Dershowitz: Iran Feels Deal Gave Them Leverage, US Capitulated

The deal to swap five Americans for seven Iranians made Iran feel it bested the United States, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz tells Newsmax TV.

"Iran realized that they have some leverage when they have hostages and we will capitulate and exchange our prisoners for them or our sailors for them," Dershowitz said Monday on "Newsmax Now."

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Dershowitz, author of the new book The Case Against the Iran Deal: How Can We Now Stop Iran from Getting Nukes?, said the Obama administration shouldn't be singled out for criticism over the deal, since practically every democracy has made similar bargains.

"I wish right from the beginning every country in the world that refused to engage in this kind of pact with the devil, but they have engaged in it and that's become kind of a routine process when people are taken as hostages," he said.

The prisoners let go by the United States had been involved in sanctions violations and were not terrorists, and the people held by Iran were innocent civilians, including a journalist and a Christian pastor, Dershowitz noted. That's a better deal than Israel has been forced to make, getting one Israeli soldier freed for 1,000 Palestinian terrorists, he said.

Still, he said, it only encourages the arrests of more journalists and other innocents.

"Already we see people being kidnapped in Iraq," he said. "Iraq is now Iran. For many, many purposes these may be ISIS kidnaps, there may be Iranian-stimulated kidnaps, we just don't know."

It is unclear whether the controversial Iran nuclear deal will be a positive step, Dershowitz said.

"If Iran in 10 years develops nuclear weapons, it will be a disaster," he said. If Iran is prevented forever from developing nuclear weapons, as negotiator Wendy Sherman has said, "It's a great deal," Dershowitz said, though he added that President Barack Obama said it will be a good deal if it stops them for at least 10 years.

"We still don't know what we bought in exchange for giving them $100 billion," he said.

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