Undemocratic Secret Side Deals are Central to Iran Pact

 

IBDEditorials.com

“Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons,” President Obama said four months ago. AP

Iran Deal: Congress has already given up any chance of stopping President Obama's surrender to Iran by agreeing to let him have a veto. Now Congress discovers secret side deals that it won't even get to examine.

The supplemental secret deals among America, Iran and the United Nations' nuclear weapons watchdog agency, just discovered by Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., trample on Congress' constitutional role in foreign policy and threaten representative government in America itself.

These clandestine agreements, which the Obama administration apparently had no intention of disclosing, are far from being side items.

As National Review reports, "the International Atomic Energy Agency would negotiate separately with Iran about the inspection of a facility long-suspected of being used to research long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons" — the Parchin military complex 19 miles outside of Tehran, where Iranian and Russian ballistic missile activities have reportedly taken place.

The U.N. agency hasn't been allowed into the site in a decade, and as Pompeo complained, keeping the details secret of what was agreed to regarding Parchin "is asking Congress to agree to a deal that it cannot review."

The military aspects of Tehran's nuclear program are addressed in a second secret deal. Earlier this year, Secretary of State John Kerry insisted these had to be dealt with definitively, but he soon caved and declared that those concerned were obsessed with the past.

Evidence of military applications, of course, would demolish Iran's claims that its nuclear program is all about medical care. It would mean that the Islamofascist regime has lied about considering nuclear weapons un-Islamic, and that the Ayatollah Khamenei's nearly decade-old fatwa against them was a deception.

Just four months ago, President Obama was taking the Ayatollah at his word. "Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, and President Rouhani has said that Iran would never develop a nuclear weapon," Obama said in a Farsi-subtitled TV address to Iran, as he and the first lady celebrated the Iranian New Year.

Well, if we believe them, Mr. President, why is a deal even needed? And what about "the most transparent administration in history"?

The White House website still has Obama's memo to agency heads saying, "Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing," that "public engagement enhances the government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions" and "executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information."

Neither the public nor its elected representatives are allowed to know what's in these secret side deals so they can "engage" and "participate in policymaking."

As far as Obama is concerned, the Iran deal is good for you, there's no need for you to know what's in it, so accept it. That's an executive order.