclear bomb, and more – that were enumerated in the November 2011 quarterly report on the Iranian nuclear program by the IAEA Board of Governors.

On 11 October 2017, the NCRI issued a new report, entitled “Iran’s Nuclear Core: Uninspected Military Sites,” which reveals four more of the clandestine sites where the Iranian military is conducting nuclear weapons R&D. While Iran’s alarming and destabilizing geo-strategic behavior certainly provides more than enough reason for the president to find the JCPOA not in America’s national security interests, it is the Iranian regime’s blatant violation of the nuclear NPT as well as material breaches of the JCPOA(especially section T, that deals with nuclear warhead work), that fully justify U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal entirely.

Denying re-certification for the Iranian nuclear deal is an important first step as is the Treasury Department designation and sanctioning of the IRGC. Designating the IRGC to the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list and complete withdrawal from the JCPOA should follow. Seeking the support of our closest allies and partners to implement a follow-on set of measures, including sanctions and increasingly coercive commercial, diplomatic, legal, military, and political steps, is also critical if we are to ensure that this Tehran regime never has the ability to deploy deliverable nuclear weapons that threaten any of us.

Trump was right to put the Iran nuclear deal on death row

Originally posted on Fox News

President Trump was right to sharply criticize the 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran Friday and say that Congress and other nations must set stricter conditions for Iranian behavior in order to keep the U.S. from withdrawing from the pact.

“However, in the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated,” President Trump said. “It is under continuous review and our participation can be canceled by me as president at any time. As we have seen in North Korea, the longer we ignore a threat, the worse that threat becomes.”

I would have preferred President Trump to announce a clean withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, but I support his decision to give Congress and European leaders a final chance to fix it – even though the chances of this happening are extremely remote.

 I applaud the president for calling out Iran for its sponsorship of terrorism, missile program and efforts to destabilize the Middle East. He explained clearly and accurately why the agreement designed to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons is in reality weak and dangerous.

The president’s compelling description of the growing threat from Iran explained why the Israeli and Saudi governments immediately endorsed his action.

President Trump’s ultimatum was the most important part of his speech, since he announced that he will kill the agreement unless its many flaws are fixed. Given the low probability that Congress, U.S. diplomats or European officials can devise and implement any substantial changes to the nuclear agreement, the deal’s future is grim.

Congress now has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose severe economic sanctions on Iran that were lifted by the nuclear agreement. Congress also will consider legislation on how to address the agreement’s shortcomings and “triggers” imposing sanctions in response to Iranian behavior.

Any legislation or renegotiation of the nuclear agreement must address its three major flaws: allowing Iran to enrich uranium; allowing Iran to operate a plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor; and the deal’s very weak inspection provisions.

Other issues also should be addressed, such as Iran’s missile program, support of terrorism and meddling in regional conflicts.

While there’s been some talk of extending the deal’s “sunset” clause – when the agreement expires – such a fix would be meaningless without the above changes concerning Iran’s nuclear program.

However, none of these vital changes is likely to approved by Congress in legislation or agreed to by other nations who signed the Iran deal.

Congress is very unlikely to pass legislation with any substantial fixes to the agreement because too many moderate Republican senators will vote with Democrats against changes that could cause Iran to withdraw. The Senate would require 60 votes to pass such legislation, meaning that even if all 52 Republicans supported it they would need to pick up eight Democratic votes.

Based on a statement by a senior European Union official Friday, European states plan to stubbornly resist any efforts by U.S. officials to fix the nuclear deal.

By not withdrawing from the pact immediately, President Trump is trying to work with Congress and follow the law. This is the opposite of how President Obama imposed the nuclear agreement on the American people by refusing to follow the U.S. Constitution and submitting the pact to the Senate for ratification as a treaty. To say that such a far-reaching international agreement is not a treaty was an absurd claim by the former president.

It’s also worth noting that President Trump can reimpose most sanctions on Iran himself if Congress fails to act. The president could take such action and impose additional sanctions as part of a withdrawal decision.

You’ll see many pundits and members of Congress on the talk show circuit this weekend discussing various schemes to fix the nuclear deal. Ignore their hot air. The nuclear deal with Iran is all but dead. In about two months, President Trump hopefully will put the Iran deal out of its misery.

On Iran, Trump’s advisers offer ‘dumb’ and ‘dumber’ options that will accomplish nothing

Originally posted on Fox News

Angry at the options he was presented with last July when he reluctantly agreed to certify to Congress that Iran was in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal (the JCPOA), President Trump demanded another option for his next certification decision due by October 15.

He didn’t get it. Instead, the president’s national security advisers – led by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — have presented him with two absurd options to “decertify” the JCPOA but to keep the United States in this deeply flawed agreement.  These options are so bad that they are best described as “dumb” and “dumber.”

Mr. Trump’s advisers also refused to present him with a thoughtful Iran deal exit strategy drafted by Ambassador John Bolton or to let Bolton meet with the president to brief this option.  After he was blocked from meeting with the president, Bolton published this option in National Review.

 Under the dumb option, Mr. Trump would decertify the JCPOA, remain in the agreement to fix it later and Congress would reimpose sanctions lifted under the nuclear agreement.  Congress would act under provisions of the Coker-Cardin Act which allow expedited consideration of taking such action over a 60-day period.

This dumb option has two huge problems.  First, there is zero chance Iran will agree to any changes to the nuclear deal or give back the huge concessions it extracted from Secretary of State John Kerry.  Second, it appears that moderate Senate Republicans will side with Democrats to block passage of any sanctions that could endanger the Iran deal.

The dumber option – unfortunately, the top option of Trump’s advisers – calls for President Trump to decertify, remain in the agreement, and to not impose any additional sanctions.  The purpose of this option is to end the requirement that the president certify the agreement to Congress every 90 days and postpone imposing new sanctions to give U.S. diplomats a chance to fix the JCPOA and convince Iran to agree to changes.

This is a dumber option because it is exactly what the Obama administration wanted and what Hillary Clinton would have pressed for if she had won the election: protecting the JCPOA by dropping the prospect of new sanctions, doing away with the certification requirement and answering criticism of the deal by engaging in endless talks with Iran and European diplomats to fix the agreement.

Iran deal supporters mostly want the U.S. to remain in the agreement because they claim Iran is in compliance and a U.S. withdrawal would alienate America’s European allies.

The “we must avoid alienating European leaders” argument is unlikely to sway Mr. Trump since he proved by his decision to withdraw from the equally flawed Paris Climate Accord that he rightly believes Europe does not have a veto over U.S. foreign policy or his decisions as president.

Many disagree Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA, including Senators Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Ted Cruz, R-Texas, David Perdue, R-Ga., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who spelled out major instances of Iranian noncompliance and cheating in a July 11, 2017 letter to Secretary of State Tillerson.  The senators noted in their letter that Iran refuses to allow inspections of military sites and reports by German intelligence of Iranian cheating.

Making this worse, IAEA Director Amano made a stunning revelation in a late September Reuters interview that the IAEA is unable to verify Iran is implementing the JCPOA because it does not have the means to ensure that Tehran has not engaged in activities that “could contribute to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”

Under the dumb and dumber options being promoted by McMaster, Tillerson and other Trump advisers, this farcical situation will continue as the United States remains in the nuclear deal while engaging in pointless talks begging the Iranians for a better one.  The middle ground that these options supposedly represent is an illusion – their sole purpose is to ensure that President Trump never withdraws from an agreement he has correctly called an embarrassment to the United States.

President Trump’s upcoming decision on how he will deal with the dangerous and flawed nuclear agreement is a moment for moral clarity and may be a defining moment of his presidency.  There is only one reasonable and moral option: a clean withdrawal using the Bolton plan.

Finally, President Trump also must send a message to his national security advisers by soundly rejecting the dumb and dumber Iran deal options they presented.