President Donald Trump is scheduled to announce his decision about whether to continue supporting the Iran nuclear deal today, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is among the voices urging him to abandon the deal, addressing the topic in an op-ed for Fox News Opinion.
Trump “should not hesitate to nix this flawed and dangerous agreement that is beyond fixing,” wrote Rubio, noting that “bipartisan majorities in both chambers of Congress voted against it due to its many fatal flaws.”
One of Rubio’s chief concerns is the financial windfall that the deal provided to Iran’s mullahs, releasing about $100 billion in frozen assets and lifting economic sanctions.
The mullahs, observed Rubio, did not use these resources to benefit the Iranian people, but instead “aggressively built up their ballistic missile program,” “ramp[ed] up their support to Lebanese Hezbollah and other terrorist groups,” and prop[ped] up the Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, whose regime is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands, and has repeatedly used chemical weapons against innocent civilians, including women and children.”
The other major flaw of the deal, according to Rubio, is its failure to reign in Iran’s nuclear capabilities and ambitions. Even the “modest and temporary limits on Iran’s capabilities to produce weapons-usable nuclear material” are set to expire in just a few years, which former President Barack Obama has conceded.
A related fundamental flaw is the failure to mandate real “anytime, anywhere” inspections. As Rubio notes, the Iranian regime “has adamantly refused demands to allow unfettered inspections at its military sites—including the Parchin military complex, where inspectors previously found man-made uranium particles.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stunning revelation last week that Israel had obtained Iran’s “atomic archive,” a secret stash of over 55,000 documents and other evidence, was further proof of Iran’s unfettered desires to achieve nuclear weapons.
Recent efforts by White House officials and others to “fix” the Iran deal are doomed, wrote Rubio, because none of these flaws are addressed — including the Iranian regime’s ongoing oppression of their own people.
“The American people deserve better than a bad deal that paves the Iranian terror regime’s path to nuclear weapons,” wrote Rubio, urging a reimposition of economic and financial sanctions.
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter: @rumpfshaker.
[Cross-posted at The Capitolist.]
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