“This is probably the biggest thing that President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal last fall. “This is healthcare for us, just to put it in context.”
As Congress finally votes on Obama’s atomic vanity project, Rhodes has proved absolutely right. Much like Obamacare, ObamaNuke is a high-priority, highly convoluted, highly opaque mess that is being ramrodded through Congress by dodgy means, even as the American people overwhelmingly reject what is being barge poled down their throats.
Obamacare makes childless singles purchase pediatric vision and dental care, whether they want it or not. ObamaNuke contains equally baffling provisions.
Iran possesses sufficient oil and gas to last into the 22nd century, and rampant sunshine to fuel solar panels from Abadan to Zabol. Nonetheless, Obama’s “deal” lets the ayatollahs continue enriching uranium. Do they need it for peaceful atomic energy or for anti-Israeli and anti-American atomic bombs? Why does Obama allow Iran to keep even one uranium-enriching centrifuge?
If they truly are peaceful, why have the ayatollahs declared military sites totally off limits to international inspectors? Where inspectors are allowed, Americans are forbidden. Iran gets to approve all inspectors. Tehran also may obstruct inspectors for 24 to 78 days before letting them enter suspicious locations. One can hide plenty in three to eleven weeks.
Obama lets Iran self-inspect the Parchin facility, that country’s Los Alamos Laboratory. Iran will inform the International Atomic Energy Agency if it finds anything unusual. In this spirit, Obama should let sausage makers inspect their own factories and ring the FDA if they spot anything inappropriate.
Meanwhile, Iranian Atomic Energy Organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told parliamentarians in Tehran last month that IAEA chief Yukiya Amano refused to tell the U.S. Congress about the ayatollahs’ secret side deals with the IAEA.
“Had he done so,” Kamalvandi said of Amano, “he himself would have been harmed.”
Obama and most Democrats still applaud this agreement, despite Iran’s open, public threats against its umpires.
ObamaNuke includes a militant-Islamic bailout wherein the ayatollahs immediately would score some $150 billion in unfrozen assets that they could deliver to Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi, and other anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Western terrorists. Obama breezily admitted last month that “some of that money will flow to activities that we object to.”
These funds are not disbursed periodically. If Iran eventually is caught cheating on this “deal,” that cash cannot be re-frozen.
ObamaNuke also lifts sanctions against leaders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard including General Qasem Soleimani, considered responsible for killing some 500 American GIs in Iraq.
Obama had the good taste to wait until ObamaCare became law before breaking its provisions (e.g. delaying by fiat statutory insurance-mandate deadlines). Ever the serial criminal, Obama violated ObamaNuke even before it was passed.
The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (42 U.S. Code §2160e) requires that Obama deliver to Congress within five days of the deal’s presentation all related side agreements. This federal law passed the Senate 98 to 1 and the House 415 to 0. Obama signed it on May 22.
Nonetheless, when Obama failed to provide Congress this information by July 20, he broke this law.
The Washington Free Beacon caught Ben Rhodes on tape telling liberal activists last fall that the White House was contemplating, “How do we structure a deal so that we don’t necessarily require legislative action.”
This parallels the Christmas Eve Senate votes, reconciliation measures, “deemed passed” House language, and other parliamentary prestidigitation that Democrats used to shove ObamaCare into law.
Thus, ObamaNuke’s abandonment of the Constitution’s two-thirds Senate treaty vote, the substitute motion of disapproval, 34 Democrats needed to sustain Obama’s expected veto of that motion, etc.
Just as paltry public support for Obamacare did not deter its architects, ObamaNuke’s authors couldn’t care less that the people hate this “deal.” A humiliating 21 percent of Americans support ObamaNuke, Pew Research reported Wednesday. In contrast, 49 percent oppose it, and 30 percent don’t know what to think. As only one out of five Americans cheers him on, Obama plows ahead with his diplomatic disaster.
Led by Kansan Mike Pompeo and New Yorker Lee Zeldin, House Republicans wisely have scrapped plans to pass a motion of disapproval, which Obama would veto, and Democrats then would defend against an override. Instead, Republicans will weigh a motion to approve ObamaNuke. Mercifully, it will fail.
Senate Republicans should follow the House’s lead. If Obama cannot win 51 Senate votes for his precious “deal,” he either will abandon this charade or inflict it by decree. If he does the latter, it will make his dictatorial act du jour that much easier to capsize in court or — as Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) roared at a Capitol Hill rally on Wednesday — the next president can “shred it to pieces.”