Thoughtfully and powerfully, Sen. Chuck Schumer stood tall in opposing President Obama’s increasingly unpopular nuclear deal with Iran.
Few in Washington know the dynamics of the Middle East as well as Schumer. Few have greater access to the most informed figures. Few have been more calibrated on foreign policy, sometimes hawkish, sometimes not.
And no one had more at stake in not only rejecting Obama’s call for congressional approval so soon after the President issued an overly aggressive appeal for support, but in also promising to override an expected presidential veto of a thumbs-down vote.
All of which bolstered Schumer’s credibility, as did his sober point-by-point analysis of the pact negotiated by Obama and the leaders of Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. Ultimately, well-founded mistrust for Iran’s long-term intentions brought Schumer to reject Obama’s judgment.
Schumer is the Senate Democrats’ presumptive new leader as of next year. In breaking with Obama, he displayed the courage to put principle over politics when many in his party are rallying to the President’s side, including Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
Separating the deal into three parts — nuclear restrictions on Iran over the next 10 years, restrictions after 10 years and the pact’s non-nuclear implications, Schumer concluded that the dangers outweigh the benefits.
Of the inspections for the next decade, he noted, a 24-day delay agreement puts the lie to the idea that “anywhere, anytime” probes will keep the mullahs honest. And those inspections can only be triggered by a not-easily-won majority of an eight-member commission.
Even if Iran were caught cheating, “snapback” economic sanctions “seem cumbersome and difficult to use,” he writes, a polite way of saying they won’t snap back at all.
After 10 years, the picture is still gloomier. “If Iran’s true intent is to get a nuclear weapon,” Schumer warns, “it must simply exercise patience.”
And, he says, there’s every reason to think Iran will use the at least $50 billion and likely much more that the deal pours into its economy to sponsor terror, in part to placate upset hardliners.
Accepting the proponents’ standard — which is not whether the agreement is ideal, but whether America is better with or without it — Schumer concludes the world should return to harder bargaining with Iran.
Schumer’s understatement was devastating compared with Obama’s hard sell, in which Americans opposed to signing onto his deal are either morons, warmongers or both.
Sounding like a bizarro-world George W. Bush, Obama suggested opponents of the bargain were in bed with jihadists, outrageously declaring that Iranian hardliners “are making common cause with the Republican caucus.”
“The choice we face,” the President declared, while suggesting opponents of the deal were eager to repeat the mistakes of the Iraq war, “is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war.”
Except for Obama’s Strangelovian straw men, everyone wants diplomacy to bring Iran to heel rather than war. The trouble is that the President’s too-eager diplomacy produced awful results.
By leaving Iran at most a year away from building a bomb, Obama will all but certainly trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
By allowing Iran to keep developing ballistic missiles, he will put the mullahs in position to target the heart of Israel.
By lifting economic sanctions, the President will pour more billions into the Iranian economy, strengthening the mullahs if they make an unstoppable dash to build a bomb in the future.
And some money from sanctions relief will be spent on terror, even if Obama does dismiss the fact as insignificant.
The mullahs continue to call for Israel’s destruction, and their top agents say publicly that the International Atomic Energy Agency will be denied access to Iranian nuclear facilities.
Meanwhile, in violation of a Security Council resolution, a top Iranian military man — sanctioned as a sponsor of terror, tied to an attempt to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. and blamed for 500 American deaths in Iraq — has just surreptitiously visited President Vladimir Putin in Russia.
Trust? Nyet.
While Americans usually rally around a President when big foreign policy questions are in play, this deal has become ever less popular as Americans have learned more about it.
“I’ve had to make a lot of tough calls as President,” Obama said Wednesday, “but whether or not this deal is good for American security is not one of those calls, it’s not even close.”
He’s right about that, at least — it’s not close. Congress must stand up to stop a President who, it seems, can no longer contain himself. Schumer’s courageous stance can help lead the way.
