Sen. Ted Cruz wrote a letter to President Obama last August reminding him that senators had not been informed of violations of a major nuclear arms treaty before voting on New START in 2010.
It stated that “Russia has potentially mislabeled intermediate missiles as intercontinental missiles and fielded air defense systems that possess ground-to-ground ballistic capability.”
Cruz was referring specifically to a ground-launched R-500 cruise missile with a range of over 1,200 miles and a newer missile, the RS-26 ICBM dubbed by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin as “the missile defense killer.”
Noting that the White House has put an embargo on releasing a Pentagon report that details these issues, Cruz added that “If true, these would not only constitute clear violations of the INF treaty, but present a material threat to the United States and our allies.”
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs Madelyn Creeden finally got around to briefing members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about Moscow’s violations in a closed-door November 2012 session.
At that time, committee chairman Senator John Kerry — who was then only two months away from becoming a Secretary of State Kerry who would negotiate the Iran deal — wasn’t at all eager to discredit the Obama administration’s desperate brand of deal-doing.
As reported by Josh Rogen in the Daily Beast, an exasperated Kerry responded: “We’re not going to pass another treaty in the U.S. Senate if our colleagues are sitting up here knowing somebody is cheating.”
Accordingly, the Iran “pact” was never presented to Congress as a binding treaty requiring approval by a two-thirds Senate vote. It also explains why we’re not likely to hear violations — or even full terms — of the deal reported with any enthusiasm by the same administration.
There are several such problems. Actual circumstances are very different than commitments we heard Obama announce back in 2013 that “Iran must accept strict limitations on its nuclear program that make it impossible to develop a nuclear weapon.”
For starters, as former CIA nuclear weapons analyst Fred Fleitz of the Center for Security Policy told Fox News in January, “few Americans understand that Iran keeps its nuclear infrastructure under the nuclear deal and will be allowed to expand it.”
Instead, Iran will be allowed to continue enriching uranium with its 5,000 centrifuges, “and will be developing more advanced centrifuges while the deal is in effect.”
Meanwhile, the core from its heavy-water plutonium reactor which Tehran agreed to remove “will be rebuilt and replaced with Chinese assistance.” Although the upgrade will produce less plutonium, the Chinese collaboration will enable “Iran to master this technology.”
Fleitz offers a caveat to assertions by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry that Iran has “shipped out its uranium stock pile." He points out that “They failed to mention that this was a swap for an equivalent amount of uranium ore that can be converted into enriched uranium in a few months.”
And contrary to a claim we heard in the president’s January State of the Union address that “Iran has rolled back its nuclear program," Tehran has announced the construction of two 1,000-megawatt power plants in collaboration with Russia, and two other small power plants in cooperation with China.
In addition to collaborating with China and Russia, it’s also worth noting that Iran and North Korea have worked together over two decades.
Iran has provided financing for North Korea’s nuclear program in return for nuclear and missile technology. Senior Editor Bill Gertz reported in the Washington Free Beacon that Kim Jong Un's regime even had the temerity to supply missile components to Iran “during recent nuclear talks,” which violated U.N. “sanctions on both countries, according to U.S. intelligence officials.”
Gertz went on to say that details of those shipments “were included in Obama’s daily intelligence briefings” but were kept secret from the U.N.
Remarkably however, missile prohibitions were never included in that “breakthrough” White House Iran deal.
Shared Iranian, North Korean, and Chinese military priorities undermine the security of our South Korean and Japan allies.
Perhaps recognizing that North Korea may have as many as 100 missile-deliverable nuclear bombs within five years, President Obama met with South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye last year to discuss arming her nation with a regional U.S. and Japanese Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) detection and interception network.
Beijing . . . which is demonstrating threatening behavior in the East and South China Seas, has warned Seoul that accepting THAAD would “sacrifice its fast-developing relations with China.”
Who can doubt that Iran, now free to export oil and $150 billion richer to purchase arms from China, Russia, and North Korea, has us entirely over a barrel?
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of “Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom”(2015) and “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” (2012). Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.