JINSA in the Washington Post on Inadequate Fixes for the Iran Deal
Anything goes for the Iran deal’s defenders
By Jennifer Rubin
Now that the side deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency have come to light, it is fair to ask whether Democrats supporting the Iran deal care at all what is in it. The implications of the side deals are substantial, William Tobey and Judith Miller explain:
Anything goes for the Iran deal’s defenders
By Jennifer Rubin
Now that the side deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency have come to light, it is fair to ask whether Democrats supporting the Iran deal care at all what is in it. The implications of the side deals are substantial, William Tobey and Judith Miller explain:
Understanding how the IAEA and Teheran intend to resolve differences over the possible military dimensions of Iran’s program and ensuring access to suspect sites are crucial to evaluating the overall agreement. Secretary Kerry promised that the former issue would be resolved before a final agreement was concluded. Now, it will not be settled until December 15, 2015, and even that is doubtful. So Congress is being asked to approve the Iran agreement without knowing whether or not the IAEA will have the information it needs to monitor Iran effectively. To avoid this, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act requires that Congress receives all relevant documents including any agreements “entered into or made between Iran and any other parties.”
The Democrats who say they needed anywhere/anytime inspections (a phrase the White House now admits was never considered, in effect confessing to conning Congress) and signed onto the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act now confess they weren’t serious about either.
Democrats in Congress supporting the deal have either bought into the specious argument that any deal is better than no deal (even if the “any deal” involves giving the largest state sponsor of terrorism $150 billion and access to conventional weapons and missiles) or they can’t bring themselves to cross the left-wing base. They should at least be honest about it.
Meanwhile, after spending two years rejecting the very sorts of concessionsPresident Obama made, former adviser Dennis Ross – along with Gen. David Petraeus – can’t make up his mind about the deal, he claims. That someone of his experience refuses to endorse the deal his former boss and potential future Democratic president Hillary Clinton back so strongly is telling, although Ross’s lack of candor provoked eye-rolling among many Iran deal critics whose views and arguments have been identical to Ross’s.
It would be one thing if the “teeth” they proposed were real. Actual amendments to the deal would be welcomed and could accompany a vote of disapproval. But instead, the recommendation is a really serious statement from the president to Congress? (“A blunter statement on the consequences of Iran moving toward a weapon and of producing highly enriched uranium would allay some of our concerns.”) Since Obama is hardly credible at this point, I don’t see what good this would do.
Likewise, their proposals to mitigate the harm beg the question as to why we did not take these moves to obtain a better deal, something Ross personally recommended many times. (“Providing the Israelis the MOP and the means to carry it would surely enhance deterrence – and so would developing options now in advance with the Israelis and key Arab partners to counter Iran’s likely surge of support for Hezbollah and other Shiite militias after it gets sanctions relief.”)
The arguments for the deal’s defenders and fence-sitters amount to a confession that the contents of the deal no longer matter. This is how we got such a rotten deal – conveying that the deal, not its substance, is the only thing that matters. Skeptics would counsel that a different president with a different negotiating philosophy who was willing to employ real leverage could get a better deal.
UPDATE: Michael Makovsky, chief executive of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, who co-wrote many reports with Ross, tells Right Turn that he shares Ross and Petraeus’s concerns. “Where I disagree is their implication that such a statement from Obama – however welcome -would materially make the Iran deal more palatable. The fundamentals of the deal and its implications would remain the same.” he explains. He reminds us, “The president has made repeatedly clear he has no intention of using military action against Iran and has disparaged those whom he accuses of wanting military action (even if they didn’t actually advocate it), so no statement now threatening such force would have any credibility with Iran or others.” However, he agrees that “we should seek to augment Israel’s capacity to strike Iran’s nuclear program. As Lt. Gen. (ret.) Dave Deptula and I wrote in an April 2014 op-ed in the Wall St. Journal, we should offer to transfer to Israel 30,000-pound bunker-busters, or MOP’s (Massive Ordinance Penetrators) and spare B-52’s that we have in Arizona that can carry them.”