President Obama last week accused members of the Republican Caucus of “making common cause” with Iranian hard-liners. He stood by those remarks while appearing on this weekend’s Sunday shows. The president would rather bluster about Republicans acting hand-in-hand with those who chant “death to America” than acknowledge the dangerous facts about his nuclear agreement.
In truth, Americans and Israelis will be less safe at home and abroad if this deal is allowed to proceed. Likely future Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has pledged to vote against this deal, knows it. So do many of his colleagues in the Democratic Caucus. But most importantly, so does Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Like Prime Minister Netanyahu, I am not opposed to the idea of diplomacy. I’m opposed to the idea of surrender diplomacy.
The administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with the Islamic Republic of Iran may be the worst example of diplomacy in modern history. Over the course of the negotiations, we’ve watched the administration make concession after concession, casting aside red line after red line.
The JCPOA does not meet the framework that Congress has demanded or even what the administration had outlined to the American people throughout the process. It concedes far too much in an effort to secure a legacy-building deal. It grants hundreds of billions in permanent sanctions relief to the Iranians in exchange for temporary and limited reductions to — and inspections of — Iran’s nuclear stockpile.
Nothing in this deal effectively eliminates Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon. In reality, it puts Iran in a prime position to achieve that goal when the deal sunsets in 10 years — if not earlier. Not only is this a dangerous threat to Israel and the United States, but it will also accelerate nuclear proliferation and further exacerbate tensions in a region that can only be described in the most generous terms as “unstable.”
It gives the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism a stamp of legitimacy and the means to expand its destabilizing influence through massive amounts of sanctions relief even before Iran has demonstrated full adherence to the deal’s terms. It grants amnesty to Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, who is one of the world’s most leading terrorist masterminds and the man thought responsible for the death of at least 500 United States troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does not extend the same courtesy to the four Americans imprisoned on trumped up charges in Iran.
It lifts the conventional arms embargo on Iran in spite of public testimony from Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey that we should do so “under no circumstances.” Russia and China will now be able to legally profit off major weapons exports to Tehran.
Known verification and inspections provisions under this agreement already provide Iran with 24 days to grant access to inspectors, almost certainly enabling it to escape any detection of activity in violation of the JCPOA. But recent revelations uncovered by my Kansas colleague, Rep. Mike Pompeo, we now know that the deal also includes at least two secret side agreements regarding verification never submitted to Congress. These secret side deals govern the inspection of the notorious Parchin military complex, which is thought to be the testing facility for Iranian missiles and nuclear weapons.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Obama administration, these agreements have been negotiated in secret between the IAEA and Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry has even admitted he has not seen these agreements and the administration failed to submit these agreements as part of the deal.
President Obama said in his East Room speech announcing the agreement that the deal is “not built on trust, but verification.” These side deals call into question the entire negotiation process.
How can any member of Congress be expected to approve an agreement of this magnitude without knowing the true nature of the very verification process on which the president says it is built?
I cannot and will not.
Kansas Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder represents the 3rd Congressional District, which includes Johnson County.