Iranian Nukes: President Obama's deal with Iran was supposed to keep that nation's mullahs from creating a nuclear weapon with which it could intimidate and dominate the Mideast and much of Europe. Instead, it actually makes it more possible -- and in shorter time.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of a secret side deal that, in the words of the normally circumspect AP, advances "Tehran's ability to build a bomb even before the end of the pact." The accord as agreed to by the U.S. and five other nations was supposed to last 15 years. Or so we were told. Turns out, that's not the case.
This is the latest of the shocking lies to emerge from our White House about the Iran deal. After concluding the deal last July, President Obama basically told Congress to shut up on their criticism of the deal and suggested they were lying.
"I challenge those who are objecting to this agreement ... to explain specifically where it is that they think this agreement does not prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and why they're right and people like (Energy Secretary) Ernie Moniz, who is an MIT nuclear physicist and an expert in these issues, is wrong," said Obama a year ago after signing the deal. He subsequently referred to those who dared to oppose the deal as "crazies."
That's statesmanship for you.
In point of fact, however, the deal as signed all but guarantees that Iran will someday get a nuclear weapon with which to terrorize its neighbors. What the AP document does is move up the time under which Iran can make a nuclear weapon. So we'll all be at risk sooner than we think.
The so-called "add-on" agreement lets Iran expand its uranium enrichment program after 10 years -- not 15 years, as the public parts of the deal suggested. So starting in January of 2027, 11 years after the deal went into effect, Iran will be able to replace its old, out-of-date uranium-enriching centrifuges with newer, far more advanced ones.
Currently, Iran is limited to 5,060 of the older type of centrifuges. In 11 years, it will replace those with 2,500 to 3,500 newer ones. That's not really a reduction -- they will produce highly enriched uranium, the kind used in a nuclear reaction, at roughly twice the current rate, says the AP.
Oh, by the way, Obama brought Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz's name into this, so let's just say this: Moniz told AP this week that Iran can put any number of advanced centrifuges in place after 13 years. "That will give Iran a huge potential boost in enrichment capacity, including bomb-making should it choose to do so," said the AP. Please remember that the next time Obama uses someone's credentials, as he did with Moniz last year, to bolster a false claim.
As we've been writing for years in editorials too numerous to mention, President Obama has signed off on an Iranian nuke. He either doesn't care what the result of his poor diplomacy was, or actually wants to see a radicalized Iran -- a nation that our own government agrees supports terrorism -- dictate events in the Mideast, to the detriment of the U.S. and the rest of the West.
Iran has been developing and testing ever-larger and ever-more sophisticated ballistic missiles for years now. Just last week, before taking off for its summer break, Congress voted to impose sanctions on Tehran for its ballistic missile program, which has no other use than to throw a nuclear weapon at an unsuspecting enemy.
This has been the problem all along -- the White House held secretive talks with promises that Iran will never get a bomb, only for the rest of us to discover that far from keeping Iran from getting a nuke to terrorize the world with, the so-called "deal" with Iran actually speeds it up. Just one more foreign policy reason why this administration can't end too soon.
