Democrats had been outraged when Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel had criticized the Iran Deal in a speech to Congress. It was said to be a personal insult to the president. But they have been quite sanguine about President Macron of France and his congressional speech implicitly criticizing President Trump's foreign policy while pushing the Iran Deal.
Unfortunately, Macron's central claim was quite misleading.
"Our objective is clear. Iran shall never possess any nuclear weapons. Not now, not in five years, not in 10 years, never."
Whether or not that's Macron's objective, it's certainly not that of the Iran Deal. Even Obama admitted that.
Obama, whose top priority at the moment is to sell the framework deal to critics, was pushing back on the charge that the deal fails to eliminate the risk because it allows Iran to keep enriching uranium. He told NPR News that Iran will be capped for a decade at 300 kilograms — not enough to convert to a stockpile of weapons-grade material.
“What is a more relevant fear would be that in Year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point, the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero,” Obama said.
That's the breakout time to a bomb. And that's the best case scenario. We're not living in the best case scenario because Obama lied about that 300 kilograms.
As part of the concessions that allowed Iran to exceed uranium limits, the joint commission agreed to exempt unknown quantities of 3.5 percent LEU contained in liquid, solid and sludge wastes stored at Iranian nuclear facilities, according to the report. The agreement restricts Iran to stockpiling only 300 kg of 3.5 percent LEU.
If the total amount of excess LEU Iran possesses is unknown, it is impossible to know how much weapons-grade uranium it could yield, experts said.
And Iran has made it clear that its breakout time is shorter than ever.
"If America wants to go back to the experience (of imposing sanctions), Iran would certainly return in a short time -- not a week or a month but within hours -- to conditions more advanced than before the start of negotiations," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told a session of parliament broadcast live on state television.
Macron is echoing Obama's grandiose claims. But the fine print is pretty clear.
The agreement doesn't stop Iran from advancing toward a nuclear weapon. Not now. Not ever.