President Barack Obama's declaration that there will be rigorous inspections to foil any attempt by Iran to cheat on the nuclear proliferation pact is a "dismissive, cavalier, we've-got-it-all-covered argument" that's patently false, Illinois Republican Rep. Peter Roskam tells
Newsmax TV.
In an interview with "Newsmax Now" host John Bachman, the lawmaker dismissed
the president's assertion that "nuclear material isn't something you can hide in the closet" as contradicting history.
"The [United States] completely missed … that the Iranians were building, that they were putting their [nuclear] infrastructure together in the first place," he said. "The whole world missed it, frankly, so the declarative statement by Barack Obama that says, 'hey, don't worry, we've got this covered, all is well' is a false claim."
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Roskam also said "there's no capacity" to get the 24/7 type of inspection of the Iranian regime based on the deal negotiated by the Obama administration.
"So that sort of dismissive, cavalier, we've-got-it-all-covered argument is not persuasive and should be rejected for those reasons," he said.
Roskam notes Secretary of State John Kerry and Obama "throughout the negotiations have said that they were willing to walk away from a bad deal."
"They've switched arguments now, and they've said that there is no alternative to this deal," he said."The inconsistency is now coming to full fruition because if they were willing to walk away from a bad deal, that means that there was an alternative."
Roskam said, however, "time is not the friend of this deal," noting New York Democratic Rep. Steve Israel, "one of the president's strong allies," and Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch are both against the pact.
Israel, an assistant Democratic Whip; New York Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee; and Deutch, the ranking Democrat on the Middle East Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, all announced this week
that they oppose the deal with Iran.
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