The following is an excerpt of a statement today by Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, regarding the announced nuclear agreement with Iran.
“Negotiation is not a policy. It's a technique. It's something you use when it's to your advantage, and something that you don't use when it's not to your advantage.
“Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said that, and it was never truer than in the negotiations the Obama Administration has engaged in with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. The only reason to engage in negotiations on this matter would be to convince Iran to dismantle its illegal nuclear program. Unfortunately, that does not appear to have been an enduring goal of the Administration, which has backed away from principle at every turn.
“Perhaps the most inexplicable abandonment of principle involved in these negotiations has been the refusal to tie the negotiations to the freedom of four Americans held or believed to be held by the Iranian government.
- In 2011, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati was arrested for allegedly spying for the United States. Originally sentenced to death, he was retried and is now serving a 10-year sentence, while enduring torture.
- In 2012, Pastor Saeed Abedini was arrested on charges of “undermining national security” by establishing orphanages in partnership with Iranian Christians. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and also has endured torture and threats of adding further charges and time to his sentence unless he renounced his faith and returned to Islam.
- In 2014, Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian was arrested and held for months without charges until being accused of “propaganda against the establishment.” His trial resumed yesterday. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
- Former FBI agent Robert Levinson has been missing since researching a cigarette smuggling case on Kish Island in 2007. Iran denies it has him in custody, but refuses to help discover his whereabouts.
“In several House committee and subcommittee hearings over the past year, Administration witnesses – from Secretary Kerry to Under Secretary Wendy Sherman – have told us that they constantly asked about the imprisoned Americans, but these men were never treated as important enough to impact the nuclear negotiations. We may have just abandoned four Americans to their fate in a theocratic dictatorship where justice seems unknown.
“The freedom of these Americans should have been a precondition of any negotiations and not an afterthought. Now that the talks are concluded, what leverage is there to gain their freedom?
“And the abandonment of principles doesn’t end there. President Lyndon Johnson signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 to prevent nations from hiding behind pretentions to industrial uses of nuclear energy in order to create nuclear weapons. Over the years, India, Pakistan and North Korea ignored U.S. efforts to forestall new entrants into the nuclear club, although we have tried over the years to derail their efforts. Now we appear to have an agreement with Iran that paves the way for this rogue nation – this supporter of terrorism – to join the nuclear club as an equal to the current nuclear powers.
“Iran has spent many years investing in a sophisticated network of facilities, technology and machinery to enrich uranium despite the fact that it is technically easier and more cost effective to purchase fuel-grade uranium for a civilian energy program – if that was really what they wanted. The April framework for this nuclear agreement allows Iran to have 6,104 enrichment facilities, although only 5,060 supposedly would actually enrich uranium for 10 years. This so-called ‘sunset clause’ limits the length of verifiable constraints on Iran’s nuclear program as called upon by 367 members of Congress who believe these constraints must last for decades and not just 10 years.
“However, this would be workable only if there is an inspection regime that allowed full and unfettered access to all sites to ensure that the agreement was being observed. Despite Iran’s government pledging to refuse to allow inspections of its military sites, President Obama said in April that ‘Iran has also agreed to the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history.’ The Iranian government has made clear that it will not cooperate with such inspections no matter what Administration officials have said. The managed access to nuclear facilities agreed to provides weeks for Iran to contest any request to inspect facilities during which they can move materials and cover up any nuclear production.
“The U.S. capacity to enforce such inspection depends upon the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect all sites without notice that is necessary to allow for concealment of nuclear activities, including those related to military purposes. IAEA Director General Yukia Amano said recently that ‘With the cooperation from Iran, I think we can issue a report by the end of the year on the assessment of the clarification of the issues related to possible.’ Iran has over the years claimed that the IAEA’s information on its military activities related to nuclear energy were a fiction created by Western intelligence agencies. Nevertheless, Secretary of State John Kerry said the Administration has “absolute knowledge with respect to the certain military activities they were engaged in” and that we no longer needed to demand that Iran satisfy IAEA concerns over military nuclear activities.
“So in the end, we have an insufficient nuclear arms agreement for which compliance cannot be suitably verified. Meanwhile, we have only delayed Iran’s march toward their long-sought hegemony in the Middle East and may have ushered in a nuclear arms race in that region as our allies rush to defend themselves against a threat we failed to contain. Saudi Arabia reportedly already is pursuing nuclear weapons, but more troubling is the possibility that Sunnis, not limited to a national government, may seek nuclear weapons in their centuries-old clash with Shiites as embodied by an impending nuclear Iran.
“The President has threatened to veto any attempt to block this flawed deal. If this deal with Iran is as obviously as good as the President claims, why is his emphasis on a veto rather than on persuasion? It is clear what Iran has gained from this effort; they are poised to achieve their goal of becoming a nuclear power. What is the benefit for the United States?”
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