President Obama has promoted the recently agreed Iran deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as “a comprehensive, long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” There are many fallacies and ambiguities in this statement.

One is that this is a “long-term” deal. With some major nuclear restrictions lapsing as early as year eight and all of them vanishing by year fifteen, the only thing the deal is longer than is Obama’s presidency. But another aspect of this statement is, to say the least, problematic: that the deal stops Iran’s advance toward a nuclear weapon. For the deal fails to put in place any meaningful brakes on Iran’s ballistic missile program and may well even enable it.