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The Daily Signal
Memo to Obama:
It’s Not Iran Deal Critics Who Are the ‘Crazy’ Ones
Nile Gardiner
August 25, 2015
Just back from his annual summer vacation at Martha’s Vineyard,
President Barack Obama has returned to disparaging his political
adversaries and anyone who happens to disagree with him on policy.
According to a report in Politico, the president has taken to
describing opponents of the hugely controversial Iran deal as
“crazies.” The so-called “crazies” now include a majority of members of
the House and Senate, a large chunk of the American electorate
according to opinion polls, and the government of Israel, led by Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It is significant that several leading figures in the president’s own
party have declared their opposition to the Iran deal, including
Charles Schumer, the senior senator for New York, and Eliot Engel, the
ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee from New York.
Obama’s remarks, made at a conference hosted by Senate Minority Leader
Harry Reid, D-Nev., in Las Vegas on Monday, echoed his American
University speech on the Iran nuclear deal in early August, where he
compared critics of the deal to Islamist hardliners in Tehran who chant
“death to America.”
Obama isn’t interested in outlining a coherent case explaining why the
agreement with Iran advances America’s interests and national
security—because it clearly doesn’t.
Instead of maintaining the pressure on Iran to end its nuclear program,
after years of the United States and its allies painstakingly building
an international sanctions regime, the White House has opted for a
policy of surrender.
Resolve has been replaced with reckless appeasement—and a determination
to strike a deal at any cost with a tyrannical regime that views
America with hatred and contempt.
There is every reason why the deal negotiated between the E3/EU+3 Group
(the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the United
States, with the high representative of the European Union for foreign
affairs and security policy) and the Iranian regime has been strongly
opposed on Capitol Hill and is viewed with tremendous skepticism by the
American people as well as by key U.S. allies in the Middle East.
This is a disastrous agreement that leaves Iran’s nuclear
infrastructure largely intact, in effect leaving Iran in a position to
produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb within a year
if it chooses to renege on the agreement, which is highly likely. Under
the deal, Iran gets to maintain 6,000 operational centrifuges, with the
remainder of its 19,500 centrifuges kept in storage.
In addition, the agreement fails to place any restrictions on Iran’s
development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and its
overall conventional weapons capability, with Moscow waiting in the
wings to supply Iran’s military needs.
The proposed deal is a financial bonanza for the Iranian dictatorship,
the world’s biggest state sponsor of international terrorism, and the
strongest backer of terror groups dedicated to the destruction of
Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
Once the deal moves forward, Iran will gain an immediate $150-billion
windfall from the unfreezing of overseas accounts, as well as major
additional revenue from the lifting of economic sanctions, including
oil sanctions.
The deal places Israel, and U.S. allies in the Gulf States such as
Saudi Arabia, in an increasingly perilous position and will inevitably
lead to an arms race in the region, with the prospect of a war in the
Middle East now even more likely.
Obama’s unconvincing defense of his administration’s highly flawed Iran
deal looks increasingly desperate. His aggressive focus on attacking
opponents of the deal, both at home and abroad, further demonstrates
that he has lost the argument and feels compelled to resort to
name-calling and political vitriol.
Whatever the rhetoric coming from the White House, however, the fact
remains that the proposed agreement with Tehran is disastrous for U.S.
interests and will pave the way for a nuclear-armed Iran.
Critics of the Iran deal are anything but “crazy”—they are standing up
for the defense of the free world in the face of a grave threat.
Read this article and others at The Daily Signal
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