Secretary of State Kerry and Energy Secretary did a full court press in support of the P5+1 Iran deal on each of the major Sunday News programs. They didn’t seem to have much confidence in the negotiated agreement though as they misstated the truth about the contents of the deal on each stop of their propaganda tour.
There were three main areas that the team of Kerry and Moniz tried to address:
1) Will the deal keep Iran away from a nuclear weapon for the term of the agreement, the anytime anywhere verification fib.
One of the major concessions of the United States was giving up on the requirement of anytime/anywhere inspections. When the President announced the framework deal on April 2nd he promised that there would be anytime anywhere inspections. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told Jake Tapper of CNN last April “first of all, under this deal, you will have anywhere/anytime 24/7 access.” He said the same thing to Israel Channel 10. Moniz himself told Bloomberg “we expect to have anywhere, anytime access.”
Despite the evidence Kerry claimed that no said there would be anytime/anywhere inspections and that no nation has ever agreed to that kind of inspections routine.
Typical of this subterfuge was Kerry’s statement on Fox News Sunday:
The fact is that in arms control there is no country anywhere on this planet that has anywhere, anytime. There is no such standard within arms control inspections… we never, ever had a discussion about anywhere, anytime. It’s called managed access. It’s under the IAEA. Everybody understands it
Like clockwork after Kerry lied about never even hearing about anytime/anywhere inspections, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, would explain they aren’t really needed anyway because even with the 24 day delay for inspections worked in to the deal, inspectors would be able to find Iranian violations, for example on ABC This Week Moniz said:
There have been various analogies to throwing things down toilets, et cetera. This is not so simple with nuclear materials. We have plenty of evidence of exquisite environmental sampling that will reveal the traces of nuclear work.
It’s true that inspectors question would be able to find past nuclear activities, however if the Iranians have a month to scrub down a facility, the IAEA couldn’t determine the nature of that activity. Therefore once the case was taken up by the violations committee, there would be enough doubt that few if any countries would be willing to kill the deal by reimposing sanctions.
Secondly if the violations were not nuclear in nature, such as researching and building advanced centrifuges or missile engines, 24-days is more than ample time to clear a site without leaving a trace. While they claim “environmental sampling will cure all ills, that simply isn’t true.
2) What will be the costs of empowering Iran with advanced weapons and hundreds of billions of dollars (via relaxation of sanctions including the arms and missile embargoes)?
The dynamic duo of deceit had a few different subterfuges on this point. At one point they claimed it was a victory because they delayed the lifting of the arms embargo by five years and the missile embargo by eight years. As Kerry said on Fox News Sunday
This is a nuclear negotiation about a nuclear program. The United Nations, when they passed the resolution, contemplated that if Iran came to the negotiation and they ponied up, all the sanctions would be lifted. We didn’t lift all the sanctions. We left in place despite the fact that three out of seven countries negotiating wanted to do away with them altogether. We won the five years for the arms and eight years for the missiles.
Actually if Kerry had checked his facts he would have realized the requirement for lifting the arms embargo was not that Iran “come to negotiations.” United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 1929 stipulated that the embargo was to remain in place until Iran had complied with UNSCR 1929 plus past UNSCRs 1696, 1737, 1747, and 1803. Thus the UNSCRs obligated Iran to stop all uranium enrichment, cease all heavy water plutonium work, and halt all development of proliferation sensitive ballistic missiles before the embargo was lifted. They. So the arms embargo was to remain in place until Iran dismantled its nuclear program, not just because it agreed to negotiate.
The lifting of the arms and missile embargoes was a last minute demand by the Iran side, if the U.S. was going to give in on that point they should have elicited another concession from Tehran, like the release of the four Americans they are holding.
Kerry also claimed that even with the lifting of the embargoes Iran would not be able to arm the terrorist groups. On Face The Nation he said:
[T]hey add on to additional mechanisms that we have to hold them accountable on arms and missiles. We have the missile control technology regime. We have other missile restraints on them. We also have other UN resolutions that prevent them from moving arms to the Houthi, prevents them from moving arms to the Shia, prevents them from – to the Shia militia in Iraq, prevents them from moving arms to Hezbollah.
Back in January former Israeli National Security Adviser, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror outlined the threats to the Jewish State from non-state entities in a report released by the Begin Center for Strategic Studies (BESA). The most serious existential threat to the Jewish State by non-state entities is the terrorist group Hezbollah, with 150,000 missiles, which according to the General is a “rare and substantial firepower apparently even exceeded the firepower possessed by most of the European states combined.”
If Iran was able to arm the Hezbollah terrorists with 150,000 missiles in the nine years since their 2006 war with Israel, while under an arms embargo just imagine what they will be able to do for Hezbollah and their other terrorist clients once the embargo is lifted.
Then there is the $150 billion dollars of frozen Iranian money, which will be unfrozen (note Kerry insists its “only” $100 billion).
That cash windfall will occur within months of the deal being implemented, but on top of that the sanctions regime will be shredded; the Iran economy (including oil sales) will be back in business, and the rogue regime will reap hundreds of billions of dollars. Businesses from all over the world are frothing at their mouths, eager to do business in Iran.
And here’s fun part of the agreement not discussed by Kerry, should there be a violation leading to a “snapback” of the sanctions, the companies that will have set up shop in the rogue regime will be able to keep operating there. Making the promised snap-backs more of a joke than anything else. Actually the “joke’ is on the American people and it is not very funny.
Bonus) Blame Booooosh
For those who enjoy the traditional Obama Administration approach Kerry even took the time to blame George W. Bush for Iran’s nuclear buildup. This conversation took place on CNN’s State of The Union, hosted by Jake Tapper:
Tapper: I’ve spoken to a lot of experts, ones who wanted this deal to be good, who were rooting for you. And they say the best case scenario is that over the next 15 years… the Iranians will be closer to the capacity to build a nuclear weapon… and they’ll have done it all under the guise of international law.
Kerry: … Guess what, my friend: Iran had 12,000 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, and that’s enough if they enriched it further for 10 to 12 bombs. They had it. That’s what Barack Obama was dealt as a hand when he came in: 19,000 centrifuges already spinning; a country that had already mastered the fuel cycle; a country that already was threshold in the sense that they are only two months away from breakout.
More Kerry lies. The Iranians didn’t have 12,000 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) when Obama took office they had 0 kg of HEU. Kerry might have been thinking of the 12,000 kg of low enriched uranium (LEU) they had by 2014, but that doesn’t work either because the Iranians stockpiled most of that under Obama: as of February 2009 they only had 1,010 kg of LEU. They also didn’t have “19,000 centrifuges already spinning” they had 3,936 centrifuges spinning. And they were not 2 months away from breakout but instead were just getting around to stockpiling enough uranium for a single bomb. Besides that everything Kerry said to Tapper above was true (my friend).
3) When the deal expires doesn’t it leave Iran as a nuclear power because it will allow Iran’s breakout time to go to zero?
Moniz and Kerry double-teamed on this one as they insisted to Chris Wallace during Fox News Sunday the breakout time would never be zero, again contradicting what the president said in April;
Moniz: The breakout time, in fact, will not be going to zero at that time.
Wallace: So the President was —
Moniz: The – I’m just telling you we have the agreement has – the final agreement has the one-year breakout time securely for 10 years and then there will be a soft landing after that for several years.
Wallace: Right. So by year 13, 14 it’s —
Kerry: It never, ever goes to zero. Ever.
Moniz: No, it will never go to zero.
Kerry is making is his claim based on the fact that Iran is forever prohibited by the Treaty on Nuclear Proliferation, (NPT) from building a nuclear weapon. But when one realizes that Iran is already a member of the NPT regardless of the JCPOA and was moving toward a weapon that argument is nonsense.
Initially Moniz seemed to be saying that Iran won’t get to zero breakout until after year 15 (in is second answer above he says “a soft landing after that for several years”) but then both he and Kerry went further and said the breakout time will never shrink to zero.
Perhaps they mean that Iran will never be able to break out in a day or two, which despite its ridiculousness, would be would be the equivalent of zero. Otherwise it’s very difficult to imagine what they could mean. After all the agreement’s restrictions on centrifuge R&D sunset at year 8. The restrictions on uranium stockpiling and enrichment sunset at year 15. In a decade and a half the Iranians will have as many advanced centrifuges as they want enriching as much uranium as they want to whatever levels they want. That’s close enough to what the press means when they ask about a zero breakout capability.
The famous Judge Judy named one of her books, “Don’t Pee On My Leg And Tell Me It’s Raining.” The secretary of state and the energy secretary talked about a lot of rain on the Sunday news shows, but sadly instead of telling the truth they were peeing on the legs of the American people.
The video below is the Fox News Sunday version of the dynamic duo of deceit’s attempt to convince the American people the Iran agreement is good for America.
