Defusing the Ticking “ObamaBomb”: Andrew Harrod
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/defusing-the-ticking-obamabomb?f=must_reads
“ObamaBomb: A Dangerous and Growing National Security Fraud” is former CIA Analyst Fred Fleitz scathing condemnation of what he called an “aberration by one of America’s worst and most incompetent presidents.” Written for the one-year anniversary of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on July 14 and presented by the author in Washington, D.C. for the Endowment for Middle East Truth and the Heritage Foundation, this book thoroughly validates that assessment.
In the book’s foreword, Fleitz’s current boss, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, summarized the Iran nuclear deal as the “worst diplomatic agreement in my lifetime – and, arguably, in American history.” According to Gaffney, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action guarantees that the Iranian government will eventually have nuclear weapons in its possession. “In the meantime, it enriches them and enables them to engage in jihad, terrorism and subversion.” The unsigned JCPOA “is utterly unverifiable and unenforceable,” he added. “It undermines our allies. It will exacerbate nuclear proliferation, not preclude it.”
President Barack Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has called the JCPOA a “legacy achievement” for Obama’s second term, just as the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”) was to his first. CSP has “nicknamed the JCPOA the ‘ObamaBomb’ deal, because it is a legacy agreement of President Obama that is just as deceptive as ObamaCare. [Yet], while ObamaCare may destroy the American healthcare system, the ObamaBomb deal may lead to a nuclear armed Iran that could attack America and its allies.”
The book theorized that the JCPOA’s 15-year lifespan “at best will leave Iran with an industrial-scale nuclear program in 10-15 years with the blessing of the international community.” In Fleitz’s opinion, it is more likely that Iran will exploit the deal’s terms to improve uranium enrichment with advanced centrifuges and produce plutonium at the Arak heavy water reactor. “Iran will use the provisions of the nuclear agreement … to significantly increase its capability to produce greater amounts of weapons-grade nuclear fuel in a much shorter time,” he said.
In his book, Fleitz called the JCPOA “the product of the radical and naïve foreign policy views of President Barack Obama, who sees Iran more as a victim of past U.S. policies than a rogue state and state sponsor of terror.” In particular, “it is impossible to dismiss the pro-Muslim bias of Obama’s ideology that I believe is driven by both personal factors and far left ideologues.” According to Fleitz, to exacerbate the president’s radicalism, Obama’s national security team – which is run by former campaign aids and congressional staffers – may be “the weakest of any modern president.”
Concurring with public speculation by former Obama Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta, Fleitz wrote that the “Obama Administration primarily pursued this agreement, not to stop or slow Iran’s nuclear program. Obama has misguided assumptions that it would somehow bring Iran into the community of nations, help make it a partner to fight the terrorist group ISIS and even promote peace and stability in the Middle East.” It is impossible to believe that – according to a quip by national security expert Richard Perle – the JCPOA “is somehow going to magically transform an Iranian regime that regards the United States as the great Satan.”
Fleitz wrote that, due to the Obama Administration’s fixation on arranging a “legacy nuclear agreement, Iran was always in the driver’s seat.” The Iranian officials were put in the position of obtaining an agreement favorable to their desires, and therefore they postponed the negotiations, giving time for their nuclear capabilities to grow exponentially. “Iran’s nuclear program expanded more between 2009 and 2013 than at any other time in its history, as Iranian centrifuges surged from about 5,400 in January 2009 to about 19,000 in August 2013,” Fleitz reported. Hence, “Iranian diplomats could argue in nuclear talks that these programs were too big to give up.” Because of this development, the Iranian government has retained a much larger nuclear capacity than it would have if the JCOPA had been struck in 2009.
Fleitz said that in promoting this nuclear deal, the Obama Administration used “unprecedented deception, dishonesty and stealth” in a “national security fraud involving a desperate, win-at-any-cost strategy.” He detailed the influence-peddling payments by JCPOA supporters like the leftwing Ploughshares Fund to media outlets like NPR and Obama’s “coded anti-Semitic language” against Jewish JCPOA opponents. Nonetheless, both congressional houses (including, as with ObamaCare, all of their Republican members) voted against the JCPOA, which was ultimately supported by only 21 percent of Americans.
The author’s condemnation of the JCPOA came with a clear policy proposal: The “most intellectually honest way for a future U.S. president to deal with the nuclear agreement with Iran is to tear it up on his or her first day in office.” As with Iranian plutonium production, he demanded that the next U.S. leader makes it “clear to Iran: Stop all uranium enrichment and uranium enrichment research or we will stop it for you.” For real Iranian nuclear nonproliferation including any-time, any-place surprise inspections, he advised the United States to implement stalwart sanctions and work with the nations of Israel and Saudi Arabia to develop a plan to destroy the Iranian nuclear program with airstrikes.
In his book and presentation, Fleitz also advocated putting various military and economic sanctions in place as a response to growing Iranian aggressions against the nation of Israel, U.S. vessels in the Persian Gulf, and the American citizens that it has taken hostage. He called Iran’s post-JCOPA behavior “increasingly brash and threatening, [suggesting that] Iran sees itself as a powerful regional player unafraid to take on the United States.” By contrast, “if Iran will not end its missile program, the United States should respond with sanctions and by shooting down launches of nuclear-capable missiles.”
Fleitz said that he does not desire the United States to enter into a war with Iran. He argued before EMET that various restrictions could strangle Iran’s nuclear programs, while any Iranian nuclear tests, as in North Korea, would consume scarce nuclear fuels. Yet he wrote that he is “frustrated with some politicians and groups in Washington who reflexively reject the idea that the use of military force by the United States might be necessary to stop Iran’s nuclear effort.”
Despite Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama’s fantasies, Fleitz has conclusively shown the necessity of replacing with confrontation what he said at the Heritage Foundation is a policy that can only be described as appeasement.
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