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Today is a very sad day. Not only for the state of Israel, but for the entire world, even if at this moment, the international community refuses to see the tragedy

UN Security Council Enshrines Disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal into International Law



The United Nations Security Council approved unanimously a resolution endorsing the final Iran nuclear deal agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The resolution, which will go into formal effect 90 days after its passage on July 20th, incorporates the JCPOA as an attachment. The intent in adopting the Security Council resolution so quickly was, in the words of New Zealand’s Foreign Minister who was presiding over the Security Council session, “to give international legal force to the agreement reached in Vienna, and extend the obligations it contains across the broader UN membership.”
U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power said basically the same thing in her speech following the Security Council vote.
“Today we have adopted a UN Security Council resolution enshrining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, agreed to six days ago in Vienna.”
The New York Times reported on July 20th that Secretary of State John Kerry could not prevail on his negotiating partners or Iran to put off lifting the UN sanctions on Iran until Congress was able to weigh in. Even some Democrats complained about moving to the Security Council so quickly. Kerry got defensive during an interview on a Sunday talk show. “It’s presumptuous of some people to suspect that France, Russia, China, Germany, Britain ought to do what the Congress tells them to do,” he said. “They have a right to have a vote.” They may have a right to have a vote, but the United States has the right to veto any such premature resolution. The Obama administration thought it was more important to defer to the impatience of the “international community” than to respect Congress’s role in the U.S constitutional process. Now, with the resolution in place, Congress is being boxed in by the argument that failure to proceed with implementation of the JCPOA starting in 90 days irrespective of what Congress does would violate international law. Congress does have a couple of options. It could bar Obama from waiving any congressionally imposed U.S. sanctions, if it is able to override Obama’s veto. It could also decide down the road not to lift any U.S. statutory sanctions permanently. However, if Congress were to take such actions, the tables would be turned diplomatically in Iran’s favor. If Iran decided to walk away because of congressional action, the U.S., not Iran, would be blamed for sabotaging the deal. Alternatively, Iran could call Congress’s bluff and rely on the rest of the international community, acting under the new Security Council resolution, to do business with Iran so long as Iran was demonstrating compliance with its commitments. In that case, any “snapback” of sanctions would, as a practical matter, be virtually impossible to accomplish if Iran were then to violate the terms of the JCPOA. Iran would have already been sufficiently integrated into commercial dealings with other countries and the U.S. too sidelined by its own unilateral actions inconsistent with the Security Council resolution to overcome objections of Iran’s trading partners, including within Europe, to any future snapback of sanctions.

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Yet at least putting off the vote on the new Security Council resolution for 90 days was a risk that President Obama should have been willing to take if he cared first about the U.S. Constitution and the welfare of the American people. But time and time again, he has shown that he does not care. What does President Obama care about instead? Iran has grievances with the United States that we need to understand, he said, in keeping with his global apology tour. An example of such a grievance was what Obama described in an interview with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman as U.S. “involvement with overthrowing a democratically elected regime in Iran.” He was referring to the 1953 overthrow of the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in which the CIA had a hand. However, if Obama’s handlers had done a bit more research, they would have found out that Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, had supported Mosaddegh’s overthrow in part because Mossadegh's cabinet had submitted a bill granting women the right to vote. He supported the Shah until the early 1960’s, when bills for land reform and female franchise were introduced by the Shah’s government. Using Mosaddegh’s overthrow as an excuse for seizing American hostages in 1979 and holding them in deplorable conditions for 444 days was a cynical maneuver for which the Iranian regime should apologize. It could have made a start by releasing the three American hostages, including a pastor and a reporter, it is holding today. Indeed, the hostages should have been released immediately upon the signing of the JCPOA. However, Obama did not think it was important enough to make their release a precondition for moving forward with completing his legacy nuclear deal. Obama’s apology tour continues, only this time the consequences may be catastrophic. Samantha Power reiterated the Obama administration line that the deal with Iran “would cut off all pathways to fissile material for a nuclear weapon for the Islamic Republic of Iran, while putting in place a rigorous inspection and transparency regime to verify Iran’s compliance.” The deal does no such thing. The agreement provides Iran with opportunities to game the system set up to resolve disputes over international inspectors’ access to undeclared sites where suspicious activities may be taking place. Even if Iran were to abide by every single provision of the deal, it will become in 12 years or so a nuclear threshold country, with the ability to produce enough nuclear material to build a nuclear bomb in virtually no time at all. Within 8 years, Iran will be free to acquire any items, materials, goods and technology that could contribute to the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems. And nothing in the meantime will be able to stop Iran from dealing with the rogue state, North Korea, which already has nuclear bombs despite a deal negotiated years ago by the same Wendy Sherman who shepherded the deal with Iran. Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor spoke to the press shortly after the fateful Security Council vote. He summed up the truth that few wanted to hear:
“Today is a very sad day. Not only for the state of Israel, but for the entire world, even if at this moment, the international community refuses to see the tragedy."


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Joseph A. Klein, CFP United Nations Columnist -- Bio and Archives

Joseph A. Klein is the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom.


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