The U.S. senators who sold out to the mullahs
Exclusive: Lt. Col. James Zumwalt fingers Warren, Sanders et al. over Iran nuke deal
By Lt. Col. James ZumwaltPublished January 29, 2020 at 7:10pm
With tensions flaring in January between the U.S. and Iran after a U.S. strike killed terrorist leader Maj. Gen. Qassam Soleimani, Tehran announced it was fully withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the 2015 nuclear deal.
President Donald Trump had already withdrawn from it in May 2018.
Pro-JCPOA critics argued it represented the last best chance for Iran to toe the line to stop development of its nuclear arsenal.
That argument was flawed for reasons detailed below. But forgotten is just how President Barack Obama pulled an end run on the Senate – the body constitutionally required to approve all U.S. treaties with a two-thirds vote – to pass JCPOA.
And, most disturbingly, is how Iran bought votes in a revelation bordering on treason.
JCPOA was clearly a disaster for the following reasons:
1) Obama failed to report JCPOA did not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons – it only prevented such development for 10 years. And, with Tehran's record for violating international agreements, the mullahs were likely to obtain the capability earlier.
2) Obama and the U.S. JCPOA negotiating team leader, then-Secretary of State John Kerry, failed to disclose two secret side deals with Iran. Had Republicans not discovered them, JCPOA would have been submitted to a Senate vote without the senators knowing they existed.
While the deals were later explained to senators, questions exist as to how much detail was.
They required Iran "come clean" on how far advanced its nuclear arms program was – a necessary requirement to determine whether future violations occurred.
Suspicions were Iran had tested nuclear device detonators at its Parchin military site.
While Tehran had since bulldozed the area to cover this up, it agreed international inspectors could test the soil to verify whether weaponization had occurred.
Outrageously, the side deals denied international inspectors access to Parchin to collect the samples; instead, the Iranians would provide them!
No wonder Kerry sought to keep the deals secret.
3) There was no regulation of Iran's rapidly improving, nuclear-armed, ballistic missile capabilities.
4) Despite Iranian/North Korean cooperation on their nuclear arms programs, no effort was made to curtail it.
5) JCPOA allowed Iran to conduct uranium enrichment, build advanced centrifuges, buy ballistic missiles, fund terrorism and have a near zero breakout time for building a nuclear bomb.
Thus, in a nutshell, JCOPA empowered Iran to achieve the very goals after 10 years that we were seeking to permanently deny them.
And, again, that was only if they complied.
Kerry's negotiations failed to alleviate concerns of JCPOA's critics.
They had no misconception the Iranian nuclear threat would melt away permanently or, for that matter, even temporarily.
The JCPOA parties included Iran and the "P5+1" nations. "P5+1" referenced the five permanent U.N. Security Council members (China, Russia, France, the U.K. and the U.S.) plus the one non-member, Germany.
For all intents and purposes, JCPOA was a treaty and, as such, required U.S. Senate approval by at least a two-thirds majority.
However, Obama and Kerry knew two-thirds Senate approval was impossible. Accordingly, JCPOA was not called a treaty but, rather, a "non-binding political commitment."
Doing so allowed the Obama-Kerry team to circumvent the two-thirds vote requirement, thus only needing a simple majority.
Despite this sweetheart deal for Iran, the mullahs would never sign it, really making it no more than a "gentleman's agreement" either side could terminate.
Additionally, without obtaining congressional approval, Obama secretly shipped cash payments to Iran.
One for $400 million was sent on the day JCPOA was implemented, apparently as a down payment to ensure the release of Americans held captive there; later, another $1.3 billion was shipped.
Obama claimed the money was owed Iran.
However, it was not owed to the mullahs – but owed to the shah's government tossed out in 1979.
Every president since then had held back from paying the funds to a terrorist government, until Obama.
Undoubtedly, we would be much further down the road today to a mullah regime collapse had Obama not rejuvenated Tehran with these funds or the release of $150 billion in Iranian assets that followed.
It is this funding that allowed Iran to financially back the Shia militias in Iraq now threatening democracy there. And, in another "sweetener" for the Iranians, Obama mandated American citizens, victimized by Iranian terrorism and owed judgments totaling over $53 billion, could not attach the Iranian assets he was releasing.
With the damning JCPOA drawbacks delineated above, the question is how could any senator have voted for it? The answer is money.
In an act bordering on treason, several Democratic senators who voted to pass JCPOA accepted contributions from the Iranian American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) – a lobbying group supporting Tehran.
Once IAPAC maxed out its legal contributions to Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., he voted for JCPOA.
But he was not alone. Others accepting money included Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.
While America slept, treason took place in the Senate.
Disturbingly, on Jan. 8, 2020, a day after Iran fired missiles at U/S. bases in Iraq, presidential candidates Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., along with others, held an hour-long conference call with another pro-Iran lobbying group – the National Iranian American Council.
Disgracefully, both candidates criticized Trump during the call for his "march to war" with Iran.
Peter Schweizer's recent book "Profiles in Corruption" reveals a clear conflict of interest for Warren concerning Iran.
Her son-in-law, Sushil Tyagi, from India, oddly had received funding from Tehran for a film he produced.
It came from the same government agency overseen by Iranian propagandists.
Later, Tyagi's name was quietly removed from the film's credits.
Iran's intelligence minister recently boasted Tehran actually runs a lobbying group in Washington to promote the ruling mullahs' agenda.
Republican senators have called for an investigation.
Contrary to Hillary Clinton's assertion about Trump supporters, the real "deplorables" are the senators who sell their votes to Iran.
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