by George Rasley

CHQ readers will recall that during the campaign then-candidate Donald Trump regularly excoriated the Obama – Iran nuclear weapons deal (JCPOA) saying, “My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in business a long time. I know deal-making and let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic – for America, for Israel, and for the whole Middle East.”

And we’ve explained in any number of articles, most recently in Countdown To Get Us Out Of The Obamabomb Deal With Iran and, Even UN Says Iran Not Complying With Obama Nuclear Weapons Deal, Conservative National Security Experts Urge President Trump to Withdraw From Obama’s Nuclear Deal With Iran, President Trump’s UN Speech vs. Action On Iran And North Korea and If North Korea Has Miniature Nukes, So Does Iran,  the inevitable result of continuing to falsely certify that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear weapons deal, and allowing their continued nuclear weapons and missile development cooperation, is an anti-American world dominated by two nuclear-armed rogue states; North Korea and Iran.

The message that the United States must stop falsely certifying that Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA seems to be getting through to the President, but the next step – withdrawing from the agreement entirely – continues to run into strong opposition from Secretary of State Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Mattis and most especially from National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster.

Reuters reported that Defense Secretary Mattis said on Tuesday the United States should consider staying in the Iran nuclear deal unless it were proven that Tehran was not abiding by the agreement or that it was not in the U.S. national interest to do so.

“If we can confirm that Iran is living by the agreement, if we can determine that this is in our best interest, then clearly we should stay with it,” Mattis told a Senate hearing.

”I believe …, absent indications to the contrary, it is something that the president should consider staying with,” Mattis added.

Earlier, when Mattis was asked whether he thought staying in the deal was in the U.S. national security interest, he replied: “Yes, senator, I do.”

Naturally, because most squishy establishment Senators wish to keep the United States in an unconstitutional agreement they helped to facilitate there was no follow-up question of “How is it in our national security interest to stay in the JCPOA?”

Indeed, the case for decertifying that Iran is in compliance and take us out of the agreement has been made, as we pointed out above, on numerous occasions, and with great force – yet Mattis, Tillerson and McMaster continue to maintain that President Trump should not withdraw from this disaster.

According to a scoop by POLITICO’s Eliana Johnson:

Donald Trump’s national security team has unanimously recommended that he decertify the Iran nuclear deal — but that he stop short of pushing Congress to reimpose sanctions on Tehran that could unravel the agreement.

Trump’s team plans to work with Congress and European allies to apply new pressure on the Iranian regime, according to a strategy developed in an Iran policy review led by national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

Johnson reports that Iran has warned that if the U.S. reimposes sanctions, Tehran might restart its nuclear program.

This is of course a smokescreen because the evidence is that Iran never stopped its nuclear weapons program, so threatening to restart it puts the United States no worse off than it is now.

Our take is that this “decertify, but stay in strategy” is a scam engineered by McMaster and the cadre of Obama holdovers he has brought into the National Security Council staff to rope-a-dope Trump into leaving the Obamabomb agreement in place until a President who shares the Obama worldview can be elected and inaugurated.

The ayatollahs are using Obama’s handiwork to legitimize their terrorist state, facilitate (and conceal) their continuing nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs, and acquire valuable resources from gullible negotiating partners. Ambassador John Bolton is right, the idea of staying in, but decertifying is too cute by half – it is time to withdraw cleanly from the Obamabomb deal.

The next certification date is October 15, 2017. In the face of all of the Obamabomb agreement’s obvious flaws, recertifying the agreement, but staying in it is, in our view, rank political cowardice.

We urge our CHQ readers and friends to contact the White House through this link. Tell President Trump that he must not bow to pressure to falsely certify that Iran is in compliance with the Obama nuclear weapons deal and that it is time to withdraw from Obama’s disastrous nuclear weapons deal with Iran completely and prepare every available option to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

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George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie’s ConservativeHQ.com. A veteran of over 300 political campaigns, he served on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle, as Director of Policy and Communication for Congressman Adam Putnam (FL-12) then Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, and as spokesman for Rep. Mac Thornberry now-Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

 

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