Thursday, December 03, 2015

Bravo

Our State Department thinks of everything.

I've worried that Iran will exploit the provision of the Iran nuclear deal to cheat and get nukes far earlier than even the deal envisions on paper. But our State Department has guaranteed that nobody here can accuse Iran of breaking the agreement.

How? The Iran nuclear deal isn't any sort of agreement at all:

President Obama didn’t require Iranian leaders to sign the nuclear deal that his team negotiated with the regime, and the deal is not “legally binding,” his administration acknowledged in a letter to Representative Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) obtained by National Review. “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document,” wrote Julia Frifield, the State Department assistant secretary for legislative affairs, in the November 19 letter.

What is it? A firm handshake and a nod?

But it is hard not to be very impressed. If this isn't a signed document of any sort, how can Iran violate it?

So nothing Iran does can derail the bonuses that will be passed around in the State Department for this accomplishment.

Yet this is only the final line of defense for doing nothing about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Remember that provision of the deal that said that Iran didn't have to admit to past nuclear weapons work because the International Atomic Energy Agency would issue a report on the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear programs to clear the way for the deal?

Yeah, about that report due by the end of the year:

A U.N. report on whether Iran has in the past carried out work related to nuclear weapons will not reach a definitive conclusion on the subject, the chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday.

Who could have seen this coming, eh?

It's the Schultz Doctrine, all around.

How can Iran not go nuclear the way we've arranged this?

Bravo. Well played. All around.

UPDATE: The Iranians insist that we pretend they never had a nuclear weapons program or they will refuse to abide by the pathetic restrictions placed on their nuclear ambitions by the Joint Comprehensive Wink and a Nod negotiated by Secretary of State Kerry:

Tehran has long urged [IAEA director] Amano to close the file and assure everyone that there never was a “Possible Military Dimension” to its nuclear program. Now, the mullahs say, unless Amano certifies that they never intended to build a nuclear bomb, they won’t shut down the spinning centrifuges. They may even take all their marbles home.

The worst secretary of state ever is likely to go along with this:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that preventing Iran developing a nuclear weapon in future was more important now than "ambiguities" about its past military efforts.

What a shock.

They pretend. We pretend. It was predictable.

And speaking of worst secretary of state ever:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday it might be possible for the Syrian government and rebel forces to cooperate against Islamic State militants without Syrian President Bashar al-Assad having first left power.

I remember when Kerry viewed Assad as a Hitler who had to be confronted (with unbelievably small strikes, recall).

He is clearly the worst secretary of state in living memory--and it isn't just me, if I lack credibility.

Give this super genius another year and American troops will be on the ground fighting at Assad's side.