Armageddon (18 page)

Menendez's successor as Foreign Relations chairman, Senator Bob Croker (R-TN), saw Hillary's and Obama's attempts to take credit for the sanctions as a kind of backhanded compliment. “I take comments from administration officials saying they were so involved in this as a compliment. It was Congress who pushed this on a bipartisan basis,” said Corker. “Let's face it. You saw the public pushback from the administration. People can say what they wish, but there's no way we would be where we are today without Congress's actions.”
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Hillary's opposition to Iran sanctions goes back to 2009 when she and Obama worked to kill an amendment by Kirk and Democrat Evan Bayh (D-IN) to impose sanctions on Iranian exports of refined petroleum. Rolled into a subsequent omnibus sanctions bill, it passed—over Hillary's objections—by 99–0 in the Senate and 408–8 in the House.

The most effective of the various sanctions imposed on Iran was the bill to bar Iranian financial institutions, including its Central Bank, from doing business with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the Brussels-based global financial clearinghouse. This sanction made it virtually impossible for Iran to do any kind of business internationally.

The
Wall Street Journal
reported that “the administration was afraid that the SWIFT-related sanctions would cause too much disruption to the system and unnerve allies. Lawmakers said the sanctions were needed to close a huge loophole through which Iran was laundering money.”
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Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, put it best: “The overwhelming success of Iran sanctions is certainly motivating many folks to claim credit. The reality is that there is no doubt that the toughest sanctions were imposed by Congress over the objections of the administration.”
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After these sanctions forced Iran—on its knees—to enter negotiations, the administration agreed (and Hillary supported) a deal that gave Iran everything it ever wanted. And on top of the giveaway deal, the administration has since showered Iran with other concessions that even go beyond the scope of those it won in the negotiations. All Iran has to do is whisper that it is somewhat unhappy with something and Obama is right there offering more goodies. Almost any scrutiny of its terms, whether superficial or detailed, reveals its glaring defects. It is hard to conceive of a worse deal for the United States, Israel, or the fate of the world.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Iran deal “a historic mistake” and said that it “reduces the pressure on Iran without receiving anything tangible in return, and the Iranians who laughed all the way to the bank are themselves saying that this deal has saved them.”
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We need to use the Iran deal as a key campaign issue. To do so, we have all got to understand why the deal is terrible. We have to be able to argue it out with our undecided friends, point by point. The key things to stress are discussed below.

Iran was wilting under the impact of American and international sanctions. Originally, these sanctions targeted the nuclear program, but over the years had expanded to hit every aspect of Iran's economy starting with its banking system. Eighty percent of Iran's government revenue comes from its sale of oil and gas to the rest of the world. The United States has long boycotted Iranian oil, but under the most recent round of sanctions—the ones that brought Iran to its knees—the European Union joined the boycott. At the peak of the sanctions, nobody in the United States or the European Union could either buy Iranian oil or insure their tankers. At the same time, the United States enacted legislation to punish countries that continued to do business with Iran, sharply limiting their ability to operate in the United States.

Driven by sanctions, inflation officially reached 22%, but most believe it had soared even higher. The International Affairs Review of the Elliott School at George Washington University wrote that “in one week alone, the price of chicken rose 30 percent and the price of vegetables almost 100 percent.” It noted that prices became “unstable” and that household budgets were “being stretched thinner and thinner, and people [saw] the value of their savings quickly disappear.”
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The government was forced to end its subsidy of food staples, electricity, water, and gas. Unemployment reached 35%. Factories and businesses laid off workers because they couldn't get raw materials. The Iranian rial lost half its value and Iranians were increasingly demanding US dollars in their commercial transactions. The black market thrived.

Then the United States and the European Union took its foot off the throat of Iran and agreed to lift the sanctions under the deal. National Public Radio reported as follows: “$100 billion: That's roughly how much the US Treasury Department says Iran stands to recover once sanctions are lifted under the new nuclear deal. The money comes from Iranian oil sales and has been piling up in some international banks over the past few years.”
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The money was accumulating because the Iranians were able to skirt the sanctions and sell at least some of their oil on the global markets. But they couldn't get their hands on the cash the oil brought in. It was frozen in overseas banks.

Mark Dubowitz explained, “Those [mostly Asian] countries were buyers of Iranian oil. But they agreed to hold the funds in escrow until the sanctions are lifted. In other words, Iran sold them the oil but couldn't move the cash back home.”
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Dubowitz warns that all of the $100 billion could end up funding Hezbollah or other terrorist organizations.

Now the pressure on Iran is off. Subsidies can again flow. Inflation will now be tamed. All momentum for regime change is dissipated. And the cash bonanza could be higher. The
Foreign Policy
Review
estimates that the number is “north of $120 billion with an additional $20 billion per year in oil revenues, making the deal worth $420 billion over 15 years.”
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Not only is this torrent of cash being used to fund terrorism from Yemen to Lebanon to the West Bank to Iraq to Libya to Afghanistan to Pakistan, but it also keeps the Iranian regime afloat and in power.

By contrast, the United States has given Israel $148 billion in total military and economic aid in the 68 years since 1948, a sum dwarfed by the cash payout our worst global enemy has just received at the hands of President Obama.

Did Obama get the best deal he could? Donald Trump, for one, says absolutely not. He proclaimed that he would have doubled or tripled the sanctions when Iran proved obstinate at the bargaining table.

Now Obama—without a peep of protest from Hillary—is going even further in rewarding Iran with financial goodies beyond the scope of what was promised in the deal. The administration is telling foreign governments and banks that they can “start using the dollar in some instances to facilitate business with Iran.”
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The AP was told the new rules “would permit offshore financial institutions to access dollars for foreign currency trades in support of legitimate business with Iran, a practice that is currently illegal. Several restrictions would apply, but such a license would reverse a ban that has been in place for several years and one the administration had vowed to maintain while defending last year's nuclear deal to skeptical U.S. lawmakers and the public.”
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The more voters understand what a sweet deal Obama has given the Iranians, the angrier they will get. Hillary cannot avoid being caught in the crossfire. Her endorsement of the deal is clear and unequivocal. She will try to cloak her backing for its terms in anti-Iranian rhetoric. She has even vowed to go to war with Iran if they violate the deal. But Iran does not have to violate anything. Keeping to the terms of the deal will allow Iran to get the money to do anything it wants.

Nor does the treaty require that Iran give up its goal of developing nuclear weapons. The deal is only for 15 years. By 2030, all bets are off and Iran can go nuclear without fear of consequence. As Blaise Misztal, head of the national security program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, put it, “This isn't a deal that prevents a nuclear Iran. It's a deal that prevents a nuclear Iran for 15 years.”
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“All Iran has to do is take the patience pathway to a nuclear weapon,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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Even within the 15-year window while the deal is in effect, there is little in it to constrain Iranian nuclear ambitions. As Iran's atomic-energy chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said, “The only thing that Iran gave Obama was a promise not to do things we were not doing anyway, or did not wish to do or could not even do at present.”
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The deal permits Iran to continue enriching uranium and producing plutonium, although at lower grades. Iran would keep about one-third of its 19,000 centrifuges capable of separating explosive U-235 from uranium ore. For 15 years, Iran promises to refine uranium to no more than 5% enrichment—the level needed for nuclear power plants—and agrees to limit its enriched-uranium stockpile to 300 kilograms—3% of its stores before the deal. But will Iran keep the deal?

Originally, Hillary and Obama promised that any deal with Iran would provide for inspections “anywhere, anytime.” But the deal has fallen far, far short of this pledge. To begin with, Iran may have nuclear enrichment facilities we don't know about. Iran only acknowledged its two main enrichment plants after they were exposed by foreign sources.

Inspections of its admitted enrichment facilities will be handled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The United States can only pressure the IAEA should we find that the inspections are inadequate. IAEA is an independent agency. Far from the “anywhere, anytime” standard for inspections that Obama, Hillary, and John Kerry promised before the deal was struck, it provides for, in effect, a 24-day notice period before an inspection could take place.

The IAEA would begin the inspection process, under the deal, by making a request for access to a nuclear site. Iran would have 14 days to grant access to inspectors. If it refused, an international panel of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, the European Union, and Iran would have another week to decide if access should be granted (a five-vote majority would be needed—presumably a coalition of the Western allies would suffice). If Iran agreed to let the inspections happen, they could still delay for three more days before providing access. A total delay of 24 days! More than enough time to hide what they are doing. And if they refused access, all we could do is refer the matter to the UN Security Council.

Good grief. Obama and Hillary claim that if Iran balked, economic sanctions would “snap back”
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into place. But the idea that sanctions, once lifted, could “snap back” is delusional. After sanctions are lifted, countries and companies will resume their commercial relations with Iran—and many have started to do so. Reimposing sanctions would be a herculean task and, now that Iran has had a cash infusion and time to recover from the original sanctions, would take years to be effective.

By contrast, experts all agree that if Iran wanted to do so, it could probably have a bomb within a year, even if it had first dismantled its facilities as required by the deal. In other words, it could get the bomb before the sanctions were reimposed or became really effective. And once Iran gets the bomb, nobody will be able to control it.

Unbelievably, one of Iran's nuclear facilities—the Parchin military base, about 12 miles from Teheran—won't even be inspected by the IAEA, but will be “self-inspected” by Iran. According to leaked information, the still-secret deal between the IAEA and Iran would allow Iranian officials to take their own environmental samples at Parchin and turn them over to inspectors, in effect, allowing Iran to self-inspect the site. And even at the sites where the IAEA can inspect, could Iran cover up any violations of the agreement within the 24-day window the deal provides?

Olli Heinonen, a former director of the IAEA, said that Iran couldn't clean up its act in 24 days. But, he said, “the more likely risk is that the Iranians would pursue smaller-scale but still important nuclear work, such as manufacturing uranium components for a nuclear weapon. A 24-day adjudicated timeline reduces detection probabilities exactly where the system is weakest: detecting undeclared facilities and materials.”
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David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former weapons inspector in Iraq warns, however, that three weeks might be ample time for the Iranians to dispose of any evidence of prohibited nuclear work. Among the possibilities, he said, were experiments with high explosives that could be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, or the construction of a small plant to make centrifuges. “If it is on a small scale, they may be able to clear it out in 24 days,” Mr. Albright said. “They are practiced at cheating. You can't count on them to make a mistake.”
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In the campaign, we must make Hillary defend this absurd deal, forcing her on the defensive. By making her defend Iran or express any degree of confidence in Teheran, we can show how badly she has been conned by the Ayatollah. Bear in mind that the Iranian deal will have been in force for a year by the time the election is held. Evidence of Iranian cheating and of the IAEA's and the administration's inability to hold them to their word is already becoming obvious to all and by Election Day it will be even more obvious. . . . to all but Hillary and Obama.

Not only will there be abundant evidence of the deal's flaws, but there will likely be even more Iranian activity in promoting terrorism around the globe. The hundreds of billions of dollars that the deal has released to Iran will fund terror attacks in half a dozen countries. Its shortcomings will be on display for all to see.