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Trump Must Decertify and Abandon Iran Deal

 

NCRI Staff

NCRI – A senior fellow at the National Review Institute wrote an op-ed for National Review advising Donald Trump to decertify the Iranian nuclear deal and walk away from the pact altogether.

Andrew C. McCarthy wrote that Iran has not been compliant with the nuclear deal for even a moment and that the US must stand strong to support human rights and oppose terrorism.

McCarthy calls it “shameful” that Trump has already certified the Iranian Regime’s compliance (despite the compelling evidence) twice so far in 2017.

He wrote: Trump insisted throughout the 2016 campaign that the deal — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — was the worst and most dangerous in the history of deals. Just two weeks ago, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, he described it as an “embarrassment” and “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” Yet, under the statute that calls for presidential findings every 90 days, the president, in recertifying, represented to Congress and the American people (a) that Iran is transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the agreement and (b) that continuing the JCPOA is vital to the national security interests of the United States. These assertions insult the intelligence.”

He also asserted that Iran’s threats to US national security go far beyond that which is agreed to in the nuclear programme.

He wrote: “Quite apart from violating the terms of the JCPOA and refusing to permit verifiable inspections from the start, Iran continues to be the world’s No. 1 sponsor of anti-American terrorism, backing Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, a network of Iraqi cells, and the Houthis in Yemen, to cite just the best-known examples. That’s not just me talking; the regime continues to be one of just three countries on the U.S. government’s official terrorist list (the others are Syria, which is Iran’s cat’s-paw, and Sudan, which has longstanding ties to the regime in Tehran).”

McCarthy advised Trump that is it time to walk away from the table, calling the administration’s plan to decertify while keeping the deal intact “a terrible plan”
He wrote: “The rationalization for keeping the JCPOA is that Iran has already gotten most of the deal’s goodies. Abandoning the deal now would hurt us more than the mullahs, the thinking goes, because it would relieve them of the deal’s burdens. That’s preposterous. Under the terms of the JCPOA and its undisclosed side deals, we do not and cannot know whether Iran is performing its obligations. More significantly, even if we could verify and even if Iran were in compliance, the deal does not prevent Iran from acquiring nukes; it just slows the mullahs down for a few more years.”

He points out that the US still holds enough leverage to bring Iran back to the negotiating table afterwards for a better deal because there is not a country on earth that would rather trade with Iran than the US.

He wrote: “If the president wants to negotiate, let it be on a new deal and on America’s terms — which, you may remember, are that Iran does not get nuclear weapons, must honour its obligations on weapons development and proliferation, and must cease promoting terrorism. No other deal is worth having.”