Last Thursday, House Republicans announced legislation to alter the existing vestiges of Obama’s disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal. As congress approaches a looming April deadline for recertification of the agreement – if the agreement is not modified and made tougher through the legislative process, Iran will be able to meet the lax standards of the Obama Administration and reap massive rewards.
Republican defense hawks, Liz Cheney (daughter of former Vice President, Dick Cheney), and Pete Roskham are looking to add measures to ban the manufacture of ballistic missiles – nuclear or conventional, and force Tehran to allow, “anytime, anywhere” checking of any suspicious research labs or nuclear facilities.
The current nuclear deal gives Iran 24 days notice of before international inspectors show up to inspect and investigate for illegal nuclear activity. However, this is more than enough time for Iran to box up any elicit nuclear research and hide it in an offsite location.
This new legislation will enforce a much more stringent inspection regime, with harsh consequences fore even the slightest failure. All previous sanctions will snap back into place immediately if anything is found that would “enable Iran to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium or plutonium for a nuclear weapon in under 12 months,” the bill said.
Cheney, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, says that the previous accord brought in by the Obama administration was undoubtedly “the most damaging agreement our country has ever entered” while it completely failed to take any necessary steps for the prevention of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Furthermore, Cheney said that the new legislation “establishes the minimum requirements that must be in any verifiable agreement in order to obtain future sanctions relief. Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, and we must no longer gamble our nation’s security on a dangerous agreement that provides only a false sense of security.”
The bill will also add even more sanctions on Iran to force it to comply with human rights standards and prevent their continued support of international terrorism.
Senator Bob Corker and Ben Cardin are working on parallel legislation in the Senate. However, not everyone is pleased. “If what we hear about the Corker-Cardin process is true, then it doesn’t do enough to deal with the present Iranian missile threat,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu – a senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “I think the intention driving the House bill is to more assiduously plug loopholes in the deal and to very tightly rewrite the conditions under which the U.S. grants sanctions release to Iran and to make sure the most likely delivery vehicle toward an Iranian nuke, which is a ballistic missile, is taken into account,”
