The agreement over Iran’s nuclear program is “a deal with the devil” that should be rejected by Congress, Rabbi Richard Block, immediate past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, said in an op-ed today in The Hill.
Under prior legislation, most sanctions on Iran were to sunset only when the president certified to Congress that Iran no longer provides support for acts of international terrorism and has “ceased the pursuit, acquisition, and development of, and verifiably dismantled, its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and ballistic missiles and ballistic missile launch technology.”
The deal accomplishes none of these goals. Rather, Iran receives as much as $150 billion in frozen assets, will reap immense profits from post-sanctions commerce, and can spend as much as it will to promote terrorism. Much of its nuclear infrastructure remains intact and it can continue R&D in weaponization. It may acquire ICBM’s in eight years and will eventually be free to enrich without limitation, enabling it to become a nuclear weapons threshold state and reducing the “breakout time” between enrichment and nuclear weapons to zero.
Administration officials initially promised a deal would include “anytime, anywhere” inspections. This one does no such thing. Instead, a cumbersome, convoluted process to address Iranian violations provides ample time to conceal most kinds of evidence. Iran’s leaders have declared repeatedly that inspection of “military facilities” will not be allowed, and secret side deals between Iran and the IAEA may compound the inspection plan’s flaws.
Block disputed the charge that the alternative to the deal is war, writing that “if Congress turns down the deal and overrides a veto, U.S. sanctions, the ones that matter most to Iran, remain in place.”
Others have also pointed out that war is not the only possibility should the deal get disapproved. Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued earlier this week that if Congress rejects the deal, European businesses would be “unlikely to value the Iranian market more than the U.S. market, and much of the existing sanctions regime would stay in place.” Orde Kittrie, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote today that Congressional rejection of the deal has significant historical precedent and would help force a renegotiation of the deal.
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