WASHINGTON, DC — Some experts welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to decertify the Iran nuclear deal, but they said the American leader should have gone a step further and killed the agreement, which some analysts argue has strengthened Tehran’s narco-terror proxy Hezbollah and its hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
While some analysts praised Trump for decertifying the Iran deal, others stressed that the president did not go far enough.
“The Iran deal was, as the president said, a bad deal, possibly the worse in modern history. We should kill it. That’s what I recommended the president do, but I’m happy to see him decertify it,” Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a former deputy assistant to President Trump, told Breitbart News.
“As far as the Iran deal goes, I am very pleased to see that he, as expected, decided not to recertify the Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action],” Clare Lopez, the president of research and analysis at the Center for Security Policy, told Breitbart News. “I would like to see him go further, of course, and the reason is that Iran is in blatant breach of the JCPOA.”
Lopez pointed out that President Trump does not need Congress to ditch the nuclear deal, which she argues has failed to prevent Iran from further developing its nuclear program.
She said that Iran has made sure to keep its “clandestine nuclear program” running since 1988, adding, “I sincerely hope the president is planning to end the deal because it does not affect Iran’s clandestine nuclear program.”
“They have not stopped. They have not slowed. They have not paused the illicit clandestine nuclear programs,” she continued, referring to Tehran’s nuclear activities. “The JCPOA has no provisions for inspecting the off-limit military sites, which are the places where Iran is developing its clandestine nuclear weapons.”
Gorka and Lopez noted that Trump should have seized the opportunity to officially label the IRCG a terrorist group when announcing his administration’s new Iran strategy.
“The president should have decertified the Iran deal and at the same time designate the IRCG a terrorist group,” declared Gorka. “The IRGC is a menace and a threat to our national interest and the safety of our allies and partners.”
During his speech, Trump noted that the IRGC poses a terrorist threat to the United States, “but then he held back,” noted Lopez.
However, Gorka added, “I think the statement today makes the [terrorism] designation [for the Revolutionary Guards] more likely.”
The president did say that his administration will impose “tough sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” as part of his Iran strategy.
“The Revolutionary Guard is the Iranian supreme leader’s corrupt personal terror force and militia. It has hijacked large portions of Iran’s economy and seized massive religious endowments to fund war and terror abroad,” he explained. “This includes arming the Syrian dictator, supplying proxies and partners with missiles and weapons to attack civilians in the region, and even plotting to bomb a popular restaurant right here in Washington, DC.”
The U.S. military has long warned against the presence of Iran and its proxies — Hezbollah and IRGC —throughout the Western Hemisphere, including the United States.
Various officials from within the Iranian government and IRGC recently threatened to attack American troops if Trump deems the Guards as a terrorist organization.
Dr. Gorka acknowledged that the billions of dollars in unfrozen assets released to Iran as part of the Iran deal have strengthened Iran’s narco-terrorist proxy Hezbollah and the IRGC.
In 2015, both Gen. Martin Dempsey, Obama’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the former president himself conceded that Iran would use nuclear deal-linked sanctions relief money to proliferate terrorist activity.
Along with the millions of dollars generated from the drug trade and other illicit activity in Latin America, the sanction relief funds have allowed Hezbollah to establish “operational cells all over the United States,” declared Lopez, echoing the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCC).
The nefarious activities of state-sponsor of terrorism Iran “actually got worse” under the 2015 nuclear deal, said Dr. Gorka.
Dr. Gorka stated that he and former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who returned as executive chairman of Breitbart News in August, pushed against certifying the Iran deal earlier this year.
Meanwhile, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin advocated for certification, he added, noting that President Trump was angry about having to recertify a deal he had repeatedly denounced as one of the worst in history.
The left-leaning Center for American Progress (CAP) think-tank did not respond to Breitbart News’s requests for comment on Trump’s decertifying the Iran deal.
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