Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said the latest information Congress has about the Iran nuclear deal shows the Obama administration distorted the truth about that agreement, and created a “fairy tale” to help get it approved.
“The early stages of the Obama administration’s nuclear talks with Iran were conducted in secrecy. Unfortunately, we’re only now beginning to see the full extent of the administration’s deception,” the Texas Republican wrote in a column published Wednesday.
Despite a promise from President Obama that Iran would never be able to get nuclear weapons, Iran can restart its nuclear program in 11 years, Cornyn argued.
“The most troubling part of this saga is that the president and his team didn’t dedicate their time to crafting a deal with real teeth to hold Iran accountable,” Cornyn wrote. “Instead, they distorted the truth to create a fairy tale.”
Cornyn pointed to a recently released document that “eases restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program before the agreement ends.” That document described a road map that Iran may be able to follow in order to replace its older centrifuges with newer equipment a little more than a decade from now, which some reports said could put Iran in a position to build a bomb soon afterwards.
“Under the deal President Obama struck, after just 10 years the Iranian government will be well-positioned to create a nuclear weapon in six months or less,” the senator wrote. “That’s not keeping Iran from ever creating a nuclear weapon, as the president promised. It essentially reinforces Iran’s ability to do just that.”
Cornyn called this reality about the Iran nuclear deal the “latest example of the Obama administration’s deception in selling a bad deal to our country.”
The deal does not make Iran “more responsible” or “less hostile,” Cornyn argued.
“The deal hasn’t compelled Iran to change course at all. Iran remains the foremost state sponsor of terrorism. It continues to support Hezbollah and bankroll efforts to attack American and Israeli interests in the Middle East. The regime still actively works against U.S. efforts on the ground in places like Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, inciting violence and equipping terrorist groups across the region to thwart our efforts to bring greater stability and peace. On top of all that, in complete defiance of the United Nations, Iran test-fired ballistic missiles last spring,” he wrote.
The landmark Iran deal was signed on July 14, 2015, between Iran, the U.S., the U.K., Russia, France, Germany and China.
