Editorial about Iran deal misses facts

The Sunday opinion piece, “Trump axes the Iran deal and creates a new crisis” (May 13), condemning the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran deal demonstrates some popular, but misguided conclusions.

It is true that the international inspectors have stated that they have “found no evidence” of cheating by the Iranians. It is also true that they are denied access to military sites where this cheating would most surely occur; they are required to give 24 hour notice of their intent to inspect a facility and wait, in some cases, weeks before they gain access; they only inspect what they know about — the underground Iranian nuclear research facility of Fordow was in operation for seven years before it was discovered, and only then through an Iranian informer.

In other words, we don’t know what Iran is doing relative to nuclear weaponization. Even the international inspectors admit this fact.

The nonchalant dismissal of the recently uncovered evidence of Iran’s advanced research into nuclear weaponization in the past also misses an important fact. Iran’s assurances that they had never done any of this research was a key foundation of the negotiations leading to the deal. If, as the author implies, everyone was aware of this, why did the negotiations go forward?

Even before the withdrawal from the deal, the so-called “moderate” leadership in Iran continued to call for “death to Israel,” followed closely by “death to America.”

It’s time to remember what former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin called the first lesson of the Holocaust: “When someone says they intend to kill you, believe them.” BILL EMERSON, WEST PALM BEACH