Obama’s Iran nuclear deal is dead

The Iran nuclear agreement put in place by President Obama is dead. Or, at least, it ought to be. This month, President Trump will announce his decision regarding continued U.S. adherence to the deal negotiated in 2015 between Iran and the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, and the rest of European Union.

The terms of the deal were flawed from the beginning. The Western countries would lift the financial sanctions that had crippled the Iranian economy, and in exchange, Tehran would promise to give up its ambitions to obtain nuclear weapons. This is what is known in international relations as the “wimpy theory” of negotiation, after the fabled cartoon character’s consistent plea that “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Get the benefits up front, with a promise to pay later.

{mosads}But the devil is in the details. The inducements for good behavior from Iran were frontloaded in the deal, so Teheran received the bulk of its benefits up front, including the release of more than $100 billion in Iranian assets frozen in the West since the 1979 revolution. The deal never required Iran to allow international inspectors to visit suspected military sites where nuclear weapons research was believed to be conducted. Inexplicably, the agreement was sunset after 10 years, allowing Iran to do whatever it wanted after 2025 to pick up its weapons research and move forward toward development and deployment of nuclear weapons.

Worse, the deal entirely ignored Iran’s ballistic missile development, it support for international terrorism, and it meddling in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. In fact, the terms of the deal were so lopsided in Iran’s favor that Obama knew he would never be able to gain the consent of 67 senators. Consequently, he simply refused to submit it for ratification as a treaty and instead made it an “executive agreement.” Of course, there was a downside to that for supporters of the deal. Without ratification as a treaty, President Trump is relieved of the obligation to gain the consent of 67 senators to withdraw from the agreement. He can do it on his own, with the stroke of a pen.

That decision will be made easier by the revelation earlier this week, courtesy of Israeli intelligence, that Iran’s leaders have been lying for years about their intentions in the nuclear arena. In a Monday speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that his nation’s intelligence operatives had seized a major cache of more than 100,000 documents secretly hidden by the Iranian regime.

The documents, Netanyahu argued, prove that contrary to their repeated denials, Iran’s leaders have been seeking to design, build, and test nuclear weapons. The program, codenamed “Project Amad,” was shelved in 2003 following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the documents show that work in the field continued. Netanyahu said, “We can also prove that Iran is secretly storing Project Amad material to use at a time of its choice to develop nuclear weapons.”

He continued, Iran “lied about never having a secret nuclear program. Secondly, even after the deal, it continued to expand its nuclear program for future use. Thirdly, Iran lied by not coming clean to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The nuclear deal is based on lies based on Iranian deception.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who met with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on Sunday, said the documents are not forgeries. “We’ve known about this material for a while,” Pompeo said. “I can confirm to you that these documents are real. They’re authentic.”

In 2015, Trump rallied with the Tea Party Patriots on the west face of the Capitol grounds against the Iran deal and promised to end the Iran deal as a candidate. But he has been under pressure from European allies to continue certifying to Congress, as he must under the terms of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act signed by Obama, that Iran is “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the agreement, including all related technical or additional agreements,” and, among other things, that “suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the agreement” is “vital to the national security interests of the United States.”

What is “vital to the national security interests of the United States” is to take the steps necessary to prevent the mullahs in Tehran from ever obtaining nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles necessary to carry them to their targets. The Iran nuclear deal fails this simple test. The president should end the international charade and withdraw the United States from the deal, and then go about the business of ensuring that Iran’s radicals never achieve their desired nuclear capability.

Jenny Beth Martin is chairman of Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund.