If there’s one thing the Obama administration excels at – it’s brokering deals with America’s enemies that benefit them to our detriment. This is the one area in which the Regime can actually claim to have been successful.
Take Obama’s “historic” nuke deal with Iran. What a triumph, huh? Let’s see if I’ve got this straight: Iran is not legally bound to do a damn thing because the deal “is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document.”
The “deal” creates a path to nuclear weapons for Iran, while rewarding the Islamic Republic with at least $150 billion dollars in sanctions relief – cash that Iran can use to rebuild its military and fund terrorism in the short-term. Cool beans. (For them.)
Not sure what we get out of the deal, but an Obama official told congress last year that its success “will depend not on whether it is legally binding or signed, but rather on the extensive verification measures” and our “capacity to reimpose and ramp up our sanctions if Iran does not meet its commitments.”
And what do those extensive verification measures look like? Other than the counterproductive condition that Iran gets to be notified 24 days in advance of an inspection…?
Well, the Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday that the deal actually limits inspectors from publicly reporting on potential violations by Iran.
Yukiya Amano, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, which is responsible for ensuring Iran complies with the agreement, told reporters that his agency is no longer permitted to release details about Iran’s nuclear program and compliance with the deal.
Amano’s remarks come on the heels of a February IAEA oversight report that omitted many details and figures related to Iran’s nuclear program. The report sparked questions from outside nuclear experts and accusations from critics that the IAEA was not being transparent with its findings.
Which is amazing because I think we were promised that this whole thing was going to be ultra-transparent, like everything else the Obama Regime does.
Obama sold transparency and compliance oversight as the two big wins for US and UN from the deal in his July 14th speech:
Today, because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region. Because of this deal, the international community will be able to verify that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon.
This deal meets every single one of the bottom lines that we established when we achieved a framework earlier this spring. Every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off. And the inspection and transparency regime necessary to verify that objective will be put in place.
Senator Bob Corker noted during a recent hearing: “Since the agreement was signed in July, Iran has continued to flout the U.N. not only by giving arms to Yemen and Syria but also sending Gen. Qasem Soleimani, chief of Iran’s elite military Qods Force, and other sanctioned officials to Russia, Iraq and elsewhere and by refusing to fully cooperate with the IAEA investigation into its nuclear weapons research.”
But at least Iran has toned down its warmongering and threatening rhetoric, right?
That was put out by the Islamic Revolution Design House, a media outfit associated with Iranian hardliners. It debuted last summer at an Iranian conference of religious scholars that featured “speaker after speaker calling Israel’s annihilation inevitable and promising that a new phase in that effort is about to begin.”
Wow. I wonder if that new phase involves nukes?
Iran has also repeatedly violated U.N. Security Council resolutions forbidding ballistic missile testing.
Their most recent ballistic missile test came a day after the nuclear watchdog organization disclosed the deal limits inspectors from publicly reporting on potential violations by Iran.
Via The Washington Free Beacon:
Iranian leaders now say that they are poised to walk away from the deal if the United States and other global powers fail to advance the Islamic Republic’s “national interests.”
“If our interests are not met under the nuclear deal, there will be no reason for us to continue,” Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, warned during remarks delivered to a group of Iranian officials in Tehran.
“If other parties decide, they could easily violate the deal,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state-controlled media. “However, they know this will come with costs.”
Araqchi appeared to allude to the United States possibly leveling new economic sanctions as a result of the missile test. The Obama administration moved forward with new sanctions earlier this year as a result of the country’s previous missile tests.
Suffice it to say, Obama’s nuke deal will go down as the biggest, most counterproductive diplomatic dumpster fire in American history.
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Now lets talk about Cuba because the Obama Regime has been working overtime to produce a flaming debacle for the American public to enjoy on that front, too.
Investor’s Business Daily reports that “there are signs of trouble” with Obama’s much ballyhooed March 21 visit.
After all, this is not a normal relationship. The Cuban government’s goodwill toward the U.S. is nil, even as Obama showers goodies on them and caves in to their every demand. A presidential visit is the last thing they deserve.
Yet the administration justifies the junket by saying the president’s trip will “advance our progress and improve the lives of the Cubans,” as White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough tweeted in Spanish. And indeed that’s an echo of President Obama’s original precondition to not visit Cuba until the Castroites improve the rights of Cuba’s citizens — who are fleeing the island in droves now, out of fear the Obama-Castro bromance will lead to an end of their migration privileges, a topic seemingly ignored. Notice the verbal sleight-of-hand: The Obama administration has subtly shifted its goal to now say the trip itself will improve the conditions of Cubans.
For Cubans, there have been nothing but problems. For one, dissident arrests have risen fivefold since Obama announced the normalization of ties in late 2014. Some “improvement.”
Now there’s even a question of which critics of the regime Obama will be allowed to meet in Havana. In repeated messages, Obama has stated that he wants to meet Cubans from “all walks of life” to justify this trip to Americans.
The situation got so bad last week that Secretary of State John Kerry canceled his preparatory trip to Cuba after Cuban officials told him which Cuban dissidents President Obama could meet — and which ones he couldn’t. It was a valid reason to call off a trip. Heads of state in countries with normal relations don’t tell each other who they can meet.
But President Obama’s trip is still a “go,” even as Cuba’s henchmen dictate which dissidents he can see — and which will wind up in prison to keep them out of sight.
It will be the type of phony Potemkin affair that makes Communists glow with pride. Which is why you can bet that after his trip, Obama will proudly speechify about his his triumphant, historic trip to Cuba and how he preached hope and change to the poor Cuban dissidents — the ones he was allowed to see, anyway.
Who would have ever expected such treachery from an American president?
Nice Deb 