It almost sounds like Nancy Pelosi’s famous line, “We have to pass the bill first before we know what’s in the bill.”
Some members of Congress are protesting that two secret “annexes” to the Iran nuclear accord are being withheld from them before they sign off on the overall agreement.
In a meeting in Vienna with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) learned that two side deals made between the Iran and the IAEA as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will remain secret and will not be shared with other nations, with Congress, or with the public. One agreement covers the inspection of the Parchin military complex, and the second details how the IAEA and Iran will resolve outstanding issues on possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.
It’s the latest revelation concerning the JCPOA that has many observers calling into question whether the agreement is in the best interest of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.
Congress has 60 days to review and vote on the deal, but that time frame does not start until it receives all documents related to the agreement. Pompeo and others are pushing to see the secret annexes.
“This agreement is the worst of backroom deals,” he said in a statement. “In addition to allowing Iran to keep its nuclear program, missile program, American hostages, and terrorist network, the Obama administration has failed to make public separate side deals that have been struck for the ‘inspection’ of one of the most important nuclear sites—the Parchin military complex. Not only does this violate the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, it is asking Congress to agree to a deal that it cannot review.”
The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, signed by President Obama, requires the administration to provide Congress with all nuclear agreement documents, including all “annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical or other understandings and any related agreements.”
The JCPOA, however, is a done deal, according to a government official who served for years in the Middle East.
“The reality is that the deal—the lifting of sanctions in exchange for the Iranian promise not to develop a nuclear weapon—is a fait accompli, because if Congress votes against it to overcome a presidential veto, the only thing that is going to do is impede the Iranians from using the financial system of the US, which means that all their purchases and sale of oil and such are going to have to find a mechanism outside the US banking system,” the official said.
Sen. Cotton told The Washington Post, “Congress’s evaluation of this deal must be based on hard facts and full information. That we are only now discovering that parts of this dangerous agreement are being kept secret begs the question of what other elements may also be secret and entirely free from public scrutiny.”
The UN Security Council voted 15-0 Monday to approve a resolution supporting the deal. But the accord came in for tough scrutiny this week by nuclear experts with long experience in monitoring Tehran’s nuclear program. Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director of the IAEA, questioned Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz’ insistence that Iran would not be able to hide traces of illicit nuclear work before inspectors gained access to a suspicious site. A provision in the deal gives Iran up to 24 days to grant access to inspectors.
While “it is clear that a facility of sizable scale cannot simply be erased in three weeks’ time without leaving traces,” the more likely risk is that the Iranians would pursue smaller-scale but still important nuclear work, such as manufacturing uranium components for a nuclear weapon, Heinonen told the
New York Times.
The government official who has served in the Middle East, who spoke with Aleteia on condition of anonymity, spoke of the deal as a “gamble” for the United States.
“The administration is gambling that we have a state [Iran] where the revolutionary fervor of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 has petered out and that this agreement will … start putting in place the mechanisms for reestablishing Iran’s place within the community of nations, adhering to international law and rules of diplomatic conduct and so on,” he said. “That’s the great hope, and this agreement is based on a lot of hope. There is real disagreement among experts on Iran about whether it has moved awat from Islamic Revolution to modern administrative state. Modern administrative states sign agreements and stick to them, and revolutionary ones don’t.”
That sense of taking a gamble is viewed from a different perspective in the Middle East, he noted.
“What you’re hearing out of the Saudis and the Israelis is, ‘Yeah, it’s a gamble, but with our poker chips on the table, not your poker chips.’
The chance of Iran cheating to the point of obtaining a nuke that could one day hit the US is very remote, he said, but Israel’s fear of an Iran with the bomb has not diminished. The Sunni Gulf states, as has been widely noted, also fear the prospect of a nuclearized Shi’ite Iran.
“One thing that is baffling: if the administration believes this is such a good deal, why would they be talking about enhancing the delivery of ballistic missiles systems to the Gulf Arab countries and Saudi Arabia?” said the anonymous government official. “Why do they need those? They don’t need them unless they are facing a threat from Iran.”
He noted that Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry hope that drawing Iran back into the community of nations will “open up all sorts of possibilities for ending strife in the Middle East.”
“The irony of that is that right now there are two causes of strife in the Middle East: one is ISIS, and the other is the Iranians and what mischief they have gotten into in Iraq and their continued support for [Syrian President Bashar] Assad,” he said. “He really was close to falling a couple of years ago, but the Iranians the the Russians poured in all sorts of weapons and support, and that saved him, and he’s been able to recoup most of his losses. It’s a stalemate now in Syria.”
Iran’s apparent hope to extend its influence across the region—some see a developing "Shia Crescent" wending through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, with its western tip hovering perilously close over Israel—may be boosted by the infusion of cash that comes with the implementation of the nuclear deal. Iran is poised to reap billions of dollars in freed-up assets and trade benefits, and even the US National Security Advisor Susan Rice has admitted that much of that money will go toward military use and support of terrorist activities.
Rice said in an interview on CNN this week: “We should expect that some portion of that money would go to the Iranian military and could potentially be used for the kinds of bad behavior that we’ve seen in the region up until now."
And today we celebrate...