It wasn’t even 15 minutes in before one of the 2020 Democratic primary candidates told the first big whopper of a lie at the 7th debate Tuesday evening at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
The lie came, of course, from former vice president Joe Biden, who claimed Iran adhered strictly to its 2015 nuclear agreement with the United States before President Trump came along and ruined the world.
Joe Biden told America during the debate that the Iran nuclear deal was “working” before President Trump withdrew us from it in May 2018.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
The argument among Democrats is that the nuclear deal stopped Iran, the #1 state sponsor of terror, from obtaining nuclear weapons, even though it’s written right into the deal that upon expiration of the deal Iran is legally allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.
Was the Obama administration so obtuse that they thought the Iranian regime would change its mind over time?
At no point did Iran stop research for building nuclear weapons, and that means at no point did Iran “adhere strictly” to the deal’s terms. It was a lie.
The former vice president said during the debate that he would return the United States to the Iran deal, and claimed that Trump triggered the current confrontation with Iran by leaving the agreement.
Let’s get this straight.
Joe Biden believes it’s okay for Iran to attack a US embassy and kill an American contractor in the process, because President Trump pulled us out of an agreement that was never an agreement in the first place, because Iran never signed it.
Only a Democrat could use that kind of logic.
Biden said:
I was part of that deal to get the nuclear agreement with Iran, bringing together the rest of the world, including some of the folks who aren’t friendly to us — and it was working. It was working, it [Iran] was being held tightly.
It was not being held tightly at all. Iran was still working on research for obtaining nuclear weapons.
Part of the disastrous deal was that Iran’s military bases were off limits to UN weapons inspectors, so the Iranian regime claimed that their most important nuclear research facilities were now military installations.
How dumb was Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and former secretary of state John Kerry?
And don’t forget that to inspect a facility you had to give Iran a 24-day notice. Wait, what? That’s right.
You had to give Iran the amount of time it would take to remove anything incriminating from a facility inspectors wanted to see.
Biden went on:
There was no movement on the part of the Iranian government to get close to a nuclear weapon. And look what’s happened. He went ahead and it was predictable from the day he pulled out of the agreement, Trump, what exactly would happen. We’re now isolated. We’re in a situation where our allies in Europe are making a comparison between the United States and Iran, saying both ought to stand down, making a moral equivalence. We have lost our standing in the region. We have lost the support of our allies. The next president has to be able to pull those folks back together, re-establish our alliances, and insist that Iran go back into the agreement, which I believe with the pressure applied as we put on before, we can get done.
Almost everything Biden said is not true. In fact, the only part of his statement that is true is Biden taking credit for supporting the Iran deal. And not a single moderator called him on it.
The fact that President Obama never took the Iran deal to the US Senate means he knew the American people would never accept it, because when all is said and done, the Iran nuclear deal was a treaty, and Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of our Constitution says that the Senate will give advice and consent on treaties:
“The President… shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur….”
Obama just said it was a deal and not a treaty, and we heard nothing from the mainstream news media.
Iran never adhered to the deal.
From Breitbart:
“It was working.” Under the lenient terms of the deal, Iran was able to resume its efforts to become a nuclear power after several years. And those efforts never ceased. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed dramatically in April 2018, citing a trove of Iranian nuclear files seized by Israeli intelligence, the regime continued its efforts to develop a nuclear weapon. Moreover, the deal did not stop Iran from developing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, or spreading terror. Iran also used billions of dollars in restored assets, sanctions relief, and ransom payments ancillary to the deal to fund its aggressive regional agenda, including not only supporting terrorism but also backing the genocidal Syrian dictatorship.
“We’re now isolated.” Not only is the U.S. back in step with Israel and the Sunni Arab world — which opposed the Obama administration’s appeasement of Iran — but Europe also backs President Trump’s current efforts. Earlier Tuesday, Britain, France, and Germany formally invoked a provision of the Iran deal that would allow United Nations sanctions to be re-imposed. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson even called Tuesday for a “Trump deal” to replace the defunct Iran deal.
“Go back into the agreement.” The agreement is dead. Moreover, U.S. sanctions are working to isolate and weaken the regime. As the New York Times itself reported on Monday, Iran’s economy is shrinking at an annual rate of nearly 10%, its inflation hovers around 40%, and the regime is reluctant to confront the U.S. military for fear of triggering an internal upheaval. The Obama administration repeatedly opposed sanctions on Iran; the current pressure is actually working.
