I have written several pieces for NRO over the last year (here, here, and here) on why the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran are deeply flawed because they reflect the Obama administration’s tacit decision to accept an Iranian nuclear program in the belief that it can be managed. The Obama administration recently confirmed three huge concessions it has offered to Tehran in a nuclear agreement: that Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium with up to 6,500 uranium centrifuges; that a final deal would only apply for ten years; and, after good behavior, Iran would be permitted to accelerate uranium enrichment before the agreement expired.
Obama officials defend their approach to the nuclear talks because they claim a final deal will be subject to robust verification by IAEA inspectors. This argument is hard to take seriously since Iran has never fully cooperated with the IAEA and has specifically refused to cooperated with IAEA inspectors during the talks and cheated on the interim agreement which set up the talks.Moreover, yesterday’s revelations (if they are true) by the NCRI, an Iranian dissident group, that Iran has been operating a secret facility where it has been developing advanced uranium centrifuges and may be enriching uranium adds to the suspicion that Tehran cannot be trusted with any dual-use nuclear technology.
There are a lot of issues to sort out here, and Republican freshman Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, in a brilliant five minute video, has a superb summary of them. Senator Sasse speaks plainly, saying the Obama administration’s plan “is explicitly tolerating a renegade nuclear program” and calls the prospective nuclear deal “foolishly short-sighted and a horrible betrayal of our allies in the Middle East.”
The junior senator from Nebraska understands why the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran is dangerously misguided — his video is a must-watch.