Carbon-testing the Iranian side deal

Powerline's Scott Johnson summarizes the investigation into the secret side deal allowing Iran to control its own nuclear inspections, as reported by Fred Fleitz in IBD/NRO:
When the AP’s George Jahn first broke the story of the secret side deal with Iran on Parchin, the side deal was viewed as so absurd that it was attacked by the left-wing media as a forgery. In the spirit of President Obama, the forgery was imputed in some precincts to Israeli intelligence. The side deal, with its self-inspection provisions — text here — is indeed absurd but, unfortunately, it is the real deal.
Johnson concludes:
[I]t’s hard to see how anyone in Congress can vote for it in light of this deliberate attempt by the Obama administration to conceal from Congress its effort to drop a crucial benchmark needed to verify Iran’s compliance with the agreement.
Is it hard?  Do we really think the Senators who are planning to vote for it are struggling with their decision?

2 comments:

Grim said...

No. They're planning to filibuster the vote so that the Senate never goes on the record as opposing it.

Grim said...

Fleitz is claiming that the author -- whom he thinks is an aide to Kerry or Obama himself -- basically dropped this draft off with the IAEA and Iran and said something like, "You guys work out how you want to handle this, but here's an idea we'd be prepared to accept." We don't know what the final agreement looks like, but if the US wrote this draft, the Iranians and IAEA knew we were prepared to accept anything at all.