Schumer: If US quits deal, US sanctions still will hurt Iran

Former Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent who aggressively campaigned against President Barack Obama in 2008 on behalf of Republican John McCain, will lead the charge against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran for a group opposed to the pact.

When the 2013 negotiations began, “Iran had accumulated enough 20 percent enriched uranium that the required additional enrichment time for weapons use was only a few weeks”, 29 top U.S. nuclear scientists and engineers said in an August. 8 letter to President Obama.

The latest episode in the ongoing U.S.-Russia missile defense debate centers on the nature of the Iranian threat to the U.S. and its allies in Europe, and whether the Iran nuclear deal satisfies the conditions to abandon missile defense laid out in Obama’s 2009 Prague speech. Obama said.

The president tells us we should sign on to his deal because there are no better options.

Netanyahu, in a conference call last week to members of the Jewish Federations of North America, said that the JCPOA would give Iran “two paths to the bomb”.

The Quds Force, the elite military unit responsible for arming Iran’s terrorist proxies, will benefit from a windfall of funding-a possible 50 percent budget increase-if the Iran deal is approved by Congress.

Indeed, more than 60 percent of Iran’s population is under 30 years old, with many poised to revolutionize Iran.

All of its nuclear facilities will remain open.

Iran has almost 18,500 IR-1, first-generation centrifuges that could be used to enrich uranium. So has Iran’s disclosure of the military dimensions of its past atomic activity.

“We have a lot of other challenges posed by Iran”. Instead, the current deal is based largely around fastidious stockpile management. When the George W. Bush administration took office, Iran did not possess a single centrifuge. It still doesn’t remove the means of reaching a nuclear weapon within a short time span if Iran ever decided to scrap the deal.

“We consider that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) the United States and its partners negotiated with Iran will advance the cause of peace and security in the Middle East and can serve as a guidepost for future non-proliferation agreements”, read the letter. After all, the deal itself suggests that infrastructure control wasn’t the negotiators’ primary objective, as the JCPOA actually includes provisions that expand the range of Iran’s nuclear hardware and expertise. During that time, preventing a nuclear-armed Iran was among my highest priorities.

REUTERS/Mehr News Agency/Majid AsgaripourIranian workers stand in front of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, about 1,200 km (746 miles) south of Tehran October 26, 2010. So if forced to choose, they would comply – and have complied – with American demands.

Schumer said the deal has too many flaws. “That’s who we’re making a deal with”.

In an interview with NPR, Obama’s tone was restrained, but his words were not.

Iran also has been building a new heavy-water reactor at Arak. “I don’t agree with the judgment he made; I’ve said that”. The president could respond to a Congressional vote of disapproval by reopening negotiations with the parties, coming up with a more effective agreement, and then asking Congress to vote on an improved deal.