Tag Archives: Obama

A President Betrays the American People — Obama’s Iran Deal

There’s a confusing debate underway on the merits of the new nuclear agreement with Iran announced today. The Obama administration and its supporters are praising the accord as a historic achievement for world peace. The president’s critics claim it is a terrible agreement that will bolster the nuclear program of state sponsor of terror. Both sides are throwing around nuclear terminology, timelines, and minutiae about the agreement.

How to make sense of this? I believe best way is to judge this agreement against President Obama’s own statements.

In 2007, when he was beginning his run for president, Senator Obama told a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that “the world must work to stop Iran’s uranium-enrichment program.”

On October 22, 2012, during a presidential debate with Mitt Romney, Mr Obama said: “Our goal is to get Iran to recognize it needs to give up its nuclear program and abide

In December 2013 at a Brookings Foundation forum, President Obama said: “They don’t need to have an underground, fortified facility like Fordow in order to have a peaceful nuclear program. They certainly don’t need a heavy-water reactor at Arak in order to have a peaceful nuclear program. They don’t need some of the advanced centrifuges that they currently possess.”

This is what the president said about the Iran nuclear program to get elected. This is what the president told the American people to reassure them about the Iran talks.

The agreement announced today does not come close to meeting these statements and promises.

Under the deal, Iran will keep its entire nuclear infrastructure. After the IAEA certifies compliance with easy-to-meet requirements, U.N. Security Council resolutions pertaining to Iran’s nuclear program will be lifted and Tehran will get an estimated $100 billion in sanctions relief.

Iran is currently enriching uranium with about 9,000 centrifuges. About 6,000 will be kept operational; about 5,000 will continue to enrich. Another 10,000 — many non-operational — will be put in storage or unplugged. However, no centrifuges will be destroyed or removed from the country.

Iran also will continue to develop advanced uranium centrifuges while the agreement is in effect. However, unlike the interim agreement, which set the stage for the nuclear talks and barred Iran from testing advanced centrifuges with uranium (a provision Iran violated in mid 2014), the new agreement requires only that R&D of advanced centrifuges be tested “in a manner that does not accumulate enriched uranium.” This means Iran will be allowed to do more-intensive testing of advanced centrifuges than was permitted during the nuclear talks.

Under the agreement, Iran is supposed to dilute its enriched-uranium stockpile, convert some of it to fuel plates for a small research reactor, or sell it on the open market. Diluting its enriched uranium could be reversed in a few months — possibly much faster if Iran uses advanced centrifuges.

A bizarre aspect of this part of the agreement is that Iran will receive natural uranium for any enriched uranium it “sells.” This will help preserve Iran’s enrichment capability and also solve a problem it has concerning access to natural uranium. (Iran has little natural uranium and its uranium mines are running out.)

Iran has agreed to replace the core of its Arak heavy-water reactor, which is under construction, so it will produce less plutonium and send the spent fuel rods of this reactor out of the country. However, it will be permitted to operate the Arak reactor, a significant reversal of pre-2013 U.S. policy that work on this reactor be halted permanently because it is a serious nuclear-proliferation threat. Because of this new provision, Iran will develop its expertise on operating and building heavy-water reactors during the period the agreement is in effect.

This adds up to an agreement that will shorten, not lengthen, the time to an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Effectively verifying this agreement will be impossible, since the “24/7” inspections promised by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry in their speeches today apply only to Iran’s declared nuclear program and supply chain. The IAEA can “press” for inspections of military sites and other suspect nuclear sites, but the agreement does not provide for any penalty if Iran refuses to grant IAEA inspectors access.

Some of the worst U.S. concessions concern Iran’s eleventh-hour demand to lift embargoes on conventional arms and ballistic missiles. The conventional-arms embargo will stay in place for five years, and the ballistic-missile embargo will be in place for eight years but will be lifted sooner if the IAEA definitively clears Iran of any current work on nuclear weapons. The IAEA is very unlikely to find evidence of current nuclear-weapons work, as it won’t be allowed to inspect non-declared nuclear sites where this activity is taking place. This means these embargoes could be lifted much sooner. 

To defend an agreement that legitimizes Iran’s nuclear program, President Obama could possibly claim that Iran can be trusted because it has begun to act like a responsible member of the international community. However, we know it hasn’t. A State Department report from last June found that Iran’s sponsorship of worldwide terrorism has continued and did not decline in 2014 during the nuclear talks. Iran also is stepping up its efforts to destabilize the Middle East and continues to back the Assad regime and an insurgency in Yemen.

As American supporters and detractors of the nuclear deal engage in a heated debate over the next two months before Congress votes on a resolution of disapproval of the deal, the most important question to resolve is whether President Obama had a mandate from the American people to negotiate this terrible and dangerous agreement. Would he have won the 2008 or 2012 presidential elections if he gave even a hint of a deal like this? Would Congress have supported this abrupt change in American foreign policy if the president had kept it informed about his nuclear diplomacy with Iran and consulted with the Hill during the talks?

The answers to these questions are clearly “no.” The Iran deal is the complete opposite of what President Obama promised the American people about how he would handle the Iranian nuclear program. Congress was kept in the dark about the talks, to stop lawmakers from interfering with an agreement the president knew he could never sell to the American people.

This is more than a bad deal. President Obama has betrayed the American people by agreeing to the kind of agreement with an enemy of the United States that he said he would not agree to. It is vital that Congress hold the president to his original promises by rejecting this agreement on a strong bipartisan basis and send a signal to the world that if a Republican is elected president in 2016, this deal will be declared null and void on his or her first day in office.

Iran Nuclear Deal Much Worse than Experts Predicted

The nuclear agreement with Iran announced Tuesday was billed by EU, Iranian and US officials as historic.  It is that: it is a historically dangerous accord that will destabilize the Middle East by legitimizing the nuclear program of a radical Islamist state and a state-sponsor of terror.

The provisions of this agreement – available HERE – contains minor concessions by Iran but huge concessions by the United States that will Iran to continue its nuclear program with weak verification provisions.  Conditions for sanctions relief will be very easy for Iran to meet.

Iran will not only continue to enrich uranium under the agreement, it will continue to develop advanced centrifuges that will reduce the timeline to an Iranian nuclear bomb.  Unlike the interim agreement that set these talks in motion that barred Iran from testing advanced centrifuges with uranium (a provision that Iran violated in mid-2014), the new agreement only requires that R&D of advanced centrifuges be tested “in a manner that does not accumulate enriched uranium.” This means Iran will be allowed to do more intensive testing of advanced centrifuges than it was permitted during the nuclear talks.

The Obama administration will claim provisions of the deal requiring Iran to dilute or send out of the country its reactor-grade enriched uranium stockpile is a great victory.  It isn’t.  If Iran sells this enriched uranium (which the president said today is enough to make 10 nuclear bombs if enriched to weapons-grade), it will receive natural uranium in return.  This will solve a problem Iran has concerning access to natural uranium.  (Iran has little natural uranium and its mines are running out.)  If Iran dilutes this enriched uranium, it can be enriched to higher levels in several months.  Moreover, since the agreement allows Iran to continue to develop advanced centrifuges, Tehran will have the capacity to quickly replaced its enriched uranium stockpile.

It is crucial that the U.S. Congress send a message to the world by decisively rejecting this agreement and making it clear that a future Republican president will reject it on his or her first day in office.

Iran has agreed to replace the core of its under-construction Arak heavy-water reactor so it produces less plutonium and to send the spent fuel rods of this reactor out of the country.  This is a significant reversal of pre-2013 U.S. policy that work on this reactor be halted permanently because it is a serious nuclear proliferation threat.  Because of this provision, Iran will develop its expertise on operating and building heavy-water reactors during this agreement.

As a result of these provisions, this deal will actually shorten the timeline to an Iranian nuclear bomb and enable Iran to produce many more nuclear bombs than it currently can construct using enriched uranium and plutonium fuel. 

This is not a verifiable agreement.  The IAEA will only have 24/7 access to declared nuclear facilities.  The IAEA can “press” for access to military and suspect nuclear sites.  Provisions for access military and suspect military sites are extremely weak and provide for no consequences against Iran if it fails to grant access to IAEA inspectors.

In his press conference today, Secretary Kerry tried to explain away the agreement’s lack of anytime, anyplace inspections of non-declared nuclear sites by claiming Iran will be prevented from pursuing a nuclear weapons program since Iran’s declared nuclear supply chain will be subject to monitoring.  This will not reassure Iran’s neighbors since the agreement will do nothing to stop activities such as warhead development and possibly covert uranium enrichment at undeclared sites.

Sanctions relief will be fairly easy for Iran to reach.  UN, EU, and US sanctions will be “terminated” on “implementation day” – when the IAEA certifies Iran has complied with specified commitments in the agreement.  These commitments are fairly easy for Iran to meet.  There are provisions for dispute resolution and re-imposing sanctions due to Iranian non-compliance, but it is hard to imagine Russia or China will agree to this.  Moreover, given President Obama’s obsession for a nuclear agreement with Iran and his administration’s failure to hold Iran accountable for cheating on its commitments during the nuclear talks, I believe there is no chance this administration will stand in the way of declaring Iran in compliance with the new agreement.  This means Iran is likely to soon get access to an estimated $100 billion in frozen assets.

Some of the most stunning concessions concern lifting embargoes on conventional arms and ballistic missiles.  The conventional arms embargo will stay in place for five years and the ballistic missile embargo would be in place for eight years unless the IAEA definitively clears Iran of any current work on nuclear weapons.  However, the IAEA is very unlikely to find evidence of current nuclear weapons work since it won’t be allowed to inspect non-declared nuclear sites where this activity is taking place.  This means these embargoes could be lifted much sooner.

These are stunning US concessions.  Under this agreement, a state-sponsor of terror that currently is sponsoring terrorist groups and destabilizing the Middle East, will gain free access to the international arms market.  In addition, Iran, which refuses to sign ballistic missile arms control treaties, will be freed of restrictions on its missile program which expert believe is being designed as a nuclear weapons delivery system  Iran’s missiles could currently hit Europe and it is believed to be developing ICBMs that could strike the United States.

Former Senator Joseph Lieberman said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee Tuesday morning about the Iran nuclear agreement:

“What began as an admirable diplomatic effort…dissolved into a bilateral negotiation over the scope of that capability.  The agreement…ultimately allows Iran to become a nuclear weapon state, and indeed legitimizes Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons capability… This is a bad deal for America, a bad deal for Iran’s neighbors in the Middle East, and a bad deal for the world.”

Lieberman is right.  This is a terrible agreement that will endanger US and international security.  This deal will increase the risk of nuclear proliferation since other regional states are likely to begin enriching uranium and building heavy-water reactors.  Saudi Arabia reportedly may buy nuclear bombs from Pakistan.  Israel may decide it has no choice but to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

It therefore is crucial that the US Congress send a message to the world by decisively rejecting this agreement and making it clear that a future Republican President will reject it on his or her first day in office.  

The Anti-Democratic Quality of the Iran Nuclear Deal

In addition to all the matters of legitimate concern associated with this proposed deal between Iran, the United States, and the European powers, the deal has a strongly anti-democratic quality. This quality can be seen in paragraph twenty-five of the proposed deal’s general provisions. This holds:

If a law at the state or local level in the United States is preventing the implementation of the sanctions lifting as specified in this JCPOA, the United States will take appropriate steps, taking into account all available authorities, with a view to achieving such implementation. The United States will actively encourage officials at the state or local level to take into account the changes in the U.S. policy reflected in the lifting of sanctions under this JCPOA and to refrain from actions inconsistent with this change in policy.

So in other words, the Federal government is going to undertake to override state laws insofar as such laws conflict with the deal. Doesn’t it do that all the time? To see why this is a problem, we look at Article Six, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, known as the “Supremacy Clause.” This clause holds that the supreme law of the land shall be the Constitution, treaties, and federal statutes. State laws that conflict with the Federal rules are held null and void, provided that the Federal government is acting in accord with one of its authorized powers.

Now this deal is not going to be a treaty, because to be a treaty it would require the support of a two thirds’ majority of US Senators. Then the deal would have significant democratic legitimacy as an expression of American will, or at least Congressional will. In this case, however, Congress is only going to express legislation either approving or disapproving of the deal. That requires not two-thirds’ majority, which is 67 votes in the Senate, but only the 60 votes required to get to cloture. This does not meet the Constitutional standard for a treaty. Worse, should Congress vote to disapprove the deal, the President has already said that he will veto their disagreement. That means that Congress would have to override the veto for its disapproval of the deal to be binding. Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds’ majority of both houses, whereas approving a treaty requires only a two-thirds’ majority in the Senate alone. Thus, this deal does not merely invert the Constitutional process for approving a treaty, it actually sets a harder standard for Congressional will to be exercised.

So let’s return to the Supremacy Clause and paragraph 25 of this deal. Is it legitimate for the Federal government to undertake to override democratically-enacted state legislation on the will of the President alone? In Edgar v. MITE Corp, a 1982 ruling by the Supreme Court, a two part test was set up for when the Supremacy clause would apply to state actions. The first part of the test is that compliance with both State and Federal laws is impossible, and that might hold. However, the second part is that “State law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.” Emphasis added. Congress’ will in this case may well be that the deal be disapproved. Thus, state laws resisting the deal would be in accord with the will of Congress.

Subsequent Supreme Court rulings underline the point. Missouri v. Holland applies to the treaty power – but this is not being enacted as a treaty, as it lacks the democratic support that would be required to meet the standard for creating a treaty. The other supremacy clause rulings since 1982 all deal with the expressed will of Congress. Supremely binding legislation at the Federal level cannot be made in defiance of the will of Congress. By flipping the treaty process on its head, this deal defies the will of Congress and yet presumes the authority of a treaty. State legislation to resist it should be perfectly appropriate. Yet the State Department, acting under the authority of the President alone, has pledged to use the power of the Federal government to quash democratic objections that align with the expressed will of Congress.

Obama and Iran: Creating a New Superpower

This Iran nuclear deal was always in the works. It was pre-ordained with Obama’s election. We must view it in the context of Obama’s entire background. For instance, his 20-year membership in the vile anti-semite, Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church. Or his attendance at a pro-Palestinian farewell party for Palestinian activist and academic darling Rashid Khalidi that turned into a veritable orgy of Israel hatred. Our corrupt media has covered that up; the Los Angeles Times has video of the event but has suppressed it. The bottom line is that Obama believes that because Israel has nuclear weapons Iran is entitled to them as well. He was never committed to preventing a nuclear-armed Iran and this deal ensures that Iran will become a nuclear power and sanctions will end, rewarding the Ayatollahs for decades of unlawful behavior.

Future generations will ask: “How did they ever let it happen?”

The other aspect of this is that Iran’s ire isn’t just directed at Israel. Israel is the “Little Satan.” America is the “Great Satan.” This will change the world in which America operates.

Allowing Iran to go nuclear is infinitely worse than allowing North Korea to go nuclear.

North Korea is an impoverished, isolated, Stalinist regime.

Iran is none of those things. Iran is wealthy and will grow wealthier thanks to this deal. Iran is expansionist and aggressive, with a Shariah-based constitutional mandate to export the Islamic revolution around the globe. They have sponsored Jihadist terrorism for decades as far away as Argentina and Bulgaria, as well as throughout the Middle East and Southwest Asia. They will now have a nuclear umbrella under which to conduct those activities.

Obama has created a new superpower.

Obama Concessions to Iran Worse than Previously Known

To no one’s surprise, the nuclear talks with Iran that were supposed to produce an agreement by tomorrow have been extended. Critics of the nuclear deal sought by President Obama fear that this will be a dangerous deal because of too many one sided U.S. concessions to Iran.

These include allowing Iran to enrich uranium and build advanced enrichment centrifuges while an agreement is in force. Iran will keep all of its nuclear infrastructure, including a plutonium-producing heavy–water reactor. (It is supposed to be re-engineered to produce less plutonium.)

Iran also will be allowed to keep its entire stockpile of the uranium it’s already enriched (although it’s supposed to dilute it down to a form less-readily usable to make a bomb). Nor does Iran have to come clean about its past nuclear weapons work. And the U.S. reportedly has now pledged to provide Iran technical assistance to further develop its nuclear program.

Israeli news sources over the weekend claimed that the U.S. has caved on inspections of nuclear facilities in a final agreement, a report that is consistent with other reports this month about such a concession.

But this story actually gets worse. In a June 29 Wall Street Journal article, columnist Jay Solomon wrote that the Obama administration has been secretly making concessions to Iran since 2009 to convince it to begin multilateral talks on its nuclear program.

These concessions included the release of four Iranians detained in the United States and the United Kingdom; two convicted arms smugglers, a retired senior diplomat and a scientist convicted of illegal exports to Iran. The U.S. also agreed to increase U.S. visas for Iranian students. According to Solomon, these concessions were arranged in secret by Oman.

Iran also asked the United States to blacklist groups hostile to Iran. The Obama administration reportedly replied to this request by sanctioning a Pakistani military group known as Jundullah which had attacked Shi’ite mosques in eastern Iran, killing hundreds.

According to the Journal article, the Obama administration did not agree to sanction other groups hostile to the Iranian regime such as a pro-monarchy group in Los Angeles. The MEK (Mujahedeen-e Khalq and the National Council of Resistance of Iran or NCRI, the political umbrella group to which it belongs) had already been put on the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list in 1997 and 2003, respectively, at the request of Mohammad Khatami, a previous Iranian president.

The Wall Street Journal noted in a June 14, 2015 editorial, however, that the Obama administration cut funding to a moderate Shi’ite group in Lebanon, Hayya Bina, just after a framework agreement for a nuclear agreement was announced on April 2, 2015. Since Hayya Bina supposedly offered a moderate alternative to Hizballah, Iran’s terrorist proxy in Lebanon, the Journal editorial board suggested this was secret concession to Iran.

The editorial also noted that on the day after the announcement of the framework agreement, the U.S. Treasury Department removed Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Dubai-based Sri Lankan businessman, from a list of persons sanctioned in 2004 as part of the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network. This network provided secret assistance to the nuclear programs of Iran, Libya and North Korea.

What other concessions did the Obama administration make to get a nuclear deal with Iran? The overall picture that’s emerging suggests an even broader understanding: to what extent has the Obama White House agreed to Iranian regional hegemony, perhaps a dominance secured by a nuclear capability? How much worse does this story have to get before Congress puts an end to this dangerous farce?

It’s Not “Absurd” That Obama Will Give In to Iran’s Demands

According to press reports, U.S. officials have said the Iran nuclear talks will be extended to about July 9 so Congress can begin a 30-day review if an agreement is reached.  Under the Corker-Cardin bill, Congress has 60 days to review an Iran deal if it is submitted to the Hill after July 9.

The inability to reach an agreement by a June 30 deadline appears to be due to backtracking by Iran. The New York Times reported today that U.S. officials have warned Iran that a nuclear deal must stick to an April 2015 framework agreement.  This suggests Tehran is moving away from the framework to extract more U.S. concessions.

The framework agreement contained major (and I believe unacceptably dangerous) concessions to Iran, allowing it to operate 5,000 uranium centrifuges, develop advanced centrifuges, and keep all of its nuclear infrastructure, including a plutonium-producing reactor which would be modified to produce less plutonium.

According to a June 30  Washington Post article, a senior Obama official balked yesterday at accusations that the administration will give in to Iranian demands as “absurd.”  According to the Post, the official said:

“Why would we put ourselves through this, why would our teams be here for as long as they have been, why would we be spending the hours doing this in the way we are if we were to just say, ‘Whatever you want, you got’?” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks. “This is a very tough negotiation.”

My colleague Clare Lopez wrote in an June 29 Newsmax article that the Obama administration began to make concessions to Iran in 2009 to lure it to the negotiating table which included releasing Iranian prisoners.  Since that time, there have been a series of huge U.S. concessions on Iran’s nuclear program, including allowing it to enrich uranium and permitting Iran to develop advanced enrichment centrifuges.  According to recent press reports, the Obama administration is prepared to cave on “any time, any place” inspections of Iranian nuclear sites and settle for “managed” inspections of some Iranian military facilities.  There also have been recent press reports that the Obama administration is prepared to write off an IAEA dossier on Iran’s past nuclear weapons-related work.

Based on these and other U.S. concessions to Iran since 2009 to get a nuclear agreement, it is far from absurd that President Obama will give in to Iran’s remaining demands.

Obama’s Nuclear Surrender to Iran

With the clock winding down on a June 30th deadline for a nuclear agreement with Iran, Obama administration critics fear a potential deal is worsening by the day as U.S. concessions accelerate in the final days of the negotiations.

But as bad as these last-minute U.S. concessions appear – such as a reported U.S. offer to write-off Iran’s past nuclear weapons work and giving Iran advanced nuclear technology – they ultimately will not reduce the chances of getting a “good” nuclear deal due to a huge U.S. concession made before the negotiations began: allowing Iran to enrich uranium.

This was more than a concession.  It was an American surrender to Iran on its nuclear program.

Uranium enrichment is a dangerous dual-use nuclear technology because it is very easy to use an enrichment program intended for peaceful purposes to produce nuclear weapons fuel. After secret revelations about Iran’s nuclear program emerged in 2002, the Bush administration tried to stop the spread of uranium enrichment. Congress endorsed this approach on a bipartisan basis and pressured the Bush administration to require the UAE to forswear uranium enrichment (and plutonium reprocessing) from an agreement to share American nuclear technology. This agreement was signed and strengthened by the Obama administration in 2009.

Over the objections of Congress, the Obama administration in 2011 backed away from this strict standard barring enrichment and plutonium reprocessing from nuclear technology sharing agreements and decided to approach these issues on a case-by-case basis.

It is impossible to see how the Obama administration can justify Iran as a case to allow uranium enrichment, since its nuclear program was begun in secret and developed in defiance of six UN Security Council resolutions and Iran’s treaty obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Iran is also refusing to come clean on past nuclear-weapons related work or allow IAEA inspectors access to all of its nuclear sites.

Iranian leaders claim their uranium enrichment program is peaceful, but they have been unable to provide a convincing explanation for why their nation needs to enrich. Iran has only 19,000 enrichment centrifuges, far short of the 200,000 it would need to enrich enough uranium fuel for its Bushehr power reactor. Iran has too many centrifuges for other peaceful purposes such as producing medical isotopes.

Desperate for a nuclear agreement with Iran and frustrated that Iranian leaders would not budge on the enrichment issue, the U.S. offered to allow Iran to enrich uranium during multilateral talks in Baghdad in May 2012.  This huge U.S. concession was incorporated into a November 2013 interim agreement and the current nuclear talks that began in early 2014.

This U.S. surrender conceded to Iran the “right” to enrich uranium and effectively conceded the nuclear bomb to Tehran.  Diplomatic efforts since that time have amounted to negotiating the terms of this surrender.

Negotiations on the terms of the Obama nuclear surrender to Iran have not gone well. The number of centrifuges Iran would be permitted to operate grew from a reported 500 in 2012 to 5,000 by April 2015.  According to an April 2, 2015 State Department fact sheet, none of Iran’s 19,000 centrifuges (or any of its nuclear infrastructure) will be destroyed or removed from the country. Iran will be allowed to develop advanced centrifuges during an agreement which will shorten the timeline to an Iranian nuclear bomb. Iran also will not be required to send its stockpile of reactor-grade enriched uranium out of the country. This enriched uranium could be used to make a nuclear weapon in two to three months and is enough to fuel about nine weapons.

Obama administration officials and their supporters claim the enrichment concession was justified because a nuclear agreement with Iran is impossible without it, since Iranian leaders refuse to give up their enrichment program. This is a rationalization to explain away the reality that when Iranian leaders said they would not give up their uranium enrichment program, they were also saying they had no interest in an agreement to halt or significantly delay their capability to produce nuclear weapons.

Obama officials have claimed the proliferation risks of allowing Iran to enrich uranium during a nuclear agreement will be checked by robust, intrusive and “snap” IAEA inspections. While this is a dubious claim, since Iran would be allowed to improve its enrichment expertise while an agreement is in effect, we now know there will be no robust and intrusive inspections, since Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei and the Iranian Parliament have declared military facilities and non-declared nuclear sites off-limits to IAEA inspectors.

By allowing Iran to enrich uranium, the United States conceded an Iranian nuclear infrastructure that has no purpose other than producing nuclear weapons. This concession also set the stage for an agreement that will legitimize the nuclear program of a state sponsor of terror with a long record of cheating on its nuclear treaty commitments.

America also abandoned a principled stand against a dangerous dual-use nuclear technology that it has refused to allow friendly states to pursue. As a result, Iran’s neighbors are certain to start their own uranium enrichment programs. It also will be difficult if not impossible for the U.S. to exclude uranium enrichment from future agreements to share peaceful nuclear technology with other states if this deal with Iran is concluded.

Congress must recognize that the nuclear talks with Iran were lost before they began because of the Obama surrender on uranium enrichment. This made the nuclear talks so fundamentally flawed that a meaningful agreement to halt or significantly slow Iran’s nuclear weapons program became impossible. It is therefore imperative that Congress, on a bipartisan basis, reject any agreement produced by the nuclear talks and impose new sanctions on Iran until it complies with its nuclear treaty obligations and all UN Security Council resolutions, especially on its uranium enrichment program.

I am hopeful that the next U.S. administration will restart a diplomatic process with Iran to seek a meaningful agreement to resolve international concerns about the Iranian nuclear program. To get such an agreement, we will need a president who is not obsessed with getting a legacy nuclear agreement with Iran and who will categorically rule out the continuation of Iran’s uranium enrichment program.

Liberal Panic Over Obama’s Nuclear Sell-Out to Iran

This morning I read a Washington Post op-ed that provided an especially prescient analysis of the nuclear agreement the Obama administration is seeking with Iran.  The author said in the final two paragraphs of this piece:

“The much-discussed terms of the impending agreement with Iran thus offer the theocracy all that it wants. The accord would concede a vast enrichment capacity, as well as accepting both a heavy water plant and a well-fortified underground enrichment facility that the United States once vowed to shutter. It would permit an elaborate research and development program and would likely rely on an inspection regime that falls short of indispensable “anytime, anywhere” access. In the meantime, the sanctions architecture will be diminished, and the notion of ever “snapping back” sanctions into place once they are lifted is delusional. And because the agreement itself would be term-limited, there would be no practical limits on Iran’s nuclear ambitions upon its expiration.

However, as disturbing as all this may be, the most important legacy of the prospective agreement many not even lie in the nuclear realm. The massive financial gains from the deal would enable the Islamic Republic’s imperial surge while allowing a repressive regime that was on the brink of collapse in 2009 to consolidate power. This would be no small achievement for Iran’s emboldened rulers.”

Who wrote this devastating assessment?  Joe Lieberman?  John Bolton?  Frank Gaffney?  No, it was written by Ray Takeyh who covered Iran on President Obama’s National Security Council and authored the president’s letters to Iran’s Supreme Leader.  He is now a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations.

Takeyh was cautiously supportive of the nuclear talks at the outset and has been part of a bipartisan effort to get good deal with Iran by pressing the Obama administration to take a harder line and stop making concessions to Tehran.  My view is that the nuclear talks were lost before they began since the Obama administration conceded uranium enrichment to get Iran to the negotiating table.  But I agree with Takeyh that this will be a bad deal that will not only fail to halt or slow Iran’s nuclear program, it will also bolster the Iranian regime at a time when it is increasing its meddling in regional states and sponsorship of terrorism.

Takeyh’s op-ed followed last week’s critical (but somewhat milquetoast) bipartisan letter organized by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that included as signatories five former members of President Obama’s inner circle: Dennis Ross, David Petraeus, Robert Einhorn, Gary Samore and General James Cartright.  The letter said the nuclear deal “may fall short of meeting the administration’s own standard of a ‘good’ agreement,” “will not prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons capability” and “will not require the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment infrastructure.”

Conservative experts have long warned that the Obama administration is seeking a dangerous nuclear agreement with Iran.  This agreement is now so bad that liberal foreign policy experts and former Obama officials have turned against it.

Congress must listen to growing bipartisan concern about President Obama’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran and take decisive action. This means rejecting any agreement that the nuclear talks produce and passing new sanctions against Iran until it complies with all UN Security Council resolutions on its nuclear program.

Cut Down the Black Flag – A Plan to Defeat ISIS

There is an inter-continental Caliphate based in a country that we liberated less than a decade ago. ISIS now commands allegiance from jihadist groups around the globe and calls for attacks against the free world everywhere its adherents can reach. That is a state of affairs we should not tolerate.

When the Center published our Secure Freedom Strategy we noted that our Islamist enemies have many names and use many different tactics, but they have one goal and one guiding ideology, Islam must be supreme and all must submit. We disagree and we have declared a CounterJihad. We also gave the enemy a name, the Global Jihad Movement, which includes all the violent jihadists who fly the black flag as well as the civilization jihadists such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates like CAIR, ISNA etc.

We now are releasing the first operational element of the Secure Freedom Strategy against the Violent Jihad “Cut Down the Black Flag- a Plan to Defeat the Islamic State”. Here is the Center’s Executive Vice President Jim Hanson presenting this plan to Congressional staff at our National Security Luncheon held at the Capitol Visitors Center on 17 June 2015.

You may download an executive summary of the full plan at the link below. It will be published as a monograph next week.

Cut-Down-The-Black-Flag – Exec Sum (Executive Summary)