Iran-Deal Hypocrites
Among those slamming President Trump for withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal are several members of Congress, mostly Democrats, who opposed it then and say they still do now.
People like New York’s Sen. Chuck Schumer, who came out against the deal but then sat quietly rather than publicly push to defeat it.
After Trump killed it, he said: “The right thing to do would have been to try and come up with our allies with an agreement on those issues and let the nuclear part of this continue as is because it’s not being violated in any way.”
Huh? Team Trump spent the last year pushing the Europeans to help fix the deal, to no avail. And Schumer himself said back at the time that the accord became a clear loser for America after its first few years.
Democrats also complain that Trump’s withdrawal sends the message that the US isn’t a reliable negotiating partner.
But that argument, like the deal itself, doesn’t hold water. For one thing, it’s not a formal treaty or executive agreement. And President Barack Obama did it that way deliberately, because a majority of the Senate opposed it.
Nor did you hear Democrats raise the issue when Obama scrapped his predecessor’s deal for missiledefense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic.
True, Iran hasn’t been caught violating the terms of the accord. But the real problem is all the nuclear-related activity not covered or ignored by the deal — including Iran’s right to deny inspectors access to military sites.
Moreover, none of the positive after-effects that Obama effusively promised have come true. The Tehran regime hasn’t moderated its warlike behavior or its support for terrorism.
And, as former Obama adviser Frederic Hof has conceded, the genocidal conflict in Syria has worsened precisely because of the Iran deal. Team Obama, he’s written, decided that “Iran required appeasement in Syria as the price of a nuclear agreement.”
About the only real benefit, as Noah Rothman notes at Commentary, was unintended: Facing a mutual threat, Israel and Saudi Arabia have formed a de facto alliance.
The most surprising opponent is New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, who presented the most clear and compelling case against the accord back in 2015 and proposed a viable alternative (in answer to those who claimed no better deal was possible).
But then Menendez, fresh off his corruption trial, is up for re-election. And in deep-blue New Jersey, anything that looks like support for Trump is a political liability.
Too bad. He, Schumer and the rest of the “we’re against it but we’re also for it” crowd should reread Menendez’s remarks from three years ago. They remain convincing — and explain why Trump was right to pull the plug on such a bad deal.