OPINION:
The details of President Obama’s deal with Iran continue to leak, like muddy water from a bucket left to rust in the weeds. Several congressmen who lately called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna learned that there are secret “protocols” to the agreement Mr. Obama made with the mullahs of Tehran. Mr. Obama and the talking heads on television argue lamely that this is “always the way with such undertakings.”
What Secretary of State John Kerry returned to Washington with is an agreement that would enable Iran to get all the makings of a nuclear weapon and preserve a way to deliver such a weapon to targets even in North America. The United States is left to trust that Iran would never do such a thing. “Trust, but verify,” President Reagan once said of agreements with the old Soviet Union. Mr. Obama revises this to “trust and hope for the best.”
There’s a long history of the Tehran mullahs hiding nuclear secrets from the international community, especially when the IAEA has been led by the weak and the irresolute typical of agencies of the United Nations, unable or unwilling to deal with Tehran’s violations of non-proliferation agreements. In fact, the West’s first knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program was revealed not by the United Nations, but by the Iranian exiles in the West.
Spokesmen for the administration have contradicted earlier assurances that any agreement Iran makes would leave its nuclear facilities open to immediate inspection at any time. But now the public learns that the inspectors — none of whom under the agreement can be Americans — must ask for the opportunity to inspect a suspected site, not immediately but within 24 days, giving the Iranians ample time to destroy incriminating evidence.
Worst of all, so many provisions of the deal are predicated on what happens a decade or more in the future, when Mr. Obama and his negotiators can no longer be held to account. The graveyard protects many rogues and rascals. Who could reasonably predict what will happen in the Middle East a week from now, or a month, or years, or more?
Releasing the mullahs from the economic sanctions Washington and its allies laboriously put together will release a flood of trade, capital and technology to flow to Tehran. The situation will be completely transformed within a matter of months. “Snap-back” restoration of sanctions will be impossible, even if there is a will to attempt to restore them. Counting on anything to “snap back” is a fantasy of fools.
Mr. Obama’s reliance on the U.N. is nonsensical. Going there for an endorsement of his deal before he enables Congress to examine the deal, with or without the newly discovered secret protocols, was an insult to Americans and their representatives. The U.N. imprimatur on the deal in no way strengthens it. Why would anyone expect the U.N. Security Council, given the Russian and Chinese veto, do what the Constitution charges Congress to do?
Mr. Obama deliberately makes the United Nations a party to the deal he made with the mullahs. Subject to domestic political calculations, particularly among Democrats, Congress must now decide whether to confront the U.N. The president, whether through ignorance or calculation, led the way into this disaster, and now it is the responsibility of the Congress he so clearly disdains to retrieve the chances for peace and stability in the Middle East, and beyond.
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