Friends, when it comes to the Iran deal, how can you tell what to believe? On the one hand, you have a lot of people who think it’s a good deal. I outlined many of them in my latest piece for LobeLog:
Athough opposition to the Iran deal is at a fever pitch on Capitol Hill, support is growing for the deal outside of the halls of Congress. Crocker and Kurtzer were among the over 100 former US diplomats who signed on to a letter supporting the JCPOA written by the Iran Project on July 16. One of that letter’s signers was Nicholas Burns, who, as George W. Bush’s undersecretary of state for political affairs, helped to draft some of the first nuclear-related sanctions against Iran. In The Financial Times on July 14, he wrote that the JCPOA “is a sensible agreement and far preferable to an Iran unfettered and ever closer to a nuclear weapon.” On July 20, a bipartisan group of 60 former national security officials and legislators signed a similarly supportive letter also written by the Iran Project. Today, Kurtzer and Burns joined a group of former US diplomats, including five former US ambassadors to Israel, in sending another letter in support of the deal to both houses of Congress. Arms control experts have largely supported the deal as well, including Gary Samore, the president of the otherwise anti-deal organization United Against a Nuclear Iran. Last but hopefully not least, a majority of the American public also supports this deal, despite deep skepticism that it will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and strong disapproval of the way the Obama administration handled the negotiations.
On the other hand, you have a group of knowledgeable experts well-informed observers interested third parties idiots grand-standing for cheap political effect, and boy do they make a compelling case against this whole thing. Take Mike Huckabee, who over the weekend offered a reasoned, trenchant argument against the deal that wasn’t in any way grotesque or self-parodying:
Here’s Huckabee’s full quote, said in an interview with Breitbart News‘ editor-in-chief, Alexander Marlow, on Saturday:
“This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal. It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people. I read the whole deal. We gave away the whole store. It’s got to be stopped.”
Say, nothing outrageous or offensive about that. And totally in line with Huckabee’s previous positions on negotiating with Iran, like what he said in 2007:
But three months earlier, in a speech on Sept. 28 to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Huckabee strongly suggested putting the United States on a track toward normalizing diplomatic relations with Iran, while not ruling out using military force if necessary. He also criticized President Bush for naming Iran as part of the “axis of evil.”
“We haven’t had diplomatic relations with Iran in almost 30 years, my whole adult life,” Huckabee said. “A lot of good it’s done us. Putting this in human terms, all of us know that when we stop talking to a parent or a sibling or a friend, it’s impossible to accomplish anything, impossible to resolve differences and move the relationship forward. The same is true for countries.”
Or what he wrote in 2008:
Whereas there can be no rational dealings with al Qaeda, Iran is a nation-state seeking regional clout and playing the game of power politics we understand and can skillfully pursue. We cannot live with al Qaeda, but we might be able to live with a contained Iran. Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons on my watch. But before I look parents in the eye to explain why I put their son’s or daughter’s life at risk, I want to do everything possible to avoid conflict. We have substantive issues to discuss with Tehran. Recent direct negotiations about Iraq have not been productive because they have not explored the full range of issues. We have valuable incentives to offer Iran: trade and economic assistance, full diplomatic relations, and security guarantees.
Yes, arguing for negotiations with a country you think is going to perpetrate another Holocaust is definitely an intellectually consistent position.
And then there’s Ted Cruz, who bolsters the logic behind his anti-deal case by flat-out lying whenever it suits his purposes:
At a right-wing rally last week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) railed against the international nuclear agreement with Iran in ways that seemed extreme even by Ted Cruz standards. “If this deal goes through, without exaggeration, the Obama administration will become the world’s leading state sponsor and financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” the Republican presidential candidate said.
But perhaps more interesting than the senator’s ridiculous rhetoric was his willingness to engage Code Pink and its co-founder, Medea Benjamin, in debate. As Roll Call reported, that may not have been the senator’s best idea.
“[L]et’s have some dialogue,” Cruz told her. “So one of the things you said is ‘if Iran is trying to get nuclear weapons.’ Well the nice thing is I believe … truth matters. You know one entity, one person with whom there is no ambiguity in terms of whether Iran wants a nuclear weapon is the Ayatollah Khamenei. Is President Rouhani. Both of whom explicitly said they are developing nuclear weapons. There is no doubt about it.”
Benjamin retorted, “That is absolutely false,” prompting jeers from a crowd of Iran deal opponents and a protest from Cruz that he not be interrupted.
The problem in this case is that Cruz’s claim is demonstrably wrong. The Texas Republican may believe that Iranian leaders will one day violate the terms of its agreement and develop such a weapon, but in reality, neither Khamenei nor Rouhani have “explicitly said they are developing nuclear weapons.”
That just hasn’t happened. It’s not a matter of opinion. The fact that Cruz made the false claim while stressing that the “truth matters,” made this slightly more amusing, but nevertheless wrong.
So who are you going to believe? People who actually do diplomacy and arms control for a living, or people who are so desperate to steal part of a news cycle from Donald Trump that they’ll literally say anything at this point, no matter how false or inflammatory? It’s a real toss-up.
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