The Patriot Post® · America's Disunity Benefits Iran
On Monday, the world’s number one terror-sponsoring nation decided to engage in a bit of international blackmail. “Iran warned European nations on Monday that it would breach in 10 days the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement unless they take action to alleviate the pressure of tightening U.S. sanctions in the coming weeks,” Bloomberg News reported.
A landmark nuclear agreement? More like one built on a pack of lies, unconstitutional machinations, and abject surrender to extortion, all promoted by the Obama administration and its media sycophants as a “breakthrough” that was nothing of the kind.
Right from the beginning, the former president lied about the timeline, insisting negotiations only began when “moderate” Hassan Rouhani became the Iranian president in 2013. In fact they began a year earlier — and Barack Obama essentially gave the mullahs everything they demanded. The ongoing charade was orchestrated by White House National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, who proudly admitted that he was quite adept at creating a media “echo chamber” supporting the deal. Willing dupes like The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and Al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen, who Rhodes insisted “helped retail the administration’s narrative.”
After that? “Republican leadership colluded with the White House and congressional Democrats to enact … the Corker-Cardin Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act that guaranteed Obama would be authorized to lift sanctions against Iran,” columnist Andrew McCarthy explained in 2015.
That law, enabled by former GOP Senator Bob Corker, allowed Obama to sidestep the constitutional requirement necessitating a two-thirds vote of approval by the Senate for any treaty. Corker’s machinations flipped this requirement on its head, allowing Obama to prevail unless two-thirds of the Senate opposed the deal he refused to call a treaty. Hence, only 42 senators gave Democrats the power to filibuster any subsequent vote, and Obama prevailed.
It gets worse. Despite Obama’s insistence the deal would be based on “unprecedented verification,” he never told Congress about two secret side agreements negotiated exclusively between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — that no Americans were ever going to see.
America then learned the administration secretly sent a plane loaded with $400 million in cash to Tehran. After that, the administration admitted it furnished Iran with an additional $1.3 billion just days later. It also granted Iran access to U.S. financial institutions, despite telling Congress it never would.
The cash was purported to be a goodwill gesture that precipitated a prisoner swap. But as a bombshell 2017 report by Politico reveals, Obama’s insistence that he was making a “one-time gesture” of releasing Iranian-born prisoners who “were not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses” was also a complete lie. “Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration,” explained Politico columnist Josh Meyer. “Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware.”
On top of that, Obama’s Justice Department released 14 other men described as fugitives. One of them was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who Meyer adds had been charged with “being part of a conspiracy that from 2005 to 2012 procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran via China. That included hundreds of U.S.-made sensors for the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran whose progress had prompted the nuclear deal talks in the first place.”
And while it was all unfolding, Obama officials were characterizing anyone who didn’t buy in to this disaster — including Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer — as a war-monger. Obama himself insisted “Iranian hardliners” also opposed to the deal are “making common cause with the Republican caucus” during a speech on Aug. 5, 2015.
So who’s prevailing now? Are we supposed to believe “moderate” Iranians are threatening to increase uranium enrichment if a new deal isn’t in place by July 7? Is it moderate Iranians stoking war in Yemen, or financing the efforts of Hezbollah and Hamas to eliminate Israel? Is it moderate Iranians like Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of the general staff of Iran’s armed forces, who warned the world that if Iran decides to block the Strait of Hormuz, they will to do it “in a way that even a drop of oil won’t pass the strait?”
Is it “moderate” Iran that attacked oil tankers last week? Or that shot down an American drone just yesterday?
Does anyone still remember that, despite this so-called deal, Obama himself admitted that it won’t prevent Iran from ultimately obtaining nukes, while his equally feckless Secretary of State John Kerry admitted some of the money they gave the regime will be used to fund terror?
How about the reality that restrictions on the ballistics missiles Iran continues to test — aided by North Korea — were never part of the so-called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or that Iran’s “military facilities” are off limits to inspectors?
In May 2018, Trump kept his campaign promise and withdrew from the agreement. “This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” Trump said. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”
Unsurprisingly, the Democrat/Media Complex has taken Iran’s side. “The Iranian regime is authoritarian, ideological and repressive, a serial human rights abuser and regional troublemaker,” USA Today columnist Aaron David Miller asserts. “But we now find ourselves in a dangerous situation largely as a result of a great unraveling begun by the Trump administration’s unilateral decision last year to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.”
Utter nonsense. America has been in a “dangerous situation” with Iran since 1979, and all Obama did was postpone its development of nuclear weapons until he was safely out of office. And while Americans are rightly loath to involve the nation in further “foreign entanglements,” it is utterly naive to believe the choice is wholly ours to make.
Iran remains a nation in which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei routinely leads demonstrations where cheers of “death to America” remain a staple; that killed 600 U.S. service members in Iraq; and directed a terrorist plot aimed at assassinating Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States Adel Al-Jubeir with a bomb, and precipitating additional bombings of the Saudi and Israeli embassies — in Washington, DC.
As for Iran being a “regional troublemaker,” senior U.S. officials claim Tehran is willing to carry out proxy terror attacks in the United States using domestically based Hezbollah operatives to do so. Hezbollah has been a designated terrorist organization since 1997.
Would a nuclear Iran give Hezbollah a nuke to detonate in America? After our nation’s vulnerability was exposed on 9/11, one would think that question would be the essential part of any conversation regarding Iran. That it is not is indicative of the poisonous political atmosphere that currently exists, whereby anything Trump is for — including national security — Democrats and their media allies are reflexively against.
That orchestrated disunity — above all else — accrues to the advantage of not only Iran but all of America’s enemies. Until that contemptible reality changes, Iran won’t be the only nation seeking to exploit our foremost vulnerability.
Vulnerability that invites conflict.
Update 6/21/19: Trump announced this morning, “On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”