Iran nuclear deal is misguided

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To the editor:

It is instructive that on the day I turned to the op-ed pages of The Riverdale Press (Aug. 20) and read four out of four letters in support of the nuclear pact with Iran, there were these news items flashing across my computer screen.

Iran, under a secret agreement with the UN body responsible for monitoring nuclear activities, will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a military site suspected of working on atomic weapons, according to an AP exclusive report. Endorsed by the Obama administration, this concession has been granted to no other country in the past.

U.S. officials, reports CNN, “are concerned” that Russia is about to sell Iran an advanced missile defense system that would make it extremely difficult for the U.S. to attack Iran’s bomb-making facilities if it is caught cheating or reneges on the agreement in the future.

The United States entered negotiations declaring that its goal was a system of “verify, don’t trust” and “anytime, anywhere” inspections. Now Iran will “inspect” itself at least at one site and be able to stall outside inspectors for at least 24 days at other locations.

If the final agreement is “the best deal they could get,” as one letter writer put it, with “they” referring to the U.S. and the five world powers, imagine how readily these countries will cave in should Iran violate the accord once it is flush with $150 billion in immediate sanctions relief cash, is ready to trade and has made any possible military action far more dangerous and costly.

There also seems to be an undercurrent of wishful thinking in the Press letters, the hope that the regime that has cheated in the past and continued to chant “Death to America” and restate its mission to destroy Israel just days after signing the nuclear agreement will reform itself, concentrate on selling pistachios and focus on domestic economic problems rather than continue to increase military spending and support terrorists. Having managed to pursue a belligerent course under what one letter writer called “barbaric sanctions,” Iran is not likely to feel restrained and humble having been bolstered by tons of cash and the West’s green light to become a nuclear threshold state.

In October 1994, President Clinton hailed another U.S. nuclear agreement as “a crucial step toward drawing North Korea into the global community.” I fear this latest accord with Iran will have the same result.

Sy Oshinsky

Iran, President Obama, Sy Oshinsky

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