The latest Quinnipiac poll shows that the
American public rejects the
president’s Iran deal by more than 2 to 1. This is astonishing. The public
generally gives the president deference on major treaties. Just a few weeks
ago, a majority supported the deal.
What happened?
People learned what’s in it.
And don’t be fooled by polls that present, as fact, the
administration’s position in the very question . The Post/ABC poll assures
the respondent that,
for example, “international inspectors would monitor Iran’s facilities, and if
Iran is caught breaking the agreement economic sanctions would be imposed
again. Do you support or oppose this agreement?”
Well, if you
put it that way, sure. But it is precisely because these claims are so
tendentious and misleading that public — and congressional — opinion is
turning.
Inspections? Everyone now knows that “anytime, anywhere”
— indispensable for a clandestine program in a country twice the size of Texas
with a long history of hiding and cheating — has been
changed to
“You’ve got 24 days and then we’re coming in for a surprise visit.” New York
restaurants, observed
Jackie Mason, get more intrusive inspections than the Iranian
nuclear program.
Snapback
sanctions? Everyone knows that once the international sanctions are lifted,
they are never coming back. Moreover, consider the illogic of President Obama’s
argument. The theme of his
American University speech Wednesday was that the only alternative to
what he brought back from Vienna is war because sanctions — even the more
severe sanctions that Congress has been demanding — will never deter the
Iranians. But if sanctions don’t work, how can you argue that the Iranians will
now be deterred from cheating by the threat of . . . sanctions?
Snapback sanctions, mind you, that will inevitably be weaker and more
loophole-ridden than the existing ones.
And then came
news of the secret
side agreements between
Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. These concern past nuclear
activity and inspections of the Parchin military facility where Iran is suspected of having tested
nuclear detonation devices.
We don’t know what’s in these side deals. And we will
never know, says the administration. It’s “standard practice,” you see, for
such IAEA agreements to remain secret.
Well, this
treaty is not standard practice. It’s the most important treaty of our time.
Yet, Congress is asked to ratify this “historic diplomatic breakthrough”
(Obama) while being denied access to the heart of the inspection regime.
Congress
doesn’t know what’s in these side agreements, but Iran does. And just this past Monday, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to
the supreme leader, declared that “entry into our military sites is absolutely
forbidden.”
One secret
side deal could even allow Iran to provide its own soil samples (!)
from Parchin. And now satellite imagery shows Iran bulldozing and sanitizing Parchin as we
speak. The verification regime has turned comic.
This
tragicomedy is now in the hands of Congress or, more accurately, of
congressional Democrats. It is only because so many Democrats are defecting
that Obama gave the AU speech in the first place. And why he tried so mightily
to turn the argument into a partisan issue — those warmongering Republicans
attacking a president offering peace in our time. Obama stooped low, accusing
the Republican caucus of making “common cause” with the Iranian “hard-liners”
who shout “Death to America.”
Forget the
gutter ad hominem. This is delusional. Does Obama really believe the
Death-to-America hard-liners are some kind of KKK fringe? They are the
government, for God’s sake — the entire state apparatus of the Islamic Republic
from the Revolutionary Guards to the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei who for
decades have propagated, encouraged and applauded those very same
“Death to America” chants.
Common cause
with the Iranian hard-liners? Who more than Obama? For years, they conduct a
rogue nuclear weapons program in defiance of multiple Security Council
declarations of its illegality backed by sanctions and embargoes. Obama rewards
them with a treaty that legitimates their entire nuclear program, lifts the
embargo on conventional weapons and ballistic missiles and revives an economy —
described by Iran’s president as headed back to “the Stone Age” under sanctions
— with an injection of up to $150 billion in unfrozen assets, permission for
the unlimited selling of oil and full access to the international financial
system.
With this agreement, this repressive, intolerant,
aggressive, supremely anti-American regime — the chief exporter of terror in the
world — is stronger and more entrenched than it has ever been.
Common cause,
indeed.
