JERUSALEM,
Israel -- President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran could be an
important issue this election year. Supporters of the deal say it will
prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb but critics still warn that
it's a bad deal.
Obama hailed the deal as a diplomatic breakthrough when it was signed
just a little more than a year ago by the United States and five other
world powers.
"After two years of negotiations, the United States together with our
international partners has achieved something that decades of animosity
has not," he explained. "A comprehensive, long-term deal with Iran that
will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon."
Despite the praise by Obama and others, some experts still warn the
flaws within the agreement could mean that instead of preventing the
Persian nation from building a nuclear weapon, it will lead to a nuclear
Iran with potentially catastrophic results for the Middle East, Israel,
and even the United States.
"Their major goal in this negotiation was to get maximum sanctions
relief in exchange for minimal nuclear concessions and that's basically
what they got with this deal," Emily Landau, Israeli nuclear expert,
explained.
She believes Iran won the negotiations as the agreement failed to address the nation's ballistic missile program.
"Their biggest victory is not having their breakout capability
destroyed, undermined, you know, dismantled. Not only that, they gained
legitimacy for their uranium enrichment," Landau added.
Throughout the negotiations, the Obama administration presented a
narrative that said if you don't support the deal, you're for war. They
also presented Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a moderate.
Former CIA official Clare Lopez believes the administration wasn't honest with the American public.
"We're looking at a real coordinated effort to deceive the American
people about this deal, … while not even touching on the covert program,
which is of course where the weapons development is really going on
literally underground in bunkers and tunnels under mountains," Lopez
said.
Lopez cites the now infamous New York Times magazine article
where Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said they used the
media as an "echo chamber" to help push its argument to the public in
the United States.
"So trying to sell all of that package of goods through duplicity and
-- deceit, but using a very agreeable, a very complicit media in -- in
the United States is what that echo chamber was all about," Lopez added.
While the deal puts restraints on Iran for 10 or 15 years, Landau says they don't mind.
"Looking at the long term, which is what Iran does, they've kept
their breakout capability even if they have to wait out 10 to 15 years
until the sunset clause comes into effect and all these restrictions
that we're talking about come into effect," she explailned. "Whether
they uphold them, everything will be lifted and then they will be in a
much better position to move towards nuclear weapons capability."
While ISIS seized the headlines in the West, Landau and Lopez believe Iran remains the far greater danger.
"A country that can develop intercontinental ballistic missile
capability; that could maybe in 10 years reach the United States
obviously we're talking about a different magnitude of capability,"
Landau said.
"No comparison at all," Lopez added. "The threat from the Iranian
regime is existential, particularly as regards their nuclear weapons
capability and the EMP component of that."
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