It was not 11 minutes before a 2020 Democratic primary candidate told the first big lie of the seventh debate Tuesday evening at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
The lie came courtesy of former Vice President Joe Biden, who claimed Iran adhered strictly to its 2015 nuclear agreement with the United States before President Trump came along and ruined everything.
Iran most certainly violated the terms of the deal prior to Trump leaving it.
Biden’s lie came in response to a question that was asked initially of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said, “In the wake of the Iran crisis, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has again called for all U.S. troops to be pulled out of the Middle East, something you [Sen. Sanders] have called for as well.”
“Yet,” Blitzer continued, “when American troops last left Iraq, [the Islamic State] emerged and spread terror across the Middle East and indeed around the world. How would you prevent that from happening again?”
Sanders responded. When the senator finished, Blitzer posed the same question to Biden.
“I was part of that deal to get the nuclear agreement with Iran, bringing together the rest of the world, including some of the folks who aren’t friendly to us,” said the 2020 Democratic front-runner.
He added, “And it was working. It was working; it was being held tightly; there was no movement on the part of the Iranian government to get closer to a nuclear weapon.”
Not quite.
Please enjoy the following news headlines published between 2015, the year the Obama White House agreed to deal with Iran, and 2018, the year Trump scuttled the deal:
- Reuters: “Iran once again exceeds a nuclear deal limit: IAEA report.”
- Reuters: “Iran’s October missile test violated U.N. ban: expert panel.”
- CNN: “German intelligence: Iran may have tried to violate nuclear deal.”
- L.A. Times: “Iran says military sites are off-limits for nuclear inspections despite U.S. pressure.”
Also, as the Washington Examiner laid out in a Jan. 8 editorial, it is important to note that the since-scuttled deal’s greatest flaw was that even if Tehran adhered strictly to the agreement, it did nothing to address Iran as a conventional threat.
“The Iran deal was not disastrous merely because Obama accepted a ludicrously weak inspections protocol, although he did. It was awful because, even if the deal were followed to the letter, it still enabled the regime to become a more powerful conventional threat by providing the mullahs with the money to pursue terrorism and the freedom to develop ballistic missiles,” the editorial reads. “Furthermore, restrictions imposed by the deal would have started to sunset after 10 years, meaning the terror state still maintained its long-term ability to develop nuclear weapons.”
For obvious reasons, Biden does not want to admit any of this. He certainly does not want to admit it on a debate stage, which makes sense. After all, it is savvier to lie and claim everything was good and fine before Trump came along than admit to having brokered a disastrously weak nuclear deal with the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism.
