Today:
• Khamenei tweeted video calling for Israel's destruction
• UN voted to lift sanctions on Iran
Says it all. https://youtu.be/cMJinyFFmsw
Just to bring you up to date in the ongoing efforts of the Obama administration to provide Iran with $150 billion and the ability to make a nuclear weapon. These are developments over the weekend:
Secretary of State John Kerry deflected bipartisan criticism of the Obama administration’s move to take the Iran nuclear deal to the United Nations before the U.S. Congress has the opportunity to vote on it, saying the U.N. has a right to go first and to suggest otherwise was “presumptuous.”Obama had previously signed legislation that would give Congress 60 days to review and vote on the deal struck over Iran’s nuclear program. But since agreeing on the deal with the other world powers, the administration has announced its intention to bring the deal to the United Nations first.Thus, by the time Congress votes, the administration will argue that were the body to reject the deal, they’d be blowing up a U.N.-approved agreement.
What this means is that by the time Congress gets around to voting on the deal, international sanctions on Iran will have been lifted. The only remaining sanctions are those which Obama has the authority to modify. While there remains the theoretical possibility of ‘snap back’ sanctions if Iran breaches the agreement (this, by the way, is virtually certain as they are already in violation of the interim agreement), for this to happen would require an affirmative vote of the UN Security Council. Russia and China are Iran’s allies. Both have veto authority.
One is left to wonder what in the hell Congress is voting on.
It is Bush’s fault.
CNN State of the UnionQUESTION: 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.Fox News SundayQUESTION: Secretary Moniz… why didn’t [President Obama] keep his pledge to the American people that we would end Iran’s program?
MONIZ: Well, first of all, the issue of Iran having a nuclear program was already established in the previous administration.
My gosh, when will this excuse ever wear out.
When he took office the Iranians had less than 4,000 centrifuges spinning and experts were still arguing over whether they had enough uranium for a bomb. He almost immediately began to reach out to the Iranians with confidence-building measures. 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 [e].
In short, every thing Kerry and Moniz said was a lie and they knew it was a lie.
The administration is lying about Iran’s break out time.
Fox News Sunday
QUESTION: But the President said in April:
OBAMA: In year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges, they can enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.
QUESTION: That’s not ending the program.
MONIZ: The breakout time, in fact, will not be going to zero at that time.
QUESTION: 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.
QUESTION: Right. So by year 13, 14 it’s –
KERRY: It never, ever goes to zero. Ever.
MONIZ: No, it will never go to zero.
This is balderdash translated into gibberish then blown out of Kerry’s ass. Back in April, the administration said the break out time was two months. Now it is a year. Logic tells you that this can’t be true. Assuming that break out time is a year, it means that Iran will have a nuke within a year because there is no mechanism available to monitor their progress or curb their development.
Anytime-anywhere inspections are dead.
Iran has already said that it will not allow inspections of military nuclear facilities and it will not allow US inspectors on the IAEA teams. Without unannounced inspections we are back to playing a shell game. Kerry is trying to gaslight everyone by claiming there is no such thing as ‘anytime-anywhere’ inspections because that isn’t an official term.
CBS Face the NationKERRY: There’s no such thing in arms control as anytime, anywhere. There isn’t any nation in the world – none – that has an anytime, anywhere.Fox News SundayKERRY: 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.
This is actually a lie. Everyone knows what the term means and the administration has guaranteed Congress that it will have that access.
The arms embargo is dead.
ABC This Week
KERRY: The United Nations resolution which brought about the sanctions in the first place said that if Iran will suspend its enrichment and come to negotiations, all the sanctions would be lifted. Now, they’ve done more than just come to negotiations. They’ve actually negotiated a deal. And three of the seven nations thought they shouldn’t therefore be held to any kind of restraint. We prevailed and insisted, no, they have to be.CBS Face the Nation
KERRY: … [T]he reason that we were only able to limit them to the five and eight, which is quite extraordinary that we got that, was that three of the nations negotiating thought they shouldn’t have any and were ready to hold out to do that. And we said under no circumstances, we have to have those…Fox News Sunday
KERRY: 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.
A majority of the negotiators wanted to retain an arms embargo. He refers to seven countries but keep in mind one of those is Iran. The US caved on this. If the US had stood with Britain and France and Germany it would have put Iran in the position of sacrificing everything for the sake of ending the arms embargo.
Summary.
John Kerry is a liar. He’s not a particularly skilled one… I don’t know whether this is good or bad, I rather think it is bad because he practices the skill regularly but never improves. The US position on the Iran negotiations is on our hands and knees squealing like a pig.