On Dec. 10, 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to make the case for a tentative six-month agreement reached with Iran a few weeks earlier over the radical Islamic regime’s nuclear program. “We’re asking you to give our negotiators and our experts the time and the space to do their jobs, and that includes asking you while we negotiate that you hold off imposing new sanctions,” Kerry pleaded to lawmakers.
This Nov. 24 — after those six months of talks and a six-month extension both bore no fruit – Kerry and his team of negotiators agreed to give the regime yet another seven-month extension. But what more is there to talk about?
Over the course of the negotiations, the Obama administration has given ground to Iran on uranium enrichment, plutonium development and missile technology. This has not led to a deal. Iran continues deceive the international community, to inch toward a nuclear weapon, and to enjoy billions of dollars in sanctions relief in the meantime.
In a press conference following the extension, Kerry insisted, “The interim agreement wasn’t violated. Iran has held up its end of the bargain, and the sanctions regime has remained intact.” In his drive to convince skeptics that his negotiations haven’t been an epic failure, the U.S. Secretary of State has resorted to spinning on behalf of Iranian regime.
In reality, information contained in a quarterly report from the International Atomic Energy Agency demonstrated that Iran was feeding a centrifuge at its Natanz nuclear facility, “an apparent violation of that commitment to freeze centrifuge R&D activities” at the plant, according to an analysis done by the Institute for Science and International Security. Iran was also caught increasing its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, which also runs counter to the agreement.
Beyond this, the IAEA report also cautioned, “the Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”
As Iran gains more time to make nuclear advances and builds its stockpile of uranium, it also builds its leverage for future negotiations. Already, the debate has shifted from convincing Iran to dismantle its centrifuges, to arguing over how many thousands of centrifuges it will be allowed to keep.
On top of building leverage through gains to its nuclear program, Iran gains leverage as its economy improves due to the generous sanctions relief granted to the regime just for showing up at the negotiating table. In the first six months of the interim agreement alone, the sanctions relief was worth $11 billion to Iran, according to a joint report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Roubini Global Economics.
Furthermore, one of the supposed goals of providing sanctions relief was to empower Iranian moderates by giving them a “win” that they could use to show how the country could benefit from pursuing a diplomatic — rather than military — path. But in reality, economic benefits from the sanctions relief have been flowing to the radical Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. As fewer benefits have been seen by average Iranians, the supposedly moderate President Hasan Rouhani has actually seen his support slip.
Iran has a history of using international negotiations as a way to buy time for its nuclear program. Weeks before he was elected Iran’s president in 2013 (if we were to call it an actual election), Rouhani boasted about how, as Iran’s negotiator with France, Britain, and Germany in 2003, he was able to drag out the diplomatic progress to advance the nuclear program. At first, he explained, the Natanz facility was barely operable. He said, “We needed time.” He bragged that the regime’s 150 centrifuges blossomed to 1,700 under his leadership. “We did not stop,” he said. “We completed the program.”
In his testimony of December of last year, Kerry told Congress, “I’m not saying never” to sanctions. He said, “[I]f this doesn’t work, we’re coming back and asking you for more.”
Well, it didn’t work — not just for the six months Kerry initially asked for, but for a full year. Given that the Obama administration is committed to giving Iran’s terrorist-funding regime a very long leash, it’s now up to Congress to step in and pass new, tougher sanctions, and end this dangerous charade.
