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The Iran Threat

State Department Report Proves Iran Deal a Failure

The State Department's annual report reaffirms that Iran remains the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. This should be the last nail in the coffin of the administration's Iran deal case.

BY CounterJihad · @CounterjihadUS | June 7, 2016

The administration’s Iran deal is a complete failure.  Ben Rhodes is the top White House adviser who arranged what he called an “echo chamber” to issue “narratives” about Iran he himself admits were false to puppet journalists and think tanks.  Yesterday he defended himself, and by extension the administration, which has also confessed to lies.  “For critics, it’s easier to have a debate about messaging than the deal itself,” Rhodes said.

In fact, it is not hard to criticize the deal itself.  Start with the fact that yesterday the US Department of State’s official annual report reaffirmed that Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrrorism. Iran, which uses terrorism as statecraft, has not been changed into a responsible global actor by the deal.  Instead, the report documents that Iran supports Hezbollah and has recently reconnected with Islamic Jihad.  Its Quds Force is operating in Iraq, training Shia militias that are loyal to its own government and not to the government in Baghdad.  At least some of the vast stores of money released to Iran from this deal will be going right into funding terrorism.

Nor has the deal countered weapons proliferation in the region.  According to a Brookings report, the deal itself may be behind a new round of proliferation across the region.  That certainly includes Iran, which has already violated the deal multiple times through its testing of ballistic missiles.  As Senator Menendez attempted to point out to US Secretary of State John Kerry, the language in the deal was weaker than the existing language in UN resolutions demanding that Iran not test nuclear-capable ballistic missiles.  Kerry wouldn’t listen, but Vladimir Putin did:  his government used the very language Menendez was pointing to in order to claim that there was no violation of the deal in testing nuclear-capable missiles.

Nor has the deal made Iran less committed to hardline politics and regional aggression.  Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told his nation that “Those who say the future is in negotiations, not in missiles, are either ignorant or traitors.”  His allies fixed the elections so well that they are now in control of Iran to a greater degree than ever before.  99% of moderate and reform candidates were disqualified before anyone was allowed to vote.  The hardest of the hardliners will now choose Khamenei’s successor as Supreme Leader.  Yet Rhodes’ ‘echo chamber’ described these elections to the American public as a victory for moderates — the exact opposite of the truth.

Nor was the infamous “side deal” anything other than what critics said it would be:  a whitewash of Iran’s military nuclear program.  As the AP reported would be the case, but as Rhodes’ ‘echo chamber’ tried to hide, Iran collected its own samples from its Parchin facility.  No IAEA personnel were present.  Satellite photos showed Iran conducting major work on the Parchin facility during this process.  Were they removing materials, or cleaning up evidence?  No one will ever know, given the weakness of the side deal.  This was a reckless move that leaves us blind as to just how advanced Iran’s military nuclear program is.

Meanwhile, lest we forget, Iran never ratified the “Iran deal” anyway.  Iran’s parliament passed a completely different law that committed it to ending the nuclear program of Israel, not its own.  Supreme Leader Khamenei’s acceptance was of the Parliament’s law, which he further altered, not of the deal that President Obama signed with such fanfare.  Even the US State Department admits that the deal is “not legally binding” on Iran.

Iran is coming out of this deal richer and unreformed about its support of terror.  It will have better nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, and advanced Russian aircraft and anti-aircraft technology.  The whole region will be bristling with newly proliferated weapons.  Iran will be firmer in the grip of its hardline elite than ever before.  These are the fruits of the deal.

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