Tipsheet

Obama: Sure, My Iran Deal Will Probably Help Finance Terrorism

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  August 06, 2015 9:06 AM

America's Demagogue-in-Chief delivered one of the ugliest speeches of his presidency yesterday, which is quite an achievement, given the stiff competition. In defense of his terrible nuclear deal with Iran, Obama channeled the New York Times editors by slandering its opponents. A very low remark from a petty, petulant man:


No, no, no:


As Matt and Allahpundit note, the GOP is making "common cause" with Iranian hardliners in that each group opposes the deal, for opposite reasons. Republicans -- and a growing list of Democrats, conveniently ignored by Obama -- oppose the accord because it hurts American interests and extracts woefully insufficient concessions from Iran. Hardcore Iranian critics believe America's capitulation isn't quite abject enough.  Hence my point on Twitter:


Barack Obama and Saddam Hussein both opposed the Iraq war (unlike Hillary Clinton), but for vastly very different reasons. By Obama's new and appalling standard, he himself was a collaborator against America at the time, making "common cause" with the enemy.  Another staple of Obama's dishonest rhetoric is pretending that full-blown war is the only alternative to his bad nuclear agreement, which essentially guarantees a nuclearized Iran.  If you oppose the deal, he basically argues, you're linking arms with Iranian radicals as partners for war.  It's insulting nonsense, but it's all he's got.  He's lashing out because he knows Congress probably can't stop him and because he's contemptuous of the American people for once again rejecting his failed arguments on behalf of his unpopular agenda.  One of the objections raised by opponents of the deal is that the sanctions relief will help bolster and fund Iran's various international terrorism projects.  To which Obama says, yeah pretty much:


Noah Pollak marvels:


Obama has now admitted that his diplomatic masterpiece will (a) pave the path for Iran to become a threshold nuclear-armed state as soon as its restrictions automatically expire, and (b) finance the international terrorism of fanatical regime with large quantities of American blood on its hands. Yet he angrily insists that there's no legitimate reason to oppose the deal.  There are many, many reasons to block this disastrous agreement, not the least of which is Iran's bellicose rhetoric on inspections:

[Obama administration officials] continue to embrace the theory of the agreement to which they arrived rather than the reality of the Iranian reaction to it. Kerry may have gone from ‘anytime, anywhere’ to managed inspections, and he and his proxies may still insist that the procedures set in place are rigorous and can prevent an Iranian nuclear breakout. What he ignores, however, is the growing number — and position — of senior Iranian officials who insist that there can be absolutely no inspection, managed or otherwise, of Iranian military sites, the very locations where the work on the possible military dimensions of a nuclear program allegedly occurred or still could occur.

Oh, and now there's this, reported yesterday by Josh Rogin and Eli Lake:

The U.S. intelligence community has informed Congress of evidence that Iran was sanitizing its suspected nuclear military site at Parchin, in broad daylight, days after agreeing to a nuclear deal with world powers. For senior lawmakers in both parties, the evidence calls into question Iran’s intention to fully account for the possible military dimensions of its current and past nuclear development. The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran have a side agreement meant to resolve past suspicions about the Parchin site, and lawmakers' concerns about it has already become a flashpoint because they do not have access to its text. Intelligence officials and lawmakers who have seen the new evidence, which is still classified, told us that satellite imagery picked up by U.S. government assets in mid- and late July showed that Iran had moved bulldozers and other heavy machinery to the Parchin site and that the U.S. intelligence community concluded with high confidence that the Iranian government was working to clean up the site ahead of planned inspections by the IAEA.

"Inspections." I'll leave you with two gems from Team Smart Power's co-captain, the first via Andy McCarthy:

In one of the many mind-bending moments in Secretary of State John Kerry’s congressional testimony in support of President Obama’s Iran deal, he explained that the administration could not treat the deal as a treaty because, well, nowadays it is just too hard to get a treaty approved. In fact, Kerry claimed, “It has become physically impossible.” … Less than 48 hours later, Kerry’s subordinate Henry S. Ensher, the State Department’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (the same IAEA deeply involved in the Iran deal), proudly presented to the IAEA the formal United States ratification of a treaty: the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. The treaty was just one of four related ones that the Senate has approved in recent years.