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Iran: U.S. Banned from Knowing Details of Iran Nuclear Inspection Agreement

August 3, 2015

Iran: U.S. Banned from Knowing Details of Iran Nuclear Inspection Agreement, Washington Free Beacon,  , August 3, 2015

(Mr. Najafi states in the highlighted paragraph that “no country is permitted to know the details of inspections.“ That likely refers to the P5+1 negotiators as well as to nations other than Iran. Does it refer to the results of the inspections or to how and by whom they were conducted when? Either way, how will the P5+1 negotiators know whether Iran continues to seek nuke weaponization and whether to “snap back” sanctions? If they are told little more than “everything is just peachy,” will that be satisfactory evidence that Iran has not violated the “deal?” Please see also, Iran Openly Refuses UN IAEA Inspectors Access to Military Sites.– DM)

Reza Najafi, Iran’s ambassador and permanent envoy to the IAEA, stated over the weekend that no country is permitted to know the details of future inspections conducted by the IAEA. In addition, no U.S. inspectors will be permitted to enter Iran’s nuclear sites.

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Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the nuclear inspection organization is barred from revealing to the United States any details of deals it has inked with Tehran to inspect its contested nuclear program going forward, according to regional reports.

Recent disclosures by Iran indicate that the recently inked nuclear accord includes a series of side deals on critical inspections regimes that are neither public nor subject to review by the United States.

Reza Najafi, Iran’s ambassador and permanent envoy to the IAEA, stated over the weekend that no country is permitted to know the details of future inspections conducted by the IAEA. In addition, no U.S. inspectors will be permitted to enter Iran’s nuclear sites.

“The provisions of a deal to which the IAEA and a second country are parties are confidential and should not be divulged to any third country, and as Mr. Kerry discussed it in the Congress, even the U.S. government had not been informed about the deal between IAEA and Iran,” Najafi was quoted as saying by Iran’s Mehr News Agency.

Due to the secretive nature of these agreements, IAEA officials vising with lawmakers are barred from revealing to them the details of future inspections.

The revelation has rattled lawmakers on Capitol Hill, several of whom are now rallying colleagues to sign a letter to President Barack Obama protesting these so-called side deals.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kansas) and at least 35 other lawmakers are circulating a letter to Obama to provide Congress the text of these agreements as is required under U.S. law.

“It has come to our attention that during the recent negotiation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, at least two side deals were made between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran,” the letter states, according to a copy obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

“These side deals, concerning the ‘roadmap for the clarification of past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear programs,’ have not been made available to the United States Congress,” it states. “One deal covers the Parchin military complex and the other covers possible military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran’s nuclear program.”

An informational email being circulated to lawmakers explains, “according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Obama Administration, these agreements have been negotiated in secret between the IAEA and Iran.”

Secretary of State John Kerry has personally “stated he has not seen these agreements and the Administration failed to submit these agreements as part of the JPCOA,” the email states.

Under the terms of a bill meant to give Congress a final say over the deal, the Obama administration is required to provide text of all agreements, the lawmakers write to Obama.

“Under the clear language of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which you signed into law, members of Congress are entitled to the text of these two side deals,” it states. “Specifically, members have a right to all ‘annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical or other understandings and any related agreements, whether entered into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into or implemented in the future.’”

“Congress’s legal right to these documents creates a corresponding legal obligation for your administration to provide them for our review,” the letter says.

The lawmakers are demanding that the White House “immediately secure” these documents from IAEA “and then provide them to Congress” for review.

Pompeo and Rep. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) sent a separate letter to Obama administration official last week asking for them to disclose the nature of all secret side agreements with Iran.

Iran’s IAEA ambassador claims the agreements with the IAEA are separate from the actual nuclear accord inked with global powers.

“The Agency would know the nature of confidential documents and Iran have clearly briefed the IAEA on this; we have agreed on implementation of a roadmap which is not a part of the JCPOA, with the implementation already on process even before the Congress could examine and approve the deal,” Najafi was quoted as saying.

One senior congressional source familiar with the effort to obtain further information about the deal told the Free Beacon the Obama administration is not being transparent in the review process.

“On top of all the concessions–from ballistic missiles to conventional arms to a 24-day inspection period–we now learn that additional side deals were struck between the IAEA and Iran,” said a senior congressional source familiar with the effort to obtain further information about the deal.

“The Administration promised a transparent review process that would allow Americans and their elected representatives to assess the deal for themselves, but as it turns out, that was just utter bullsh**,” the source added. “The Administration signed off on an agreement that included a series of Iranian Eastern eggs, including secret deals regarding the possible military dimensions of Tehran’s nuclear program, to which Congress and the public are not privy.”

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Red Lines, U.S. Congress
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Moral clarity of the past

August 2, 2015

Moral clarity of the past, Power Line, Steven Hayward, August 2, 2015

(Please see also, Iran’s Supreme Leader Khameni publishes book on how to eliminate Israel. — DM)

Scott reminded us this morning of Winston Churchill’s notice of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, suggesting that we ought to take seriously the statements of murderous purpose whether they come from a seemingly implausible Austrian-born corporal, or a soon-to-be nuclear-armed Iranian ayatollah. Of course, Mein Kampf was mostly ignored in the 1930s or dismissed as the unimportant or irrelevant thoughts that Hitler would discard once he assumed the “responsibilities” of high office.

As background research for one of my longer writing projects currently under way I have been reading old issues of the American Political Science Review from the late 1930s to see how the rise of European fascism and specifically German Nazism was treated. The majority of the articles and book reviews are either stupid, trivial, or superficial, i.e., they examine institutional changes and administrative structures in the value-free way typical of social science that can’t bring itself to consider making moral judgments. Hitler’s regime is treated as more or less normal (ditto the Soviet Union, of course). From these treatments a serious student would learn almost noting important about politics. These blinkered assessments remain the case even after the Reichstag fire, Kristallnacht, the Anschluss, the investment of all of Czechoslovakia following the Munich agreement, and even the outbreak of open war in 1939. While there were some clear voices about the deeper significance of what was taking place—one thinks of Hermann Rauschning’s 1939 best-seller The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West—you typically didn’t find such clarity and depth among academic political scientists.

There are a few notable exceptions. One of them was Robert C. Brooks of Swarthmore College, who was president of the American Political Science Association in 1940. His presidential address at the December 1940 annual meeting of the APSA was entitled “Reflections on the ‘World Revolution’ of 1940,” and you could hardly ask for a more direct and sensible statement of what political science ought to be and to say. He opens by chiding his fellow academics for avoiding “contemporary, controversial political affairs.”

Some representative samples:

[S]ince Nazi Germany is the sole really effective totalitarian state, its overthrow should be the one great desideratum of democratic world politics. Nothing should be allowed to obscure that end. It was the tragic, nay criminal, blunder of Neville Chamberlain that he did not perceive this fact, that he believed in the possibility of gaining concessions from the insatiable Hitler by a policy of appeasement. For Britain, the consequences of this blunder have been tragic beyond all reckoning. Fortunately, in Winston Churchill a prime minister has been found who knows how to keep his eye on the ball. Let us hope that the President of the United States will follow his example.

Incredible as it may seem under such conditions, there are still said to be some appeasers on this side of the Atlantic, gentlemen willing to make a neat little loan—five billion dollars is the figure most frequently mentioned—to Germany as soon as her victory over Europe is complete. This, it is assumed, will soften any ill-feeling Hitler might cherish against us because of our earlier mistaken sympathies for the Allies. Also, poor fellow, he would need the money to buy our goods where with to repair the ravages of war and to feed the starving German people. Of course, once the loan were made, we would be too polite to inquire how much of it was spent, not for butter but for guns, the latter to be used against the United States. If political scientists cannot scotch so obviously ruinous a policy, one may well despair of the future of our profession. What is far worse, one would have to despair of the future of free government. . . [Emphasis added.]

Political scientists must be realists. As such, we know that if Britain is crushed, the only kind of peace we can hope for will be an armed peace—and that probably of short duration. . .

Combined attack by dictator powers upon America may result in our defeat or in our victory. In the former event, democracy will be dead upon this planet for a period of unpredictable length. Even so, let us hope that we might inflict wounds upon despotic aggressors from which they would not soon recover. This is not set down in malice; rather it would appear to be the only hope of future resurrection for our political principles. If democracy fighting for its life proves to be spineless and cowardly, why should any future generation wish to revive it? On the other hand, if it goes down fighting gloriously to the last ditch, it will not lose the power to fire the hearts of some future generation. Once more, as at the end of the eighteenth century, a race of rebels may be born of the sons of men.

Finally, the conclusion, which evokes the spirit of both Churchill and the famous words of Lincoln:

In the end, it is certain that Americans will not submit tamely to such a fate. They will not enter the door marked “Appeasement”: they will go out through the opposite door marked “Defiance.” I do not pretend to like the sort of future that confronts us. It may bring with it the heaviest burdens, the most cruel sacrifices. In all probability, things will get worse before they get better. It may fall to the lot of an American President to say, as did Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that he has “nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” Not liking a future, however, is no reason for not facing up to it. There is a deep satisfaction in resoluteness, through all perils, regardless of the outcome. Let us give thanks also that we are done with roseate illusions; that we are ready to deal with grim realities. Peace and justice may not be for our time, but we have the privilege of risking everything that they “shall not perish from the earth.”

For this Prof. Brooks gets posthumous induction into the Power Line 100 roster of Best Professors in America. Can anyone imagine a president of the APSA speaking in these tones today? Not likely. (And now that James Kurth is retired, is there anyone remotely like Brooks at Swarthmore today?)

(There is no public Internet access to the complete article unfortunately: You can only get it if you have a JSTOR account. It appears in the February 1941 issue of the APSR.)

Categories: Chamberlain, Churchill, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Germany, Hitler, Ideology, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1
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Rant | Obama continues to fix the Creator’s worst mistakes

August 2, 2015

Rant | Obama continues to fix the Creator’s worst mistakes, Dan Miller’s Blog, August 2, 2015

(The views expressed in this rant — some of which are off-topic — are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

This is a partially updated version of Fixing the Creator’s worst mistakes, published on December 29, 2012. It deals mainly with Islam, Iran, the nuke “deal,” illegal immigration and Obama’s usurpation of power. 

Islam and other religions

Obama is “our” Imam in Chief and in that capacity continues to preach that Islam is the religion of peace; there is neither Islamic violence nor any Islamic desire for it. Since the Islamic State is violent it is not Islamic.

Coptic Christians beheaded

Coptic Christians beheaded. So what? They weren’t other Muslims.

Christians and Jews? Islamists are intent upon removing what they consider the curses of Christianity and Judaism. Pope Francis appears to be far more concerned about Climate Change; so does Obama.

In Obama’s apparent view, Palestinians want the true peace of Islam. They abhor violence and want nothing more than to live in peace and harmony in Israel with their Jewish friends and neighbors. Their only obstacles are those senselessly thrown in their path by wicked, apartheid Israel at every turn.

That’s a lie.

The nuke “deal” with Iran

Since the Islamic Republic of Iran is also peaceful, it is Islamic and hence deserves nukes (which it claims neither to have nor to want) along with increased funding to support its hegemonic efforts to bring “stability” to the Middle East with the help of its many proxies.

It's not MY fault.

It’s not MY fault.

Here's more ObamaMoney. Have fun!

Here’s lots more ObamaMoney. Have fun with your virgins!

Obama conceals critical details of His Iran “deal” from members of Congress and from the people, while sending His minions forth to obfuscate and lie about it. Even Iran now claims that the Obama administration has been lying about the “deal.”

“Any time, anywhere” inspections to discover the “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program are a farce and have been at least since November of 2013. We were recently advised that under one or more side deals between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran, the IAEA will neither inspect sites such as the Parchin military facility nor collect samples there; Iran will collect the samples and provide them (or perhaps samples taken elsewhere) to the IAEA.

Why is Obama doing this? Mr. Fleitz, the interviewee in the above video, suggests that Obama sees Iran as having been too long victimized by the West and in need of freedom from Western oppression.

Illegal immigration

Obama’s fundamental transformation of America in His image continues to accelerate. Illegal immigrants are already overwhelming the country and He demands more of them.

to follow the Constitution. It's to old and too slow.

to screw America even more

Run-for-the-border-edition-copy

I am the greatest expert on the Declaration of Dependence

I am the greatest expert on the Declaration of Dependence

All power to the People Obama

Obama has also accelerated Congress’ partially self-imposed rush to impotence. States’ rights have become a sad joke and the United Nations has become even more powerful, wrongheaded and intrusive. Our military is more focused on climate change and “social justice” than on fighting our worst enemy, which cannot even be named.

Obama talks strategy with His chief military advisor

Obama confers with His chief military adviser

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

By His Supreme Excellency, Barack Humble Hussein Obama

Obama Banard College REV

The first paragraph of the Declaration of Dependence refers to “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” However, according to the second paragraph of the Declaration,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (Emphasis added.)

This raises what some may see as an important question: just who is that Creator fella, anyway? Is it Nature, Nature’s God or its earthly manifestation, Government? We need not answer directly due to the partisan overtones of the question. Suffice it to say that fairness and justice dictate that the Government over which I rule — as I had long been destined to do — has an obligation to correct the worst error of judgment and implementation made by that fella, whomever it may be. By correcting that error, I intend no disrespect to it or to anyone else. With few exceptions, everyone makes mistakes and when they are made it is My duty as your President to correct them.

Are all men are created equal?

No they are not, and it is the job of My Government to transform the nation, as I deem appropriate, to make everyone as nearly equal as is feasible consistent with providing the best governance possible. That is a daunting task, but since I won two presidential elections overwhelmingly I have a mandate to do it. I can and shall do it, so help Me — Allah everyone! You have nothing to lose but the chains in which you have long been unfairly bound by unnecessary and unjust freedoms.

Our Black and Brown Brothers and Sisters, whether from My America or from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, no less than invaders immigrants from Islamic nations, deserve to come to a truly welcoming America. Travel and resettlement are costly for them and they deserve the very best subsidies I can provide to afford them the leisure they want and hence deserve. That will enable them to evaluate all political candidates and to decide who will best serve My their interests.  To that end, My Executive Decree is now being written to require that all promotional materials of a political nature be in Ebonics and Spanish as well as in all languages spoken or written in all Islamic nations unless I decree that it is not necessary for specific candidates whom I favor.

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As the nation’s highest constitutional authority and scholar, I am uniquely qualified to interpret and otherwise ignore both the Constitution and the Declaration of Dependence. Both were written and adopted by White Male slaveholders, now despised by all good people.

Clearly, the statement that “all men are created equal” does not mean — as some have mistakenly claimed — equal before the law. Although the most humble of all men, I am so far above the law that I often have difficulty seeing it down below. The same is true in far lesser degree of accredited diplomats and many more. Others, such as those who maliciously oppose My sovereign will, are far beneath the law. No, equality does not mean “equal before the law.” It means equal in every respect except that. At least that’s what it should mean and it is My sworn duty to make it so. There cannot possibility be true equality without vigorous enforcement of My Decrees, to be promulgated now and in the future, mandating equality of both opportunity and result in all things.

Since it is my job to interpret and enforce our laws selectively I must also create those laws. That will be far more efficient.

An Executive Decree is now being drafted for My review, revision and signature. It will set forth the measures that are necessary to achieve our nation’s greatest dream — nay, her manifest destiny — of true equality for all. Very briefly, its directives will include the following:

1. Members of the Congress shall have no higher status or greater legislative authority than the poorest, lowest, most despised and least educated person in My nation — perhaps an illiterate, twelve year old, homeless transsexual drug abuser from Haiti. Hence, My Executive Decree shall declare the Congress in recess until truly representative members have been elected under Federal supervision to replace the elite obstructionists currently there.

In the meantime, I have my phone and veto pen ready.

veto (1)

2. During the congressional recess I shall, as your President, assume with great reluctance all legislative burdens which I have not already assumed. My people shall no longer be subjected to interminable partisan squabbles over such incomprehensible trivia as national debt limits, Federal budgets, tax fairness or anything else. The fruits of peace, love, joy and tranquility shall come to be enjoyed by all throughout My entire land.

3. Due to the peaceful outpourings of racial justice, tranquility, peace, love and joy due to My successful efforts to eliminate the scourge of White racism, there shall no longer be any excuse for privately owned Weapons of Mindless Destruction (WMDs). Hence, all shall be confiscated immediately and disposed of pursuant to Executive Decree.

4. All uniformed personnel of the armed forces shall have the same rank, pay and allowances. Staff Sergeant shall henceforth be the only military rank and all shall henceforth receive pay and allowances commensurate with that rank. The focus of all of My defense efforts will continue to be on social justice and the horrors of Climate Change. Accordingly, military personnel shall be given access to firearms only when called upon to enforce My Climate Change rules.

5. The gross unfairness of wealth maldistribution in the United States is unconscionable and that disgrace to humanity is compounded not only by an incomprehensible Internal Revenue Code but also by lengthy and even more incomprehensible IRS regulations. Accordingly, I shall decree a new and greatly simplified single tax rate of one hundred percent on all property and all earnings from any and all sources, with no deductions or credits. I shall also issue a new Revenue and Property Redistribution Decree granting $25,000 per person per year in cash as well as providing for the fair and just redistribution of all property confiscated in lieu of property tax payments. Since the unreasonably disparaged welfare safety net will no longer be needed it will be abolished.

6. Recognizing that My simplified tax plan may hamper states and other inferior governments in accessing revenues, all states and their subdivisions shall be abolished and the United States shall be divided into ten Federal Districts, to be governed by My appointed District Governors.

Conclusions

My simple, eminently fair and absolutely just decrees will transform My entire nation into a far better place for all of My people.

ObamaGod

Islam absolutely must be recognized as the world’s preeminently peaceful religion; Christians, Jews and others must recognize this and accept the true enlightenment provided by the Holy Koran. If a few Jews or Christians are killed by Muslims who are ignorant of true Islamic teachings, that is far, far less hurtful to My people than the ravages of Climate Change. I believe that Pope Francis agrees with Me on this point.

Obama My work here is done

As the monumental successes of My initiatives become clear throughout the world, I am confident that the United Nations will issue similar decrees for all nations, perhaps uniting some in UN protectorates to be governed in the fair and just ways of which the UN has over the years shown itself to be uniquely capable. The UN bows to no legitimate state or even to illegitimate states such as as Israel. Indeed, I am so confident that these wonders will come to pass that I have today notified the Secretary General that, when My work here is done, I shall give My service as his replacement higher priority than even My obligations to My own dear family.

Permit Me to commend those brave young people for their courage and superb intelligence in standing up for the highest, the best and brightest in our nation.

In closing, here’s another of my favorite songs. I hope you will enjoy it too:

Categories: Christians, Culture, Death to America, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Human rights, IAEA, Ideology, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Islam, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Judaism, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Islam, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Palestinians, Satire, Two state solution, U.S. Congress, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Military, United Nations
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Cotton v. the White House: it’s no contest

August 1, 2015

Cotton v. the White House: it’s no contest, Power Line, Scott Johnson, July 31, 2015

White House spokesman Josh Earnest mocked Senator Tom Cotton as “an international man of mystery” this week. Earnest was alluding to Senator Cotton’s complaint regarding “secret side deals” that are integral to our catastrophic deal with Iran. Senator Cotton responds in this video compiling statements by administration officials, some of whom (unlike Earnest) are speaking unironically under oath.

Video via The Right Scoop.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Kerry, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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The Iran Nuke Documents Obama Doesn’t Want You to See

July 31, 2015

The Iran Nuke Documents Obama Doesn’t Want You to See, The Daily Beast, Tim Mak, July 30, 2015

(Most transparent administration ever.

–DM)

47943959.cachedKevin Lamarque/Reuters

Congress passed a law called the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, also known as Corker-Cardin, requiring the administration to formally submit the Iran nuclear deal, an unclassified verification assessment with any secret annexes, and other relevant materials to Congress.

The intention of that provision was for unclassified materials to be freely available so that an open debate on the public interest could occur. Members of Congress are pointing out that this is not what is happening—and are urging the Obama administration to allow their release.

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Seventeen unclassified Iran deal items have been locked in ultra-secure facilities ordinarily used for top secret info. Why is the Obama administration trying to bury this material?

Scattered around the U.S. Capitol complex are a series of Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facilities, or SCIFs, which are typically used to hold Top Secret information.But today in these deeply secure settings are a series of unclassified documents—items dealing with the Iran nuclear deal that are not secret, but that the Obama administration is nevertheless blocking the public from reading.

The Obama administration delivered 18 documents to Congress on July 19, in accordance with legislation requiring a Congressional review of the nuclear deal. Only one of these documents is classified, while the remaining 17 are unclassified.

Yet many of these unclassified documents cannot be shared with the public or discussed openly with the press. The protocol for handling these documents, set by the State Department and carried out by Congress, is that these unreleased documents can only be reviewed ‘in camera’—a Latin term that means only those with special clearance can read them—and must be held in various Congressional SCIFs.

Most staffers were hesitant to discuss—let alone share—a number of these documents, even though they’re not classified, because they require security clearances to view. By mixing a classified document with unclassified documents, critics of this arrangement contend, important facts are being kept from the public just as Congress is deciding whether to support or oppose the Iran deal.

“The unclassified items… should be public. This is going to be the most important foreign policy decision that this Congress will make,” a Republican Senate aide told The Daily Beast. “This is the administration that once said it would be the most transparent administration in history. They’re not acting like it.”

“Many in Congress view the administration’s tactic of co-mingling unclassified documents with classified documents and requiring Congressional staffers to have secret clearances just to view certain unclassified documents as an attempt by the administration to limit open debate,” a second senior Republican Congressional staffer said.

Among the 17 unclassified documents are important texts related to the Iran nuclear deal: One document, titled “Elements of Iran’s R&D Plan,” is based on the “safeguards confidential plan [between] Iran and the IAEA,” a State Department official said, and so it can’t be released publicly. The document describes how Iran’s research and development on its nuclear program, including on its centrifuges, could progress over time.

Other unclassified documents may be diplomatically sensitive: One is a letter from the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the U.K. to Secretary of State John Kerry; another is a letter from Kerry to the three foreign ministers and his Chinese counterpart as well.

The set includes a discussion paper written before the final agreement, on how sanctions would be dealt with in the interim. Yet another is a draft statement by the U.S. government, to be issued on a future Iran deal implementation day.

Bloomberg View’s Eli Lake and Josh Rogin previously reported the existence of the 18 documents submitted by the Obama administration to Congress, as well as some descriptions of what the set contained.

The Iran nuclear deal is unlike other arms control agreements “because it’s so complex and has so many moving parts,” said Jeffrey Lewis, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “It goes into jaw-dropping detail.” So it’s not a complete surprise that there might be some sensitive ancillary documents to go along with the arrangement. Iran might not want the particulars of its nuclear research program in full public view, for instance.

The unreleased, unclassified documents are informative for Congress but not for public consumption, the State Department contends.

“Some of the documents are the types of documents which, like State Department cables and other internal USG documents, we would not post publicly but would share with Congress in appropriate circumstances. Others are documents that, while not part of the [Iran nuclear agreement] itself, pertain to it and we were clear with the other P5+1 members and Iran that we would be sharing those documents with Congress, and we have,” a State Department official said.

Added the official, “Congress has every document that we have, and every Member of Congress and every staff [member] with the necessary security clearance can review all of the documents.”

Some Democrats were supportive of the administration’s hush-hush approach. The documents are part of a sensitive diplomatic process involving Iran’s nuclear program, they argue, so it’s not surprising that there are some restrictions to the level of transparency the government will allow.

“The essential elements to make the decision on the deal are out there,” a senior Democratic aide said. “I don’t think there’s a lack of transparency or discussion on [the Iran deal], because you’ve had very detailed briefings and every member of Congress has been able to view these documents… The way they are stored is consistent and not unreasonable, and I don’t think there’s anything nefarious.”

Open government advocates, on the other hand, were appalled that unclassified documents this important were being kept both from public view—and, in a real way, from serious Congressional scrutiny.

“Keeping unclassified documents in a SCIF is overkill, even if the documents are sensitive or confidential. They simply don’t need the kind of sophisticated protection against clandestine surveillance that SCIFs are intended to provide,” said Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, working to reduce government secrecy.

“The primary obstacle to congressional review that is created by this arrangement is the requirement to physically be present in the SCIF. Members of Congress cannot review the material in their offices, or share it with trusted colleagues or with subject matter experts. It is a significant hindrance to review,” he added.

Congress passed a law called the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, also known as Corker-Cardin, requiring the administration to formally submit the Iran nuclear deal, an unclassified verification assessment with any secret annexes, and other relevant materials to Congress.

The intention of that provision was for unclassified materials to be freely available so that an open debate on the public interest could occur. Members of Congress are pointing out that this is not what is happening—and are urging the Obama administration to allow their release.

“A lot of both documents and discussion that have been held in a classified setting doesn’t have classified characteristics to it… to the extent that many [documents aren’t classified,] they should be made totally public, as far as I’m concerned, so that the public can evaluate for themselves,” Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez told The Daily Beast.

Republican Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, agrees. His spokesperson told The Daily Beast that he “believes that the administration should make these unclassified documents available to the public so the American people can see the details of the Iran nuclear deal.”

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Kerry, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, U.S. Congress, U.S. politics
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Know Comment: American-Iranian fairy tales

July 31, 2015

Know Comment: American-Iranian fairy tales, Jerusalem Post, David M. Weinberg, July 30, 2015

ShowImage (4)iran. (photo credit:REUTERS)

An updated list of the fictions peddled by the Obama administration in support of its pact with Iran.

Here is an updated scorecard of the misrepresentations advanced by the Obama administration in defense of its concordat with Iran. The list grows every day.

1. Iran will be motivated to keep the agreement.

False. Iran already may be plotting its escape from the agreement. Dr. Emily Landau of the Institute for National Security Studies points out that Iran has twice bolted – in 2004 and again in 2005 – when it felt that the agreements it concluded with the EU-3 were no longer serving its interests.

Lo and behold, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has an explicit defection clause, which allows Tehran to exit the deal without any deliberations or warning if it feels that any of the P5+1 countries is reintroducing any form or degree of sanction against Iran.

So, Iran will pocket hundreds of billions of dollars in (almost-immediate and unconditional) sanctions relief, then sign hundreds of billions of dollars in investment and business partnership deals with the major French and German companies that are now in on the gold rush to Iran. Then it can accuse Congress or the next US president of being nasty and use that as the pretext for its “nuclear snapback.”

2. In case of Iranian violations, America can “snapback” sanctions.

The opposite is true. The agreement intentionally embeds the US in a web of time-consuming and complex multilateral processes that place significant and perhaps insuperable obstacles to both a snapback of economic sanctions and resort to an American military strike. Prof. Jeffrey Herf of the University of Maryland has detailed how the deal places sky-high barriers in the way of American enforcement in the event of Iranian violations.

Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has shown that the nitty-gritty of the so-called sanction snapback provisions actually provide disincentives for the US and its partners to confront Iran in the event that Iran does cheat (which it has a long record of doing, and has done even during the recent nuclear talks). Moreover, Iran is supposed to get Western help and technology for defense against nuclear sabotage. So the US is essentially deterring itself from ever acting against Iran, no matter what. Which apparently is exactly what President Obama was after.

3. The deal will moderate or contain Iran’s aggressive ambitions in the Middle East.

Not at all. The nuclear deal seems to be just the first act in a longer drama of American retreat, retrenchment and accommodation as Obama hands the keys to the Persian Gulf and beyond to his new Shia friends.

Obama says that he “hopes” that “we can continue to have conversations with Iran that incentivize them to behave differently in the region, to be less aggressive, less hostile, more cooperative, to operate the way we expect nations in the international community to behave.” But, he adds, “We’re not counting on it. So this deal is not contingent on Iran changing its behavior.”

What a damning self-indictment. Is it believable that “conversations” are going to change or contain Iran? What is really needed, instead, says Prof. Walter Russell Mead of the New America Foundation, is a tough regional strategy to counter Iran’s rush for hegemony; an aggressive, anti- IRGC, anti-Assad, anti-Hezbollah policy.

But the White House never intended to contain Iran, says Dr. Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute. It has consistently displayed an aversion to countering Iran. America’s allies in the Middle East (and this list of allies supposedly still includes Israel) “have time and again begged the president to help them curtail Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and time and again Obama has refused.”

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies expands on this in an-depth study published on Thursday.

Under cover of this accord, Iran is likely to greatly strengthen its grip on the Middle East, he writes. It will solidify its control of Yemen, including developing the capacity to block the Bab el-Mandeb strait in the Red Sea and thus threaten global trade and the Suez Canal, Egypt’s lifeline. It will take complete control of Lebanon.

With the help of other countries (perhaps even including the US) it will “save” the region by fighting ISIS, to become the true ruler of Iraq and of what would remain of Alawite Syria. Hezbollah will be given thousands of precise missiles, while enjoying Iranian backing and silent American approval.

Amidror: “There is little chance that America will follow through on its promise that after signing the agreement it will be more determined in its efforts to contain Iran. This claim is unrealistic and illogical, since once a rival state becomes a partner to an agreement, one does not increase efforts taken against it in other realms. It is the nature of agreements that cover a certain area of relations that they prevent pressure being applied in other areas, rather than increasing pressure. No one in the West will now be interested in jeopardizing either the agreement or trade relations with Iran. It is therefore likely that, despite the messages of reassurance coming from Washington, Iran will become much stronger over the next 15 years, internally, regionally, economically and militarily, with no opposition from the US.”

4. There was no better deal, and the alternative to this deal is war.

Both assertions are absolutely fallacious. More coercive diplomacy could have delivered a better deal. However, Obama refused to put maximum pressure on Iran. He was not willing to impose additional sanctions on Iran (as Prime Minister Netanyahu suggested and Congress wanted), or to threaten the use of military force. When you are in talks with a genocidal, terrorism-sponsoring regime and claim that you have no viable military option, you are not negotiating.

You are begging.

Prof. Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute points out that there is a historical precedent for tougher diplomacy that works. The US Senate refused to ratify SALT II, ending the SALT process, but war between the US and the Soviet Union did not ensue. Both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan instead increased the pressure on the Soviet Union dramatically. The lesson is that walking away from bad deals does not inevitably lead either to war or to the end of negotiations.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Fairy tales, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Kerry, Khamenei, Lies, Middle East, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, P5+1
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Iran: Obama Admin Lying About Nuclear Deal for ‘Domestic Consumption’

July 30, 2015

Iran: Obama Admin Lying About Nuclear Deal for ‘Domestic Consumption’ Washington Free Beacon,  , July 30, 2015

( It’s clear that the Obama administration is lying, but what lies do the Iranian officials claim are being told? Do they involve the secret deals? — DM)

AP

Senior Iranian officials are accusing the Obama administration of lying about the details of the recent nuclear accord in order to soothe fears among U.S. lawmakers and Americans about the implications of the deal, which will release billions of dollars to the Islamic Republic while temporarily freezing its nuclear program, according to reports from Iran’s state-controlled media.

As Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior Obama administration figures launch a full-court press to convince Congress to approve the  deal, Iranian leaders are dismissing the rhetoric as “aimed at domestic consumption.”

Kerry and other top administration officials have been defending the deal on Capitol Hill in recent days, claiming that it will rein in the Islamic Republic’s contested nuclear program and fix its nuclear “breakout” period, the time required for it to obtain the amount of highly enriched uranium necessary for a nuclear weapon, at one year.

Critics have noted that the deal provides Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief that could be spent on terrorism and lifts bans on Iran’s export of weapons and construction of ballistic missiles.

When addressing claims this week by the administration that the deal shuts down Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure, Iranian officials scoffed and said that the Obama administration is misleading the public in order to sell the deal.

Hamid Baeidinejad, an official in the Iranian foreign ministry and one of the country’s nuclear negotiators, scoffed on Wednesday at the Obama administration’s comments, saying that they were meant to placate an American domestic audience.

“The remarks by the western officials are ambiguous comments which are merely uttered for domestic use and therefore we should say that there is no ambiguity in this (nuclear) agreement,” the Fars news agency quoted Baeidinejad saying in an interview with state-controlled radio.

Baeidinejad said that the Obama administration is misleading Americans about the deal in order to “calm opponents in the Congress and Zionist lobbies to soothe the internal conditions prevailing over debates on the nuclear agreement in that country,” Fars, which is also run by the Iranian state, reported.

As Congress spends 60 days reviewing the deal, which it may reject, the Iranian parliament is undertaking the same task.

During a meeting on Wednesday with Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran urged world powers to keep its commitments under the deal.

These includes lifting sanctions on the nearly $100 billion dollar financial empire of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and agreeing to bar American inspectors from all Iranian nuclear sites.

“The Iranian government is standing strong on the path of (implementing) the agreement and we will remain committed to our undertakings as long as the other side remains loyal to its obligations,” Rouhani was quoted as saying during a meeting in Tehran with Fabius, who served as a key negotiator for the French.

Rouhani said the agreement could help Iran become a key player on the international stage.

“This agreement is not against any country and our cooperation and consultations to settle the regional problems, including fight against terrorism, humanitarian aids, and materialization of nations’ demands can prove it,” Rouhani was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Fabius was met at the airport by Iranian protestors who accused him of serving as an Israeli spy.

“The protesters chanted slogans such as ‘Aids, A French Gift to Iran’, ‘We Neither Forgive nor Forget’, ‘Fabius, Servant of the US, Spy of Israel’ and ‘No Welcome to Aids Lord,’” according to Fars.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Iran scam, Iranian media, Kerry, Lies, Media, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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What information collected by Israeli intelligence reveals about the Iran talks

July 29, 2015

What information collected by Israeli intelligence reveals about the Iran talks, Tablet, Ronen Bergman, July 29, 2015

It is possible to argue about the manner in which Netanyahu chose to conduct the dispute about the nuclear agreement with Iran, by clashing head-on and bluntly with the American president. That said, the intelligence material that he was relying on gives rise to fairly unambiguous conclusions: that the Western delegates crossed all of the red lines that they drew themselves and conceded most of what was termed critical at the outset; and that the Iranians have achieved almost all of their goals.

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On Nov. 26, 2013, three days after the signing of the interim agreement (JPOA) between the powers and Iran, the Iranian delegation returned home to report to their government. According to information obtained by Israeli intelligence, there was a sense of great satisfaction in Tehran then over the agreement and confidence that ultimately Iran would be able to persuade the West to accede to a final deal favorable to Iran. That final deal, signed in Vienna last week, seems to justify that confidence. The intelligence—a swath of which I was given access to in the past month—reveals that the Iranian delegates told their superiors, including one from the office of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, that “our most significant achievement” in the negotiations was America’s consent to the continued enrichment of uranium on Iranian territory.

That makes sense. The West’s recognition of Iran’s right to perform the full nuclear fuel cycle—or enrichment of uranium—was a complete about-face from America’s declared position prior to and during the talks. Senior U.S. and European officials who visited Israel immediately after the negotiations with Iran began in mid 2013 declared, according to the protocols of these meetings, that because of Iran’s repeated violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, “Our aim is that in the final agreement [with Iran] there will be no enrichment at all” on Iranian territory. Later on, in a speech at the Saban Forum in December 2013, President Barack Obama reiterated that in view of Iran’s behavior, the United States did not acknowledge that Iran had any right to enrich fissile material on its soil.

In February 2014, the first crumbling of this commitment was evident, when the head of the U.S. delegation to the talks with Iran, Wendy Sherman, told Israeli officials that while the United States would like Iran to stop enriching uranium altogether, this was “not a realistic” expectation. Iranian foreign ministry officials, during meetings the Tehran following the JPOA, reckoned that from the moment the principle of an Iranian right to enrich uranium was established, it would serve as the basis for the final agreement. And indeed, the final agreement, signed earlier this month, confirmed that assessment.

The sources who granted me access to the information collected by Israel about the Iran talks stressed that it was not obtained through espionage against the United States. It comes, they said, through Israeli spying on Iran, or routine contacts between Israeli officials and representatives of the P5+1 in the talks. The sources showed me only what they wanted me to see, and in these cases there’s always a danger of fraud and fabrication. This said, these sources have proved reliable in the past, and based on my experience with this type of material it appears to be quite credible. No less important, what emerges from the classified material obtained by Israel in the course of the negotiations is largely corroborated by details that have become public since.

In early 2013, the material indicates, Israel learned from its intelligence sources in Iran that the United States held a secret dialogue with senior Iranian representatives in Muscat, Oman. Only toward the end of these talks, in which the Americans persuaded Iran to enter into diplomatic negotiations regarding its nuclear program, did Israel receive an official report about them from the U.S. government. Shortly afterward, the CIA and NSA drastically curtailed its cooperation with Israel on operations aimed at disrupting the Iranian nuclear project, operations that had racked up significant successes over the past decade.

On Nov. 8, 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry visited Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw him off at Ben Gurion Airport and told him that Israel had received intelligence that indicated the United States was ready to sign “a very bad deal” and that the West’s representatives were gradually retreating from the same lines in the sand that they had drawn themselves.

Perusal of the material Netanyahu was basing himself on, and more that has come in since that angry exchange on the tarmac, makes two conclusions fairly clear: The Western delegates gave up on almost every one of the critical issues they had themselves resolved not to give in on, and also that they had distinctly promised Israel they would not do so.

One of the promises made to Israel was that Iran would not be permitted to stockpile uranium. Later it was said that only a small amount would be left in Iran and that anything in excess of that amount would be transferred to Russia for processing that would render it unusable for military purposes. In the final agreement, Iran was permitted to keep 300kgs of enriched uranium; the conversion process would take place in an Iranian plant (nicknamed “The Junk Factory” by Israel intelligence). Iran would also be responsible for processing or selling the huge amount of enriched uranium that is has stockpiled up until today, some 8 tons.

The case of the secret enrichment facility at Qom (known in Israel as the Fordo Facility) is another example of concessions to Iran. The facility was erected in blatant violation of the Non Proliferation Treaty, and P5+1 delegates solemnly promised Israel at a series of meetings in late 2013 that it was to be dismantled and its contents destroyed. In the final agreement, the Iranians were allowed to leave 1,044 centrifuges in place (there are 3,000 now) and to engage in research and in enrichment of radioisotopes.

At the main enrichment facility at Natanz (or Kashan, the name used by the Mossad in its reports) the Iranians are to continue operating 5,060 centrifuges of the 19,000 there at present. Early in the negotiations, the Western representatives demanded that the remaining centrifuges be destroyed. Later on they retreated from this demand, and now the Iranians have had to commit only to mothball them. This way, they will be able to reinstall them at very short notice.

Israeli intelligence points to two plants in Iran’s military industry that are currently engaged in the development of two new types of centrifuge: the Teba and Tesa plants, which are working on the IR6 and the IR8 respectively. The new centrifuges will allow the Iranians to set up smaller enrichment facilities that are much more difficult to detect and that shorten the break-out time to a bomb if and when they decide to dump the agreement.

The Iranians see continued work on advanced centrifuges as very important. On the other hand they doubt their ability to do so covertly, without risking exposure and being accused of breaching the agreement. Thus, Iran’s delegates were instructed to insist on this point. President Obama said at the Saban Forum that Iran has no need for advanced centrifuges and his representatives promised Israel several times that further R&D on them would not be permitted. In the final agreement Iran is permitted to continue developing the advanced centrifuges, albeit with certain restrictions which experts of the Israeli Atomic Energy Committee believe to have only marginal efficacy.

As for the break-out time for the bomb, at the outset of the negotiations, the Western delegates decided that it would be “at least a number of years.” Under the final agreement this has been cut down to one year according to the Americans, and even less than that according to Israeli nuclear experts.

As the signing of the agreement drew nearer, sets of discussions took place in Iran, following which its delegates were instructed to insist on not revealing how far the country had advanced on the military aspects of its nuclear project. Over the past 15 years, a great deal of material has been amassed by the International Atomic Energy Agency—some filed by its own inspectors and some submitted by intelligence agencies—about Iran’s secret effort to develop the military aspects of its nuclear program (which the Iranians call by the codenames PHRC, AMAD, and SPND). The IAEA divides this activity into 12 different areas (metallurgy, timers, fuses, neutron source, hydrodynamic testing, warhead adaptation for the Shihab 3 missile, high explosives, and others) all of which deal with the R&D work that must be done in order to be able to convert enriched material into an actual atom bomb.

The IAEA demanded concrete answers to a number of questions regarding Iran’s activities in these spheres. The agency also asked Iran to allow it to interview 15 Iranian scientists, a list headed by Prof. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whom Mossad nicknamed “The Brain” behind the military nuclear program. This list has become shorter because six of the 15 have died as a result of assassinations that the Iranians attribute to Israel, but access to the other nine has not been given. Neither have the IAEA’s inspectors been allowed to visit the facilities where the suspected activities take place. The West originally insisted on these points, only to retreat and leave them unsolved in the agreement.

In mid-2015 a new idea was brought up in one of the discussions in Tehran: Iran would agree not to import missiles as long as its own development and production is not limited. This idea is reflected in the final agreement as well, in which Iran is allowed to develop and produce missiles, the means of delivery for nuclear weapons. The longer the negotiations went on, the longer the list of concession made by the United States to Iran kept growing, including the right to leave the heavy water reactor and the heavy water plant at Arak in place and accepting Iran’s refusal of access to the suspect site.

It is possible to argue about the manner in which Netanyahu chose to conduct the dispute about the nuclear agreement with Iran, by clashing head-on and bluntly with the American president. That said, the intelligence material that he was relying on gives rise to fairly unambiguous conclusions: that the Western delegates crossed all of the red lines that they drew themselves and conceded most of what was termed critical at the outset; and that the Iranians have achieved almost all of their goals.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, IAEA, Iran centrifuges, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian nukes, Kerry, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Red Lines, Wendy Sherman
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Israel’s choice

July 29, 2015

Israel’s choice, Power Line, Scott Johnson, July 29, 2015

The Iran deal finances and otherwise facilitates Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. It even sets up the United States and the other parties as protectors of Iran’s nuclear program.

Why would President Obama want to do that? He seems to believe that Iran should play the role of “a very successful regional power.” If he believes that this is in the national interest of thee United States, he is a fool. Yet he has said as much, and in this case it may not be naive to take his his words as expressing his view.

By contrast with Obama, the American people (on average) have Iran sized up as an implacable enemy of the United States and of Israel. In his New York Post column, John Podhoretz takes a look at the polls of America public opinion on the Iran deal. He concludes: “The more people know, the more they are inclined to oppose it.”

The state of American public opinion is one element that differentiates the Iran deal from the Munich Agreement. The American people (on average) have no illusions about the Islamic Republic of Iran. They do not think that their Supreme Leader is about to be made a friend of the United States. They do not think that the Supreme Leader’s imprecations of “Death to America” are to be discounted and laughed off. They do not view the imprecations as something like the pabulum and prevarications that Obama himself regularly serves up to them for their consumption. They view the Supreme Leader’s imprecations as consistent with actions taken by the Islamic Republic of Iran roughly from the regime’s inception.

As for the people of Israel and other actors in the region, this is also the case, only even more so, and they do not have the luxury of turning a blind eye. The threat to Israel presented by a nuclear Iran belies the country’s reason for being. See Michael Oren’s memoir Ally for the deep sense of betrayal that Obama’s actions have produced in Israel, even on the part of a sophisticated observer like Oren.

The new status quo is obviously untenable for Israel. If the Islamic Republic of Iran could be contained or deterred, the new status quo might hold, but Iran can’t be deterred and the new status quo won’t hold. It won’t hold any more than the new status quo produced by the Munich Agreement. It may last longer than the Munich Agreement’s 10 months, but the new status quo is inherently untenable.

Norman Podhoretz reiterates the essential facts in his Wall Street Journal column “Israel’s choice” (accessible here via Google). Podhoretz writes:

[I]n allowing Iran to get the bomb, [Obama] is not averting war. What he is doing is setting the stage for a nuclear war between Iran and Israel.

The reason stems from the fact that, with hardly an exception, all of Israel believes that the Iranians are deadly serious when they proclaim that they are bound and determined to wipe the Jewish state off the map. It follows that once Iran acquires the means to make good on this genocidal commitment, each side will be faced with only two choices: either to rely on the fear of a retaliatory strike to deter the other from striking first, or to launch a pre-emptive strike of its own.

Yet when even a famous Iranian “moderate” like the former President Hashemi Rafsanjani has said—as he did in 2001, contemplating a nuclear exchange—that “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality,” how can deterrence work?

The brutal truth is that the actual alternatives before us are not Mr. Obama’s deal or war. They are conventional war now or nuclear war later. John Kerry recently declared that Israel would be making a “huge mistake” to take military action against Iran. But Mr. Kerry, as usual, is spectacularly wrong. Israel would not be making a mistake at all, let alone a huge one. On the contrary, it would actually be sparing itself—and the rest of the world—a nuclear conflagration in the not too distant future.

This seems to me something like the irreducible common sense of the matter.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Iran / Israel War, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian Threats, Israel, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, P5+1
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John Kerry is blowing the Iran nuke deal

July 29, 2015

John Kerry is blowing the Iran nuke deal, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 29, 2015

john_kerry_senator_from_ma-2

Kerry doesn’t care about Iran’s nukes or its breakout times and he resents having to memorize this stuff. What excites him is giving the finger to America and meeting up with enemies of this country. It’s how he began his career and it’s how he’s ending it now.

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Want to buy a used nuclear Armageddon from Hanoi John?

It’s hard to imagine a worse salesman for the Iran deal than John Kerry. Kerry couldn’t sell himself to Americans as a presidential candidate. Now he has to sell a nuclear Armageddon to Americans.

National security was Kerry’s undoing during his presidential campaign. He had shot American soldiers in the back during Vietnam to build a base for his own political future. He had eagerly pandered to Marxist-Leninist terrorists who massacred native peoples and burned their churches. He had been for the Iraq War before he was against it and for Assad’s Syrian dictatorship before he was against it.

Now Kerry is supposed to sell the most controversial and explosive national security issue since the Cold War to a skeptical nation. And he’s doing just about as well as you would expect.

John Kerry’s tour of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Council on Foreign Relations came with all the nervous tics, the stumbling statements and erratic claims that everyone has come to expect from the only man who could have possibly made Hillary Clinton’s Secretary of State tenure look good.

Asked whether he really believed that Iran, which is sitting on a mountain of oil and gas, just wants a peaceful nuclear program “to generate electricity”, Kerry admitted that it already has a military program.

Then he insisted that we had to go through with the deal anyway so he wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of the ayatollah.

“I mean, do you think the ayatollah is going to come back to the table if Congress refuses this and negotiate again?… I mean, please. I would be embarrassed to try to go out—I mean, what am I going to say to people after this as secretary of State?,” Kerry whined.

The Secretary of State for the greatest nation in the world had been reduced to complaining that he would be too embarrassed to renegotiate the deal. Congress had to play it cool and stop embarrassing him in front of his cool new ayatollah friends.

Kerry couldn’t offer a direct answer to the question because he had already argued that Iran “believed deeply that they had a right to… have a peaceful nuclear program; because they resented the fact the United States had supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq”. Iran did restart its nuclear program during the war with Iraq, and, like most nuclear programs during wartime, it was as peaceful as a bomb.

“O Allah, for your satisfaction, we sacrificed the offspring of Islam and the revolution,” Ayatollah Khomeini wrote after the Iran-Iraq War. The letter quoted the need for “atomic weapons” and evicting America from the Persian Gulf.

Iran’s current Supreme Leader had told top officials that Khomeini had reactivated Iran’s nuclear program, vowing that it would prepare “for the emergence of Imam Mehdi.”

Imam Mehdi was never going to be impressed with a slightly lower electric bill.

Kerry had contradicted himself in a single response, admitting that the nuclear program had reemerged during the Iran-Iraq War while claiming that it was peaceful.

But Kerry’s real focus was always on empathizing with the enemy.

“I know, the degree to which Iran felt isolated by that and the sort of impact of the choices that were made during that period of time. So we’re trying to make up for that now. We’re where we are. We’re not blaming anybody,” he offered in his new role as the Ayatollah’s infidel therapist.

He insisted that 24 days was plenty of time just to get access to an Iranian rogue nuclear site while admitting that, “The breakout time goes down to always somewhere in the vicinity of a month or two.” And he suggested that Iran would become peaceful because he had “friends” who had been to Tehran and told him it was “teeming with young people who all have smartphones.”

And Kerry just wanted to go to Tehran and hang out with all the teeming cool young people and their smartphones.

The need for approval from enemies of the United States was quintessential Kerry. Utterly unwilling to acknowledge that there was a different worldview on the other side of the table, he namedropped his opposite number as “Foreign Minister Zarif, who lived here in New York” as if a man who lived in the city couldn’t possibly be a fanatical enemy of the United States.

That would have come as a surprise to Mahmud Abouhalima or Leon Trotsky.

But Kerry had just begun embarrassing himself.

Challenged on welcoming back a terrorist state to the international arena, Kerry claimed that he had told the Iranians that their chants of “Death to America” were not helpful. Asked about other states getting nuclear weapons to compete with Iran, Kerry quipped that, “You can’t just go out and buy a nuclear weapon. You don’t ship them FedEx, you know.”

If Kerry had been paying attention in the Senate, he would have known that the Khan nuclear network which shipped kits of nuclear equipment and bomb plans, had been caught by Bush shipping crates to Libya. It wasn’t FedEx, but it was close. Bush had managed to achieve a complete shutdown of Libya’s nuclear program, while Kerry had legalized the other beneficiary of the Khan network in Iran.

This would have been a month’s worth of gaffes for any other politician, but for John Kerry, it was just one question and answer session gone wrong.

Kerry had already told PBS that Iran isn’t “allowed” to transfer any of the $140 billion in sanctions relief to terrorists because of a UN resolution, before admitting that Iran would probably do it anyway. Then he had backpedaled by claiming that money wouldn’t make much of an impact on terrorism anyway.

When asked about Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s threats to America and announcement that he would continue funding terrorists, Kerry spluttered that he doesn’t “know how to interpret it at this point in time”.

“Death to America” can be surprisingly nuanced when analyzed by a master of nuance like John Kerry.

Kerry had managed to torpedo a plan for air strikes on Syria through his own inept statements. Now he’s sabotaging another administration policy goal.

The more Kerry talks, the more he comes off as a car salesman pushing the latest gently used nuclear Armageddon. He stumbles unconvincingly from one rationalization to another, revealing more about his insecurities than his policies.

Every Kerry argument is a thread and it doesn’t take much tugging on it for the whole dirty garment to come apart in a snarl of rationalizations and half-truths. Like a bad liar, he instinctively contradicts himself. And like a worse liar, he follows it up with false choices and false accusations.

His every argument comes down to some version of “Well what’s your alternative” or “If we walk away now, we lose all credibility”. It’s the argument you expect to hear from a man who has sent his fortune off to a Nigerian prince, not the Secretary of State of the United States.

The conclusion to every Kerry argument is the desperate pessimism of, “We have no other choice.” While Iran’s leadership gleefully celebrates, Kerry tells us that there are no other options. The more he talks, the more he convinces everyone who listens that the United States lost.

Underneath it all is a persistent whine. It’s the tone of an overgrown teenager who just wants to hang out with all the cool Marxist-Leninist rebels, Islamic terrorists and Viet Cong bosses. Somewhere in his mind, Kerry is still a petulant teenager resentful that he has to justify his fun times with Zarif, who used to live in New York and probably knows lots of teenagers with smartphones, by testifying to Congress.

Kerry doesn’t care about Iran’s nukes or its breakout times and he resents having to memorize this stuff. What excites him is giving the finger to America and meeting up with enemies of this country. It’s how he began his career and it’s how he’s ending it now. The more questions he has to answer, the more flustered he becomes because we’re the mean parents embarrassing him in front of the cool ayatollah.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Heroes of War, Humor, Ideology, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian Threats, Kerry, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Tehran, U.S. Congress
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