We have heard President Barack Obama, on several occasions, endeavor to allay fears about world violence. His nuclear deal with Iran does not do this. It now is up to President-elect Donald Trump either to re-negotiate an agreement that will or to reject it.
Obama’s false assurances the world is safer have sounded like a broken record.
In 2011, he suggested, after U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, “I think we can all agree… the world is safer. It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden.”
In 2013, he made the same suggestion while addressing the United Nations (UN), “The world is more stable than it was 5 years ago.”
In 2014, at a Democratic Party fundraiser, Obama told the audience, although “the world has always been messy… I promise you things are much less dangerous now than they were 20 years ago, 25 years ago or 30 years ago.”
And, in 2015, in the aftermath of concluding a nuclear deal with Iran, again addressing the UN, Obama claimed, “if this deal is fully implemented, the prohibition on nuclear weapons is strengthened, a potential war is averted, our world is safer.”
In that same address, Obama told two flagrant lies, which took wings during the 2016 vice presidential debate between Senator Tim Kaine and Governor Mike Pence — the former repeating them; the latter challenging him on doing so.
Obama’s lies to the UN were contained in the following statements: “Our objective was to test whether Iran could change course, accept constraints, and allow the world to verify that its nuclear program will be peaceful… The result is a lasting, comprehensive deal that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, while allowing it to access peaceful energy.”
At least eight times during the vice presidential debate, Kaine alluded to the assertion Hillary Clinton had “eliminated the Iranian nuclear-weapons program without firing a shot.”
Such representations leave the American public with a false sense of security about Iran, built upon the foundation of Obama’s earlier assertions the world is safer today.
It is absolutely imperative President-elect Donald Trump re-negotiate or kill the Iran nuclear agreement. In doing so, Americans need to realize just how bad it is.
Imagine, for example, a U.S. government drug-testing program implemented for its employees allowing the unsupervised submission of their own urine samples. Just such an “honor policy” is what Obama accepts for Iran concerning submission to international inspectors of its own soil samples at a site where nuclear weapons testing is believed to have occurred.
Such an honor policy extends as well to limiting inspections only to nuclear sites declared as such by Tehran. If Iran has undeclared secret nuclear sites, which has been its modus operandi in the past, international monitors lack standing to inspect them.
Additionally, as Obama rammed the agreement through the Senate, an effort quarterbacked by Kaine, the Senate was not told about secret side deals attached to it – some details of which top U.S. negotiator Secretary of State John Kerry did not even know.
The dark truth about the Iran nuclear agreement is it absolutely fails to stop the mullahs’ desire to weaponize their program. It paves the way for them to do so legally in the future, and sooner if illegally done. Additionally, it failed to demand Iran, as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, curtail such activity or stop using North Korea as a nuclear and missile test site.
The above failings of the Iran nuclear agreement combined with Tehran’s intensified aggression against the U.S. since its approval should not give Americans any sense the world is safer today because of the deal, evidenced most recently by Iran’s brazen claim it is sending elite fighters covertly into the U.S. and Europe.
Since coming to power in 1979, Iran’s mullahs have been led by two spiritual leaders: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, up until his death in 1989, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei since then. Both shared the same mindset concerning their goal of Islam’s global domination.
Upon coming to power, Khomeini stopped Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, initially begun under the shah, only later to secretly re-start it, giving rise to suspicions he sought weaponization. A Khomeini statement is most telling about this suspicion, suggesting fear of a U.S. nuclear retaliatory strike serves as no deterrent to Iran: “I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”
Meanwhile, Khamenei allegedly issued a religious edict (fatwa) claiming Islam prohibits nuclear weapons. This should be given little faith as: (1) Iran refuses to produce a copy of it; (2) Islam allows, under the concept of “taqiyya,” Muslims to deceive and lie to non-Muslims to further Islam’s global domination; and (3) former Iranian President Ayatollah Ali Rafsanjani suggests a more frightening and honest assessment of Tehran’s nuclear intentions with his statement:
If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.
Such a claim should worry Palestinians who would suffer harsh consequences of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel as well.
Nor should Khamenei’s alleged edict give us comfort in view of his recent exhortation, given just this month, what is meant in Iran’s often-heard chant, “Death to America.”
Speaking to hundreds of his worshippers, Khamenei explained, “When you chant ‘Death to America,’ when you are told to direct all your chants against America, it means: Death for all these things (that America represents).”
Trump’s election has riled Khamenei enough to cause the Supreme Leader to claim, as president, Trump cannot renegotiate a nuclear agreement made with the UN. While it was not and Trump can, Khamenei ignores two other important facts empowering Trump legally to do so: Iran never signed the deal and Tehran has repeatedly violated it.
It is clear, as Iran gains confidence it has secured the pathway to obtaining a nuclear arsenal, it envisions Islam’s global objective as obtainable. It now will be up to President Trump to dispel this Iranian mindset—one President Obama’s actions have tragically wrought.
Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.), is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of “Bare Feet, Iron Will–Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefields,” “Living the Juche Lie: North Korea’s Kim Dynasty” and “Doomsday: Iran–The Clock is Ticking.” He frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.
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