This summer, as Congress has weighed the nuclear deal struck between President Obama and Iran, much of the debate has focused on secret side agreements between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Both the White House and the IAEA have sought to reassure the public on this issue, explaining that such side deals between IAEA and the nations it oversees are common. The terms of these agreements, which govern the details of inspections and other technical matters, are rarely made public – and in fact, even members of the Obama administration do not seem to have seen the actual documents involved in these side-agreements.
This explanation was intended to prove that the side agreements are not a big deal. But what if the devil really is in the details when it comes to Iran and its nuclear program? What if the terms contained within secret sidecars to Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran effectively defeat the purpose of making the deal in the first place?
Not only is this possible, but last Wednesday the Associated Press released a report that suddenly makes it seem likely. AP reported on and then later published a draft version of the agreement, under which the Iranian regime – not international inspectors – would be permitted to gather nine samples for testing from Parchin, a site that Iran is suspected of using to develop nuclear weapons.
Such an arrangement would give the Iranian regime effective control of the process, making inspections of this site a farce. If this is so, then the Obama administration has agreed to give Iran massive sanctions relief, amounting to $140 billion, in exchange for little more than promises that cannot be verified independently.
Obama partisans’ first reaction to this news was to criticize the Associated Press reporter who filed it. But once the draft document was released, they had precious little to say – at least, those who did not go so far as to assert that AP had obtained a fake document planted by Israeli intelligence.
For its own part, the IAEA called the AP report a “misrepresentation,” but offered no specifics that might challenge the report’s contents or reassure the public about the inspections regime.
Obama has sold his deal with Iran’s theocratic regime – both to Congress and to the public – as the only way of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. Assuming for the sake of argument that this is so, it is obvious that the details really do matter regarding inspections of suspected Iranian nuclear weapons development sites.
For all of Secretary of State John Kerry’s reassurances that this agreement does not require blind faith in Iran’s intentions, it is now unclear whether even he has the information he would need to say this with any certainty or credibility.
A recent poll shows that 56 percent of Americans now oppose the deal – up four points from July. During this 60-day period of consideration, Americans feel less persuaded than before. That alone does not demand that Congress reject it, but it does mean that the burden of proof is on the White House to show that this deal is worth throwing an economic lifeline to the Iranian regime.
So far, Obama has failed to make that case. It’s up to him to prove that Iran is not being given a blank check to investigate itself. There will be consequences for members of Congress who blindly back Obama on this question despite lacking the proper information.
