OK I did it, I read the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that outlines the deal the US and the EU made with Iran in regards to Iran’s nuclear program. My head hurts, my eyes are bleeding and I am very frightened. The agreement is a total capitulation to a terrorist regime bent on regional hegemony and total subjugation of any person or country that it deems an enemy. First off, Iran gives up nothing concrete and receives a number of concessions with nothing more than a promise to stop what they have been doing.   Now the president tells us that this is a good agreement that stops Iran from moving down the road to building a nuclear device. “After two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not: a comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” the president told the country Tuesday morning, I just don’t see it. Had a country other than Iran been involved I might have more faith, but Iran has not shown itself to be trustworthy. The diplomatic writing lays out the responsibilities of the parties. In the third provision of the preamble it states that “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” In 2000 the North Koreans promised the United States and subsequently in the Six party Talk that “Both sides commit not to nuclearize the Korean Peninsula. The United States must “provide formal assurances” not to threaten or use nuclear weapons against North Korea. Pyongyang is required to “consistently take steps” to implement the 1992 North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. As history shows, all of the talks and frameworks and agreements broke down and North Korea is now a nuclear power. What will keep Iran from doing what North Korea did? The JCPOA spends a lot of time on the need for the US and EU to end any sanctions and to ensure the lifting of UN sanctions, but not much on what happens should Iran renege. There is discussion of a Joint Commission that is responsible for monitoring implementation and conflict resolution but not much else. The president speaks of the ability to snap back sanctions in the event Iran does not comply with the letter of the agreement, but the language indicates this will not be easy if even possible without full agreement of all parties.

This Agreement does little to stop Iran from nuclear research; it may slow it for a while but not stop it. To make matters worse I feel that this agreement which shows a lot of back pedaling on the part of the US will make it that much more difficult for us to negotiate in the future. Much of the concern of the west was stopping Iran from producing weapons grade nuclear material through uranium enrichment. In order to enrich uranium centrifuges are required. We know Iran has these and in the agreement they must phase out the largest number of those they have, which are denoted as IR-1 centrifuges. The fact is these are old designs that have never worked properly and have reduced the anticipated output, and it is expected that they would have been replaced by the more efficient IR-4 and IR-5 units which requires Iran to have less centrifuges to produce more enriched uranium. The concern was part of the Nov 2013 Joint Plan of Action, which required Iran not to feed the IR-5s, and it was assumed the IR-5 and other more efficient centrifuges would be disallowed in any agreement. Not only did Iran continue to feed the IR-5 but the JCPOA allows Iran to keep them provided use is only for R&D.

President Obama in announcing the agreement indicated that this is not built on trust but on verification. One of the activities Iran said it would not engage in is “Designing, developing, acquiring, or using computer models to simulate nuclear explosive devices. How do you stop a country from developing computer models? How do you verify that Iran is not doing so?

This is not a completely bad agreement if everything goes absolutely as planned. The odds of that happening are very remote given Iran’s track record of keeping promises. The “best’ we can hope for is that Iran focus’s its attention on funding their exporting of terror to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon with their new found wealth and delay developing a nuke for a few years.

I hope I am wrong. If I am wrong then nothing will go wrong. If however I and a number of others are right we could face a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East in a few short years. I hope congress has the courage to stop this agreement in its tracks. This is not a good deal, its not even appeasement it is a deal for deals sake. To ignore the potential of destruction just to build some self-indulgent legacy is the audacity of arrogance