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WASHINGTON – A growing chorus of some of the nation’s best and brightest minds is calling on Democrats in the House and Senate to break ranks with President Obama and oppose his Iran deal by putting country over party politics.
“Those Democrat politicians who still have an ounce of integrity should put loyalty to country before loyalty to Obama and his disastrous nuclear sellout to the Iranian terrorist regime,” radio talk-show host Mark Levin told WND.
Former Clinton administration CIA Director James Woolsey told WND that Democrats should oppose the deal because “the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration is about as bad an agreement as the United States has ever signed in any capacity.”
“It would be tragic for it to take effect, and it will be a disaster for world peace,” he bluntly added.
Woolsey called it “quite naive” to expect the deal to slow down Iran’s drive to get the bomb, and its “extremely loose” inspection terms mean, “We will have to face the prospect their having at least one or a few nuclear weapons before long,” which, he added, would trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
Calling the Iranian government a “theocratic, totalitarian, genocidal imperialist” regime that “controls Syria, much of Iraq, and virtually all of Yemen and Lebanon through proxies,” the former CIA chief said it will “only get worse” when the mullahs receive as much as $150 billion in unfrozen assets as part of the deal.
Victoria Coates, senior adviser for national security to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, explained to WND why she thinks Democrats should oppose the deal.
“The Iranians are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq, and rather than holding them accountable, we are lifting sanctions on the military commanders responsible and giving them a $100 billion to continue operations. It’s unconscionable.”
Coates said Cruz sent a tweet Wednesday night asking his Senate colleagues to watch the video (above) Â from a new group called Veterans Against the Deal before casting their votes.
In the video, medically retired Staff Sgt. Robert Bartlett, who said he was was “cut in half” by an Iranian bomb in Iraq in 2005, warned, “Every politician who is involved in this will be held accountable; they will have blood on their hands.
“A vote for this deal means more money for Iranian terrorism. What do you think they are going to do when they get more money?” he added.
“Call your senator, tell them no deal with Iran,” implored Bartlett. “If you don’t call, who will?”
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, an influential member of both the House Oversight Committee and the Select Committee on Benghazi, told WND Democrats should think twice about approving the agreement.
“President Obama’s nuclear deal gives the Iranian government everything it wants and gets the United States none of the things that are in our best interest,” he said.
“This deal paves the way for Iran to become a nuclear power, and failed to even bring home American prisoners being held by Iran. It represents some of the worst negotiating by this administration to date.”
Iran expert Clare Lopez of the Center for Security Policy argued Iran can’t be trusted.
“This Iranian regime has proven itself completely untrustworthy to keep agreements it had already signed,” she told WND, “such as the nuclear NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons), whose provisions include everything needed to ensure a country’s program is a peaceful one. If they can’t keep that, why should we re-negotiate?”
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., chided her own party
“It is incomprehensible to me that (House Speaker John) Boehner, (Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell and (Republican National Committee Chair Reince) Priebus haven’t gone to the microphone every day since the announcement of the Iran deal and explained their plan to oppose it and give the press a daily scorecard of who has committed to voting no,” Bachmann told WND.
“The Iran issue is in a league of its own,” she added. “It is not one issue among many. The conservatives in the House and Senate could band together and collectively lay out a plan to defeat the Iran agreement and force leadership to make it their top priority. But the rank-and-file haven’t evidenced their issue priorities. They must do this.”
An aide to GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina referred WND to an opinion piece she co-authored April 2 with former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. General Michael T. Flynn.
They concluded: “The deal that the United States has negotiated with Iran poses a grave threat to American security at home and abroad” and urged members of Congress to “insist on voicing their opposition to this deal.”
The duo lamented, “It is a sad chapter of American history when President Obama and Secretaries Kerry and Clinton are more concerned with their legacy than they are with our national security.”
In an interview earlier this week with WND, Coates pointed out it was a Democrat who had made one of the strongest cases against the Obama Iran deal.
Coates described how liberal Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz found it to be a bad deal by the president’s own definition, focusing on the three things Obama had said were his objectives:
- “First and foremost, the deal would prevent the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon.
- “On top of that, the deal would close down, it would eradicate the really dangerous elements in the nuclear program, primarily the Fordo facility.
- “And finally, that we were going to have these 24/7 inspections – these were an American precondition – that was non-negotiable.”
“We gave up on all three of those,” Coates said.
“I think, Democrats can say, ‘By your own standards, Mr. Obama, this is a bad deal. So, how can we, as responsible Democrats accept it?'”
Only one Democratic senator, Charles Schumer of New York, has yet to publicly oppose the deal, and Levin blasted him on Facebook as “truly a pathetic coward” for not only refusing to encourage other Democrats to follow his lead, but for actually calling his colleagues to assure them he would not be trying to whip up votes against it.
Schumer hopes to become the next Democratic leader in the Senate, and liberal groups have been furious over his opposition.
Opponents of the deal have to win the support of 44 Democrats in the House and 13 in the Senate to overcome a presidential veto of any legislation that would kill the deal.
As of Thursday, 11 Democratic House members have come out against the agreement.
However, opposition may be growing among Democrats despite intense lobbying by the White House to keep the troops in line.
WND Jerusalem Bureau Chief Aaron Klein reports several other key undecided Democrat lawmakers are quietly weighing whether to oppose the  agreement in a vote next month.
He cited published reports from informed Israeli diplomatic sources who have specifically identified Sens. Claire McCaskill, Ben Cardin, Christopher A. Coons and Cory Booker as all leaning closer to a vote against the agreement.
Other senators said to be undecided include Bob Casey, Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Ralph Peters, Harry Reid, Jon Tester and Ron Wyden.
If all of them, including Schumer, oppose the deal, that would give opponents the magic number of 13 Democratic votes needed to override a presidential veto in the Senate.
If those lawmakers need any more food for thought, Lopez gave WND a plethora of reasons for Democrats to think twice about Obama’s Iran deal, in addition to her thoughts quoted above:
- This Iranian regime has been at war with the U.S. for 36 years, killing and maiming Americans in Lebanon, Iraq, and on 9/11.
- The U.S. is a signatory to the NPT. That means that under Article VI of the US Constitution, it is law of the land. But the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the technical name for the Iran deal) violates terms of the NPT and is therefore unconstitutional.
- No regime that repeatedly and as a matter of policy violates the U.N. Treaty on Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (threats are a violation all by themselves) should ever be allowed to build and keep and operate a complete nuclear infrastructure that is capable of producing nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
- The U.N. Security Council has passed six resolutions demanding that Iran completely halt its nuclear enrichment. The regime refused to do so. That is not a good reason for the P5+1 (Western negotiators) to cave in and allow Iran to enrich uranium.
- The International Atomic Energy Agency cannot verify that Iran’s program does not have “military dimensions”; therefore, no agreement should be finalized until all suspect sites have been opened to IAEA inspectors and all outstanding questions resolved. (This means the Parchin facility first.)
- Most of the Iranian sites we know about in Iran’s nuclear weapons network were discovered and revealed by someone else (even though Iran is obligated to reveal them to the IAEA under the terms of the NPT): intelligence services, the NCRI/MEK Iranian opposition, or satellite imagery. Iran has never, ever come clean about any of its conversion, enrichment or warhead R&D sites in the past. Why should it ever, especially when verification measures in the JCPOA are so lame?
- No frozen funds should ever be released to this Iranian regime until it declares in writing that it recognizes the right of the Jewish state of Israel to live in peace and secure borders. Iran makes no secret of its intention to annihilate Israel. Why on earth would we help them under the terms of the JCPOA to actually defend its nuclear sites against attack? (International law enshrines the right of a sovereign state to “anticipatory self-defense.”)
- This JCPOA deal actually gives international legitimacy to Iran’s overt nuclear weapons program (if not immediately, soon enough) but does nothing to check or halt or dismantle its clandestine program. Why would we sign something like that?
- No frozen funds should be released at a time when senior regime officials have declared outright that they intend to continue supporting Iran’s regional aggression and terrorist groups like Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis, or genocidal regimes like Bashar al-Assad’s in Syria.
- Iran has been flouting the provisions of existing agreements (NPT), the U.N. restrictions in place right now on travel by Quds Force commander Gen. Qassem Suleimani (who just visited Moscow with a military hardware shopping list), as well as ballistic missile procurement sanctions. Why on earth would we trust them to keep any new agreement when they cannot or will not keep the ones already in effect?
- Last, but not least, not one more word of negotiations should be conducted with a criminal jihadist terrorist regime that is holding four Americans citizens hostage until they are home safe and sound.
Follow Garth Kant @DCgarth
