July 30, 2015 | Quote

Know Comment: American-Iranian Fairy Tales

Here is an updated scorecard of the misrepresentations advanced by the Obama administration in defense of its concordat with Iran. The list grows every day.

In case of Iranian violations, America can “snapback” sanctions.

The opposite is true. The agreement intentionally embeds the US in a web of time-consuming and complex multilateral processes that place significant and perhaps insuperable obstacles to both a snapback of economic sanctions and resort to an American military strike. Prof. Jeffrey Herf of the University of Maryland has detailed how the deal places sky-high barriers in the way of American enforcement in the event of Iranian violations.

Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has shown that the nitty-gritty of the so-called sanction snapback provisions actually provide disincentives for the US and its partners to confront Iran in the event that Iran does cheat (which it has a long record of doing, and has done even during the recent nuclear talks). Moreover, Iran is supposed to get Western help and technology for defense against nuclear sabotage. So the US is essentially deterring itself from ever acting against Iran, no matter what. Which apparently is exactly what President Obama was after.

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Issues:

Iran