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Obama’s Dishonesty On Iran – Washington Examiner

Under the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, that nation’s theocratic regime receives relief from economic and arms sanctions in exchange for curtailment of its nuclear program. But there’s a catch – when inspectors seek to verify Iran’s compliance, the Iranians can delay the inspection of any site for at least 24 days.

But before the deal was struck, the Obama administration had promised much more — “anytime, anywhere” inspections, on demand. When asked about this on Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry displayed symptoms of amnesia.

“This is a term that, honestly, I never heard in the four years that we were negotiating,” Kerry said. “It was not on the table. There’s no such thing in arms control as anytime, anywhere.”

Barring a genuine brain malady, there is no gentle way of skirting around the fact that this is a lie. The White House specifically promised this in public. Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser and spokesman, in making the case for the Iran deal in April, told CNN, “Under this deal, you will have anywhere, anytime, 24/7 access as it relates to the nuclear facilities that Iran has.”

Beyond this, Kerry appears to have specifically discussed it as a negotiating point with senior lawmakers. After speaking with Kerry, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., mentioned “anytime, anywhere” in a speech this spring to Jewish groups uneasy about the deal. And Kerry seems to have told the same thing to the Republican chairmen of the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees, according to their recollection.

Unfortunately, Kerry’s difficulty in telling the truth extends well beyond the issue of inspections. For example, consider the far more dangerous and controversial provision in the deal that lifts the existing sanctions against Iran’s acquisition of conventional arms and ballistic missiles. Kerry said in the same Sunday interview that the deal extended those sanctions by five and eight years, respectively. On Tuesday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the same thing explicitly – that the sanctions would have ended if not for the deal.

In fact, the U.N. sanctions needed no extension – they would have remained in place without further action until Iran stopped enrichment of uranium altogether. The deal that Kerry negotiated is what actually lifts the sanctions. And this concession is troubling by itself — after all, even if Iran can argue that its nuclear program has peaceful applications, it cannot say this of its ambition to develop its ballistic missile technology.

But it is even more troubling that Kerry and the Obama administration cannot just admit they traded this concession to get a deal. Instead, they are pretending that their dodgy concession is some kind of diplomatic victory for the United States.

In his weekly radio address, President Obama warned Americans, concerning the debate over the Iran deal, “you’re going to hear a lot of overheated and often dishonest arguments about it in the weeks ahead.” He was right. Only the dishonest arguments are coming from his own administration, which is desperately trying to defend dangerous concessions that will pave the way for a radical regime to finance terrorism and build a nuclear arsenal.

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